The Story Behind the Story

Are you living in the right story?

Photo by Nong on Unsplash

(A seven-minute read.)

In his seminal work, After Virtue, Scottish philosopher Alasdair MacIntrye paints a hypothetical scenario in which he’s standing at a bus stop when a young man next to him suddenly says, “The name of the common wild duck is Histrionicus histrionicus histrionicus.” It’s a perfectly meaningful sentence on its own, MacIntyre writes—and yet, devoid of context, it lacks intelligibility.

“Suppose he just uttered such sentences at random intervals,” he explains. “This would be one possible form of madness.” On the other hand, MacIntyre offers, “we would render his action of utterance intelligible if one of the following turn out to be true. He has mistaken me for someone who yesterday had approached him in the library and asked: ‘Do you by any chance know the Latin name of the common wild duck?’ Or he has just come from a session with his psychotherapist who has urged him to break his shyness by talking to strangers. . . . Or he is a Soviet spy waiting at a prearranged rendezvous and uttering the ill-chosen code sentence which will identity him to his contact.”

The point of MacIntyre’s mental exercise is simple: “In each case,” he explains, “the act of utterance becomes intelligible by finding its place in a narrative.”

That’s because, according to MacIntyre, “man is . . . essentially a story-telling animal.” We all live in and tell narratives. Indeed, we require narratives in order to make sense of our lives and the world we inhabit.

“It is through hearing stories,” he thus says, “about wicked stepmothers, lost children, good but misguided kings, wolves that suckle twin boys, youngest sons who receive no inheritance but must make their own way in the world and eldest sons who waste their inheritance on riotous living and go into exile to live with the swine, that children learn or mis-learn both what a child and what a parent is, what the cast of characters may be in the drama into which they have been born and what the ways of the world are.”

But, “deprive children of stories,” he says, “and you leave them unscripted, anxious stutterers in their actions as in their words. Hence there is no way to give us an understanding of any society, including our own, except through the stock of stories which constitute its initial dramatic resources.”

Simply put, our lives only make sense if they’re placed within the framework of a bigger story. And every action we take only makes sense to the degree that it fits within the context of that bigger story.

Indeed, in perhaps the most famous line in the book, MacIntyre submits this captivating claim: “I can only answer the question ‘What am I to do?’ if I can answer the prior question ‘Of what story or stories do I find myself a part?’”

And so it is.

The power of story

MacIntyre’s proposal can be taken in many different directions. He himself used it to insist that modern thinkers took much of the morality of the past but divorced it from the larger story of humanity’s ultimate purpose and end (what philosophers call “teleology”), thus leaving modern morality meaningless and unintelligible.

For my purposes, I apply it to my own life. My life only makes sense, and only finds happiness, peace, and satisfaction, to the degree that I remember I’m a part of a bigger story—indeed, the biggest Big Story.

Simply put, there’s a story that stands behind every other story. And I so often find that my life becomes riddled with anxiety and dissatisfaction because I’m living in the wrong story.

Let me give an example: I often think that the story I’m living in is that I’m this honest-hearted and sincere pastor who’s been called by God to start a movement of Jesus-loving and people-loving people in Maine.

In other words, there’s a neighborhood or city in Maine—Bangor or Portland or wherever—that’s languishing spiritually. But then I show up, do my Jesus thing, and start a movement of Jesus-loving and people-loving people. Love explodes. Lives are changed. And everyone lives happily ever after.

That is, admittedly, the story I so often inhabit.

But it’s a story that so often haunts me because I frequently feel so far away from the “happily ever after” part. I don’t feel like the story is moving toward the grand climax I dream about.

So I start living from a place of inadequacy instead of a place of abundance—all because I’m living in the wrong story.

I could multiply the examples, relating it to parenthood or marriage or you name it.

My life often feels underwhelming and underachieving—all because I’m living in the wrong story.

Instead, in my better moments, I remember the real story I’m involved in. I remember there’s a triune God—eternally defined by other-centered, communitarian love—who’s seeking to lead the universe into a never-ending experience of love.

In fact, this God brought the universe—and its inhabitants—into existence to receive and to give love. And I’m one of the objects of God’s supreme love—created not because I was needed but because I was wanted.

And the end toward which I’ve been created, my ultimate telos, is to live in safe, loving, and eternal fellowship with God—and to extend that safe, loving, and eternal fellowship to others.

That’s the story I’m invited to inhabit (though, of course, there’s so much more to it)—and to whatever degree the other episodes of my life harmonize with that Big Story is the degree to which they’ll make sense and bring satisfaction.

Of course, as with any good story—since, after all, all these stories are echoes, to greater and lesser degrees, of the Big Story—there’s conflict and turmoil and upheaval, and a problem that needs resolution. There’s a Hero and a villain—and questions about whether the Hero can save the day.

Many people have told this part of the story in different ways, and I won’t expound upon those here, but one of the key features of this part of the story—as I understand it—is that the goodness of the Hero has been called into question by the villain and the way the story ultimately resolves is by having his goodness vindicated.

And it’s that vindication which finally and eternally restores the universe back to a place of never-ending love—when “happily ever after” will alas and finally truly be true.

And this is, to me, the story behind the story. (I could say more about this, but it’s perhaps just best to read what my friend John Peckham has written on it—or, if you want a shorter and much more simplistic read, you can check out my God’s Story and My Story.)

The point is that my life only makes sense, and feels satisfying, to the degree I live it in light of that story. Indeed, my story only makes sense when I see how it’s part of God’s Big Story.

The magician’s book

I’m here reminded of the picture C. S. Lewis paints in his Voyage of the Dawn Treader in his Chronicles of Narnia series. Lucy, one of the main characters, comes across a book in a magician’s house, and she’s captivated by the story she reads in it.

Only, she can’t flip back in the book to read it again and can’t remember the story later on. The only thing she knows is that it’s the best story she’s ever read.

However, she finds faint echoes of it in other places, despite her failure to remember the story itself. And thus Lewis puts it this way: “She never could remember; and ever since that day what Lucy means by a good story is a story which reminds her of the forgotten story in the Magician’s Book.”

Whether we’re conscious of it or not, we’re all part of that Big Story—and God, through his Spirit, has placed “memories” of that story deep within the recesses of our hearts.

And thus, the degree to which any story we’re living in, and the degree to which any of our actions, echo that Big Story, is the degree to which our lives will have meaning, purpose, and joy.

So this new year, why not step into that story? You’re already in it—whether you realize or not, or whether you want to be or not.

So you may as well enjoy your place on the stage.

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Shawn is a pastor in Maine, whose life, ministry, and writing focus on incarnational expressions of faith. The author of four books and a columnist for Adventist Review, he is also a DPhil (PhD) candidate at the University of Oxford, focusing on nineteenth-century American Christianity. You can follow him on Instagram, and listen to his podcast Mission Lab.