Do you want to capture your children’s hearts? Do you want to fascinate people with the love of God? Do you yourself need your burning embers fanned into a flash of warm flame again? Logic and imperative will never ever begin to touch the deeps that lie in the heart of man, the deeps that were placed there by their Creator.

“Fairy tales are more than true,” said G.K. Chesterton, a century ago. Contrary to the educated and erudite of his time, he reveled in STORY, and believed it to be as necessary as food and water to the human being: “Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity,” he said. Chesterton not only believed this to be true, he lived as if it were true. His nonfiction writings are clever, but his fiction is brilliant. In the one he tells the truth, in the other he shows why and how it is true. He makes all of life a story, and in his stories we can’t help but see ourselves and stories always lead to conclusions.

Storytellers like Chesterton thus open our eyes to see the forest for the trees: this is our world, and this is us, and this is therefore the conclusion…

We can say a lot about today’s culture in unflattering complaint. Technology is intrusive, people don’t read, we are trained to think in soundbytes, education is biased, and social mores are being eroded. The Church is full of armchair quarterbacks, would-be streetcorner preachers wondering why nobody listens to their simple solutions to these everyday matters.

Even many of our leaders who have solid reasoning skills get head nods from the pews but little else… and so they are often frustrated or confused or weary of their efforts. Human nature has been studied, and logical conclusions drawn. The results are diagrammed and laid out before us in black and white, and we know the tasks set before us.

But we are uninterested, disengaged…
DISENCHANTED.

In contrast to this, there are fairy tales… there are stories! There is humor and beauty and mystery in this world, and the best authors make art of it all. They fascinate us with their words, we are spellbound and broken and remade and healed by the power of story.

John tells us that Jesus Christ was THE WORD made flesh… God spoke, and the worlds were made, and Jesus was with Him, “rejoicing before him always, rejoicing in his inhabited world and delighting in the children of man.” (Prov. 8:30-31) The old Christmas hymn says that He was “pleased as man with men to dwell,” this Jesus who is “God-with-us.” God spun a story before ages began, and then He mysteriously, unbelievably, entered His own storyline. At just the right time, when the world was finally ready for a Hero.

The Bible is full of stories, and the genius of their plot is twofold: 1. They are REAL stories, but with the lingering taste of unreality… they retain a sense of the other mingling with the common, the divine relating to the earth-bound; and 2. They are all inextricably linked with and overarched by THE story of a Grand Redemption.

So God talks to us as a Father talks to His child from infancy, with story and rhyme and symbol… lisping to us in parental coos, He “stoops down to make us great.” We learn of dragons to slay and crowns to be won… of virgins to be rescued and weddings to be attended in grand style… we are warned of the outer darkness beyond and our imaginations are set on fire when language fails to describe visions of the throne of God.

But the fascination does not end with words. God sets us and our very lives in Story. One of the best things we can teach our children is to learn to ask “why?” WHY do you think God did things this way, or made things that way? Imagination is a gift of God, and as far as we know, it is unique to the human spirit. Surely there is a reason for this! Learning to ask the question “why?” might help us to discover that reason.

One example to explore along these lines is FAMILY. God sets us in the context of family from our conception. WHY? Did He have to make people in this way? Was he bound to do this? Florence Nightingale said, “The laws of nature are the thoughts of God.” He is the lawmaker – He is not bound to any of the laws of science. When He does anything, it is with intent and purpose. He sets a baby in a womb, and the infant enters into the context of family, no matter where in this world he is, no matter whether he is embraced or orphaned, and he learns to think in terms of RELATIONSHIP from day one.

And so is it any surprise that we find God speaking to all of us in child-speak: I am Your Father… Christ is your Elder Brother… the Holy Spirit is your Teacher… I have called you friends. We come into this world learning this language; there is no need for dictionary definitions. Whether our connotations are positive or negative, we are immersed in a world of Story, and God is writing all the chapters. This may sound cliché, and yet it’s true! We are all moving toward a conclusion, and the storylines are being woven together masterfully.

Oprah may believe that there is a spark of the Divine in everyone, but the Bible tells us otherwise. This does not mean, however, that anything “profane” cannot be made “sacred.” If rocks can be taught to cry out praise to God, so can the best gifts of mankind, whether they are intended for that or not. Good fiction is always redemptive in nature, but it is not always overtly “Christian” in its tone. Good fiction speaks a truth that reverberates deeply in the heart of human nature, like a song we heard once, long ago.

In a good story, we see ourselves. A good story touches us at heart, and we are reminded of things we tend to forget (or want to forget): as we are carried away into believing this story before us, we are reminded that we, too, are indeed part of a context… that there are interwoven lives beneath the surface of things… that there is a reality that we cannot completely take in… that there is significance in the small elements of life… that we are heading toward a conclusion… We begin living in another story inside our own through good fiction. As our defenses weaken, we are enabled to more fully enter our own world through the back door of another.

The most powerful part of story is the conclusion. There we are left with our thoughts, and if it was an especially good story, it runs along its own track in our imaginations for awhile, the characters refusing to go quietly into oblivion. This is often where the sparks fly and new connections are made.

Madeleine L’engle (Walking on Water) spoke of how characters and authors become people in our own personal biographies. They affect the further thought and future choices of their readers. Christian readers of good stories see even further, as we long for conclusion ourselves. We know our ending… our doctrine is sound on that issue. We read nonfiction books about doctrine and we nod our assent.

And yet, when we read a good story we are heartened in our spirits like a timid, weary soldier after Henry V’s speech at Agincourt… we know that there is an element of TRUTH in those fairy tale happy endings. THIS is our destiny. For those of us in Christ, there will be a dramatic and completely satisfactory ending in which all the tails will be knotted, all the mysteries made known, all the dragons will be slain, and the wedding feast will be robustly celebrated.

As Doug Wilson wrote in his poem, “Catepoem,” the Groom will finally conquer His Bride and at that first dance, He will whisper in her ear, “Rage no more / Just kiss the Son.” Only the best fiction or poetry can do justice to that sweeping saga.

And what for those books with ambiguous endings that leave us exposed to brutal reality and force us to come to terms with life lived under the curse? There may not be the rousing moment of victory lived in the imagination – but there is power and a bracing effect when for a moment the curtain is pulled back and that bright light exposes all our little defense mechanisms. For awhile we are able to regain the senses that life on earth numbs us to over time.

And like Isaiah, we are left undone and open, receptive to TRUE healing and comfort. Of course, only the Spirit and the Word and the Blood bring ultimate spiritual healing, but in His wisdom God has given us gifts and He often uses broken and faulty means to bring us to NEED, which brings us to the true Source. Good story makes us thirsty for the best Story.

Persuasive arguments are necessary sometimes, but we must not be fooled by the enemy of beauty into thinking that it is a cheap trick for Christians to use story – that poetic, evocative language of God. Jesus wept, and Jesus set His face like a flint, and Jesus was overcome by love. God has sworn and God has raged and God has told stories. We are His poem, His art, and His workmanship.

It is no insignificant thing to tell a story, even if it is only your own. We are following hard after God, and in our efforts at creativity we are made like our Creator. In thinking His thoughts after Him, we are gaining the mind of Christ, who “delights in the children of man,” each one with his or her own story to tell. We are told again and again, He is not above listening to us and our words. He condescended to be interested. And so our interest in story is a sign that we are, indeed, made in the image of God, sparks of HIS imagination.

The Bible is narrated in Technicolor, but we read it in black and white, perhaps because we find that more comfortable and less challenging. Principles are easy to follow, and we always grade ourselves on a curve. But entering the Story? Well, that is altogether different, and isn’t easily done in the required half hour’s time. Does that sound backwards to you? Isn’t it fiction that we read in bed? Isn’t it fiction that is armchair-easy?

There are always exceptions, but there is a reason that fiction is usually the target of book-burnings and bannings, or the spark for revolutions. There is a reason that men like Tolkien, Lewis, Chesterton, and Tolstoy wrote in story form. We read nonfiction with another man’s voice speaking to us. We read fiction with our own. We easily remain outside of nonfiction, we observe and consider and dog-ear and scribble notes and critique. It is fiction that we unhesitatingly enter and devour. It is the difference between life and death, and as P.D. James wrote, “”The dead are not like the living, monsieur, never, never, never.” (A Taste for Death)

Do you want to capture your children’s hearts? Do you want to fascinate people with the love of God? Do you yourself need your burning embers fanned into a flash of warm flame again? Law has its place in the life of a Christian, but after it has done its shredding work, logic and argument have little to offer the weary, worn, heavy-laden souls needing the comfort of grace. God gives us the goodness of both, and throughout our lives we circle and return from failure and need to grace and comfort.

If we are wise we learn over time to divide law and gospel rightly. Story and poetry help us grow up into this, to understand and stay within this context. The best stories imitate God’s narrative voice, leading us through the process of exposure into the warm embrace of grace. Our smoldering faith is often warmed through to brilliant flame by the One who calls Himself “The Alpha and the Omega,” the Beginning and the End. He wraps Himself in Story!

And He invites us to join Him in His creative acts of reviving cold souls and opening blind eyes through the mystery and power of it. He blesses us with gifted authors – people who step aside, and humbly enter into that creative process, piercing our hearts with their needles as they thread their stories right through us, leaving an indelible pattern behind.

Nonfiction can take pride of place on our bookshelves, but it cannot touch the deeps that lie in the heart of man to cure his wounds. The deeps were placed there by the Creator, and it is His Story of Redemption that can best plumb their depths. If God is not ashamed to write us a story and woo us into it, if God Himself grants the gifts of beauty, imagination, and language to His people, then we ought not be too proud to tell our story, nor to tolle lege, “take up and read.”

Recommended stories:
Gilead and Home, by Marilynne Robinson
The Lost Princess, by George McDonald
Father Brown Mysteries, by G.K. Chesterton
The Lord of the Ring Trilogies, by J.R.R. Tolkien
Havah, by Tosca Lee
The Wind in the Willows, by Kenneth Grahame
Till We Have Faces, by C.S. Lewis

Jennifer Pursley is a homeschooling mom who lives in Acworth, Georgia with her husband and 3 children (15, 13, 8). She is a member of Midway Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Powder Springs, GA where she and her husband (a Deacon) share teaching responsibilities for First Grade Sunday School. She can be contacted at [email protected]