The Magnificent Story E-Book

James Bryan Smith

• Herausgeber: IVP Formatio
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Serie: Apprentice Resources
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Seitenzahl: 287

Beschreibung

We are story-making people. We love reading stories—and we love hearing the personal stories of others. We need stories, or narratives, to make sense of our world. And those stories shape our lives. What is the story you have been told about the gospel? About God? About the Christian life? About Jesus? About the cross? About yourself? About heaven?Your answers to these questions will form a story that will determine how your life will go. The answers reveal your ability to trust, to love, to hope—and even your capacity for joy. Any story worth giving the power to shape our lives must pass a simple test: Is it beautiful, good, and true? If it is, then it is a magnificent story—and that is where transformation takes place. From James Bryan Smith, author of the bestselling book The Good and Beautiful God, comes this spiritual formation resource meant to help both individuals and groups understand the magnificent story of Christ in their lives. The field-tested material within includes spiritual practices at the end of each chapter and a group discussion guide. Uncover the true story of beauty, goodness, and truth that will satisfy the ultimate longings of your heart.

Leseprobe

To my daughter Hope

who inspires me with how much she loves living

in the magnificent story.

Contents

How to Get the Most Out of This Book

1 Longing for a Magnificent Story

Soul Training Exercise: Beauty

2 Falling for Shrunken Stories

Soul Training Exercise: Goodness

3 Participating in the Trinity

Soul Training Exercise: Truth

4 Bathing in Beauty

Soul Training Exercise: Sight

5 Embracing Our Goodness

Soul Training Exercise: Sound

6 Discovering the Truth

Soul Training Exercise: Smell

7 Going the Distance

Soul Training Exercise: Touch

8 Making All Things New

Soul Training Exercise: Taste

9 Living in the Magnificent Way

Acknowledgments

Study Guide

Notes

Praise for The Magnificent Story

About the Author

Coming Soon from James Bryan Smith

Apprentice

More Titles from InterVarsity Press

Formatio

How to Get the Most Out of This Book

This book is intended to be used in the context of a community—a small group, a Sunday school class, or a few friends gathered in a home or coffee shop. Working through this book with others greatly magnifies the impact. If you go through this on your own, only the first four of the following suggestions will apply to you. No matter how you use it, I am confident that God can and will accomplish a good work in you.

Prepare: Find a notebook or journal with blank pages. You will use this journal to answer questions sprinkled throughout each chapter (in boxes) and for the reflection on the soul training exercises (instructions are at the end of each chapter).Read: Read each chapter thoroughly. Try not to read hurriedly, and avoid reading the chapter at the last minute. Start reading early enough in the week so you have time to digest the material and to do the exercise.Do: Complete the weekly Soul Training Exercise. Engaging in exercises related to the content of the chapter will help deepen the ideas and narratives you will be learning. It can also be healing, as it connects you to God. The exercises in this book are best done over several days.Reflect: Make time to complete your written reflections. You may not be a journaling type, but I encourage you to find some way to keep track of your answers to the box questions as well as your reflections on the exercise.Interact: Come to the group prepared to listen and share. If everyone takes time to write out answers in advance, the group conversation will be much richer, and your time together will be more effective. Remember the group discussion rule: listen twice as much as you speak. But do speak! The other group members will learn from your ideas and experiences.Encourage: Interact with each other outside of group time. Use technology to stay in touch with the members of your group between gatherings. One good idea is to have a group email thread in which someone posts a thought or idea or question, and others can chime in. Another great thing to do is intentionally email at least one person in your group each week with an encouraging word.

1

Longing for a Magnificent Story

What kind of life does the Christian story give rise to? This question is important, since the answer to it determines the shape of our spirituality.

Simon Chan

When my daughter Hope was little, I told her a bedtime story every night. I read her the usual books—Goodnight Moon and Winnie-the-Pooh—but her favorite stories were the “made-up ones.” The made-up onesstarted when we were a bit rushed, having gotten in late, and I wanted to turn the lights out so she could get a full night’s sleep. This was a bit of lazy parenting on my part. She asked for a book, but I said, “No, it’s late, and time for lights out.”

“But I want a story, Daddy,” Hope pleaded.

“Okay, I will tell you a story,” I said. So I thought about it and got an idea. I would tell a story in which she would be the main character.

“Once upon a time,” I began, “there was a giant who lived all alone in a beanstalk in the sky. He had a goose who could lay golden eggs. Then one day a little girl named Hope . . .” She let out a subtle gasp. She was not expecting it. I looked at her and she looked at me, and she smiled. I went on to tell the rest of the story, all the way up to the “The End.” It was time to pray and go to sleep, but she was not ready. She was full of energy. My parenting trick had backfired.

“Tell it again, Daddy, please tell it again.”

Years later, when she was a teenager, Hope told me those were her favorite bedtime stories. I reflected on why and have concluded she loved those best because she was in the story, not just witnessing it. I think it is the clue to understanding how we are designed. We were made not just to enjoy stories but to enter them. We long to take our lives, our stories, and merge them with another story. This is truly what we long for. But we desire more than a children’s bedtime story. We were made for something much bigger.

What’s Your Story?

“What’s your story?”

That is a common question we ask when we are getting to know someone. We are asking things like, “Where are you from? Are you married? What do you do for a living?” Once we gather this information, we come to know their story. But I ask this question with a different intent. When I ask to know someone’s story, I want to know what story they are living by. What story is shaping their life?

We are story-making people. We love stories (Once upon a time . . . ). Our narratives help us make sense of our world. The big questions in life are, What is God like? Who am I? What is the meaning of life? What can I count on? What is the good life? What are my deepest needs? When we put together our answers we have a metanarrative, a large story that is capable of answering life’s key questions. This story operates at a higher level, and once it is adopted it becomes a part of our unconscious mind. We do not have to think about the story consciously. We realize it’s there only when it has been threatened.

Our stories are running our lives—in ways we may not even be aware of. Let’s say your family led you to believe you are inadequate. They communicated this to you in many ways, usually not through words. Perhaps it was a disappointed glance or a failure to listen to you. The story of your inadequacy becomes a defining narrative of your identity, and it will shape your decisions and actions and feelings for many, many years. It does not matter whether the narrative is true or not. All that matters is that you believe it to be true.

What story have you been told about God? What have you been told about the gospel or about the Christian life, about Jesus, about the cross, about who you are, or about heaven? Your answers to these questions form a story that will determine how your life will go. If you wrote down your answers to these questions—if you told me the story you have been told, the stories you are telling yourself—and sent them to me to read, I believe I could predict how your life is going and will go without having met you.

The answers would reveal your ability to trust, to love, and to hope. I would know your capacity for courage. I would even be able to determine your level of joy—because the stories you are living by are running your life. You are living at their mercy.

If what I am stating is true, then the most important thing we can do is to start living into the right story. Any story worth giving the power to shape our lives must pass a simple test: Is it beautiful, good, and true? If it is, then it is a magnificent story. You were designed for nothing less.

The Magnifying Power of Beauty, Goodness, and Truth

The word magnificent is defined as that which is beautiful, good, and true. The root word is magnify, which means to enlarge, enhance, and expand. When something is magnificent it has the power to magnify. That is what Mary said to her relative Elizabeth in her famous speech we call “the Magnificat”: “My soul magnifies the Lord” (Luke 1:46). Mary had just learned the amazing news that she would bear a Son who would save the world. This good news led her—in the depths of her soul—to magnify the Lord. The story of the annunciation is an example of beauty, goodness, and truth.

Here is the story in a contemporary form: “Catch this: God is going to become human. God has chosen a lovely young woman of deep faith to conceive and bear and raise this child, who is fully God and fully human. Wow. And she is going to agree—to say, ‘Let it be unto me.’ She will suffer, but every generation will call her blessed. God is going to move into our neighborhood and pitch his tent among us in order to save us.” The story of Advent, the Christmas story, is beautiful and good and true.

What makes something beautiful, good, or true? Beauty, goodness, and truth are called the three transcendentals. This is because they transcend—or stand above—the physical realm. They are real, perhaps more real than the physical realm. They are invincible and unbreakable, too powerful to be changed. The Greek philosopher Plato was the first person to link them together and speak of them as a group. Plato was interested in the purification of our souls, and he believed that the three transcendentals could ennoble the soul. In this book you will encounter the word transcendental many times.

Beauty

Thomas Aquinas said beauty is “that which, when seen, pleases.” Beauty is the combination of several elements that, when put into the right form, are pleasing. On the campus where I teach there are rosebushes. When they are in bloom, I love to stop and—well, you know—smell the roses.

What makes something beautiful? Theologians such as Augustine of Hippo, in the fourth century, and Aquinas, in the thirteenth century, wrote about the components of beauty, such as clarity, proportion, wholeness, and harmony. Most people see a rose and find it to be beautiful. The color, shape, and texture of the rose are what we see, but their combination is what makes it beautiful.

We do not need to understand the qualities of beauty to know it or to love it. The slogan in an ad for a luxury car reads, “Performance that moves you. Beauty that stops you in your tracks.” Even though it is an advertising slogan, it tells an important truth: beauty is very powerful. It really does stop us in our tracks. Many people who gaze on the Grand Canyon find themselves at a loss for words. Most people are affected by the beauty of a car, a home, a flower, or a sunset even if they are not conscious of it. There are higher and deeper objects of beauty that may be more difficult—perhaps even impossible—to see.

Music, architecture, poetry, pottery, photography, food preparation and presentation, painting, carpentry, and interior design are evaluated by our sense of beauty. I enjoy watching home renovation television shows. At the end of the show (the big reveal), as the people walk through their newly renovated and redecorated homes, they all say the same thing: “Wow, it is so beautiful!” I once counted the number of times people in the show used the word beautiful: eleven times in two minutes.

I went with my wife, Meghan, to St. Martin’s-in-the-Field in London on a warm summer evening to hear a classical music concert. As we sat down, the eastern window caught my eye. The window is a kind of stained glass without the stain—clear, etched glass with a tilted oval in the center, a modern depiction of the tilted head of Jesus on the cross. It has been called one of the most significant pieces of religious art commissioned in modern times. As the sun went down, the musicians walked in silence into the candlelit sanctuary.

What kinds of beauty “stop you in your tracks”? What do you find most pleasing?

Then the five musicians began playing, first Mozart’s Divertimento in D Major, then Pachelbel’s Canon in D, followed by Bach’s “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring,” and ended with Vivaldi’s TheFour Seasons—all four seasons. We listened in a state of rapture. When they played the last note we looked at each other and were both weeping. Why? We were not sad; quite the opposite. We wept because we had been touched by beauty. The beauty of the church, the glass window piece, and the sounds of musical notes arranged exquisitely created an epiphanic experience. When we encounter beauty, we tend to say, “Wow!”

Goodness

“Beauty,” said Dallas Willard, “is goodness made manifest to the senses.” What is goodness? Goodness is that which works for the benefit or betterment of another. If, as Aquinas said, beauty is that which, when seen, pleases, then goodness is that which, when experienced, benefits. That which is good makes us better, heals us, restores us, improves us, strengthens us, and makes us right, perhaps when we were wrong. We are naturally drawn to goodness, and unless there is some brokenness in us we are naturally repelled by evil.

I love to hear stories about people who do good things. My friend Shane and some of his friends restored an abandoned lot in a depressed neighborhood by turning it into a lovely park. The city of Philadelphia tried to prevent them from doing it because it belonged to the city. They pressed on, and when the park was completed, the community came out to enjoy it. It was beautiful, and it was an act of goodness. The community rallied, and the city officials came and saw it and changed their minds.

Human goodness has one important characteristic: love. To love is to will the good of another. The finest exposition on love is 1 Corinthians 13:4-8: “Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.” Though this text is often heard at weddings, it is not about marriage only. It is an explanation of what love looks like. Paul is defining all that is good and all that is not. Patience is good. It benefits those who are patient and those around them. That is true of kindness, of forbearance, of faith, of hope, and of endurance. On the other hand, envy is harmful to those who are envious and to those around them. That is true of boasting, arrogance, resentment, and rejoicing in wrongdoing.

And all the things that are good are also beautiful. I saw an act of kindness on a plane ride. An older couple had been assigned separate seats, and a man willingly gave up his aisle seat in order for them to sit together. It made me smile because his kindness was good. To love is to will the good of another, but it is also an act of beauty. That which is not good we call evil. Though it is a bit corny, I once heard a preacher say evil is live spelled backward. Anything that goes against what helps us live is therefore evil. And evil is always ugly. Think again about the list in 1 Corinthians 13: when you see arrogance, you see ugliness. It is also working against truth. When we encounter goodness, we tend to say, “Thanks!”

Truth

The final transcendental longing we have is for truth. We often ask, “Is it true?” We innately want to know if something is right, if it’s true. Something is true if it is aligned with reality. Something is false if it is not aligned with reality. Reality is what you bump into when you are wrong. Reality—the way things actually are—may not always be believed, but eventually it will prevail. Reality does not budge. So according to our definitions of these terms we could say: truth is that which, when encountered, works. Nutritionists and dietitians tell us it is a good idea to eat a balanced diet. It is either true or false, regardless of who is saying it. Homes used to be built using lead in the pipes and asbestos for insulation. Both, as it turns out, are deadly. Truth doesn’t change.

Truth is not merely the right historical account of something. Truth is woven into reality. This is why a fictional story can tell the truth. The fable known as “The Tortoise and the Hare” is one of the most well-known stories. It tells a basic truth: slow and steady wins the race. The fable, while fictional, tells a truth. As C. S. Lewis wrote, “The story of Christ is simply a true myth: a myth working on us in the same way as the others, but with this tremendous difference that it really happened.”

Those who engage in apologetics, or defending the faith, or trying to convince people Jesus is Lord, often find themselves using truth as their defense. While I believe the Christian convictions about Jesus (for example, he was the Son of God who rose from the dead) are true, I am not drawn to Jesus only by truth. I am drawn to Jesus by his beauty and his goodness. Still, truth is an essential aspect of our lives. We need it to build a good and beautiful life. We can easily be deceived, but when we encounter truth, we tend to say, “Yes!”

The late theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar wrote that beauty “will not allow herself to be separated and banned from her two sisters,” goodness and truth. Beauty, goodness, and truth are, like the Trinity, of one essence. When all three—beauty, goodness, and truth—are aligned, you are dealing with reality at its deepest level. It resonates in your heart, where transformation takes place. If you bump up against truth, for example, it’s also likely to be good and beautiful. They refuse, as Balthasar wrote, to be separated from one another. The transcendentals of beauty, goodness, and truth are not merely ideas, concepts, or speculations at the whim of our tastes. They are at the heart of reality.

A Brief Word on Subjectivity and Relativity

During the twentieth century a new narrative began to emerge, and it eventually became the dominant narrative by the end of the century. The narrative goes like this: beauty, goodness, and truth are subjective and relative. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. We cannot know truth for certain. And no one is truly good. A more contemporary sentiment among the millennial generation goes like this: I will find my own truth.

Subjectivity refers to how judgment is shaped by inward influences (personal opinions and feelings) rather than outer influences.

Beauty is, to a degree, subjective. It is partially in the eye of the beholder. Our own tastes, shaped by our culture and our experiences, allow us to see more beauty in some things than in others. One of my friends loves the paintings of Picasso. I am not drawn to Picasso the way she is; I prefer the paintings of Rembrandt. But there is beauty in both. This is true of the beauty we experience in music, food, literature, home decor, and architecture. I visited Graceland, the former home of Elvis Presley, which is preserved exactly as it was when Elvis died. His famous Jungle Room has green shag carpeting from floor to ceiling. Not my style, but I imagine Elvis thought it beautiful. To be beautiful, something must contain the previously mentioned characteristics (clarity, harmony, tone, and so on). Individual tastes will vary.

Truth and goodness are said to be relative. Relativity has to do with relation and proportion. Goodness does have a measure of relativity. Some actions are good (writing a thank-you note), and some are very good (donating an organ). Truth also is relative in the sense that some truths affect us more than others. It is true that two plus two equals four. A deeper truth is that it’s better to give than to receive. The important thing to note is that we are living in what has been called a postmodern culture that has abandoned beauty, goodness, and truth as essential elements of life. I believe we desperately need all three.

I do not want a postmodern dentist: “Well, I’m not sure about your tooth, because we can’t be sure we know what is wrong. My diagnosis is subjective.” No, I want a dentist who has a grasp on the reality of my tooth. Yes, we all have to make interpretations, and we can all be wrong (doctors once bled people to heal them). The truth will always prevail because reality is what we bump into when we are wrong. However, we can also be right. I want my mechanic and the guy who builds bridges and the woman who performs open-heart surgery to be right.

In the same way, we need a story that is beautiful, good, and true in order to live a beautiful, good, and true life. Next we will examine how a story can (and cannot) be beautiful, good, and true.

Connecting Our Stories with the Beautiful, Good, and True Story

I met a man who watches The Lord of the Rings movies every night. When he told me this I pushed back: “Every night?” He said that when he gets off work he goes home, fixes his dinner, turns on the movie, and watches until he gets sleepy. He stops the movie and resumes in the same spot the next night. I was stunned by this, but in a way I understand. Great stories filled with adventure, with an epic battle of good versus evil, where tragedy ends in triumph, do something to our soul nothing else can.

Is there a movie you enjoy watching again and again? What do you find appealing about that movie?

We are creatures with a mystery in our heart that is bigger than ourselves. We may think we can find ultimate pleasure, satisfaction, and meaning in alcohol, sex, money, or power, but in reality those have never satisfied anyone. They are too small for our massive souls. We were designed to take part in a divine drama, an epic story. We were made not merely to hear it but to be in it. We are, indeed, stories. But in truth we are not the protagonists of the real story, the story we long to take part in. God is the hero of the only story that will satisfy us.

The thesis of this book is that there is a magnificent story, which is the most important thing happening on this earth. It is our only hope as individuals, communities, countries, and a species. But for a variety of reasons the gospel message we often hear, the story often told, is shrunken and distorted. This is why we see so many frustrated, disappointed Christians. It is not that they are bad people, but they have never heard the magnificent story in its fullness.

Hearing the good news of the gospel is similar to crying over the beauty of heavenly music. Experiencing the good news of the gospel is similar to feeling glad when we see someone perform an unexpected act of kindness for a stranger. The greatest news is that this is what God is like. To discover this we need to look at the story—the gospel—through the lenses of beauty, goodness, and truth.

My friend Trevor stated it well: “In order to see beauty, goodness, and truth, I have to have humble eyes.” Our eyes can be humble only when we get ourselves out of the way and focus on the beauty all around us. And we see God best when we learn to see and experience beauty, goodness, and truth. When we see them we get a glimpse of God. We not only see them, but we hear them, we smell them, we touch them, and we taste them. God gave us all of our senses—physical and spiritual—to feel God’s love.

God sings his love to you in birdsong. God smiles at you in maple trees. God charms you with the color green. He gave you eyes to see sunsets, ears to hear rainfall, a nose to smell a rose. God’s massive love appears in the small fragments. God is loving you in these moments, even if you don’t know it.

Beauty and Suffering: The Cellist of Sarajevo

From 1992 to 1995 the world witnessed one of the worst civil conflicts, the Bosnian War. Three factions, each tied to a religion (Orthodox Serbs, Catholic Croats, and Muslim Bosniaks), began attacking one another in a struggle for power after the breakup of Yugoslavia. The Serbs, backed by the Yugoslavian army, attacked the Croats and Bosniaks, but the latter two united and fought back. In the end no one was innocent of the bloodshed. Over 100,000 people were killed, 2.2 million people were displaced, and it is estimated that over 12,000 women—mostly Muslim—were raped.

In the midst of the ugliness and the suffering, beauty emerged to offer a different story. As the mortar shells rained down on Sarajevo, a musician from Bosnia and Herzegovina named Vedran Smailović did the only thing he knew to do: he played his cello. In the midst of the destruction of buildings and the killing of his family and friends, Vedran played his cello—in full formal attire—alone in the ruins and in the streets, even though there was relentless sniper fire.

Vedran Smailović playing the cello in Sarajevo

During the conflict no one knew when or where he would play, but as soon as someone heard him playing, the crowds grew. Grieving and starving, the people gathered to listen. Why? As Smailović said, “They were hungry, but they still had soul.” In the midst of tragedy, his music echoed from another world, a place where beauty, goodness, and truth reside. Through Smailović—an instrument of God, I believe—the people found hope and healing.

As he played his cello in the ruined city during the forty-four-month siege, Smailović inspired people around the world. Singer Joan Baez sat in solidarity with him as he played on the streets. Composer David Wilde wrote a piece for cello in his honor: “The Cellist of Sarajevo,” played by Yo-Yo Ma. Smailović became a symbol of how beauty stands in resistance to the madness of war. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, in a speech he gave after winning the Nobel Prize, said, “If the too obvious, too straight branches of Truth and Good are crushed or amputated and cannot reach the light—yet perhaps the . . . unexpected branches of Beauty will make their way through and soar up to that very place and in this way perform the work of all three.” Perhaps Dostoevsky was right when he said, “Beauty will save the world.”

What Is at Stake?

What is the most compelling vision in your life? What makes it compelling for you?

Our world is in search of a magnificent story. Many people are hungering for something that will provide answers to their deepest longings. Like my daughter Hope, many of us want to take part in a great story. No one wants to live a lame life, yet it seems many people are doing just that, including Christians. Our magnificent story has been reduced, shrunken into a tame, manageable story failing to create magnificent lives.

We need a vision. We need the true Christian story.

Soul Training Exercise

Beauty

We are made for a beautiful, good,and true story. If you are like me, you have not spent a lot of time thinking about beauty or goodness or truth—even though they are a large part of our lives. Yet we are constantly evaluating things on the basis of their beauty (“Wow, that home is beautiful”), their goodness (“Is ice cream good or bad for us?”), and their truth (“Is that politician telling the truth or just being self-serving?”). The practice for this week, along with other practices throughout this book, is aimed at helping you become more aware of the beauty, goodness, and truth all around us.

We become more aware of beauty, goodness, and truth by being more intentional. A journal is a great way to become more intentional and to reflect on the impact of the practice. If you are able, buy a nice journal to write in (though a notebook will do). This week we are focusing on beauty. Be on the lookout for beauty and write about it.

Another way to do this exercise is to keep a photo journal. Perhaps you can take pictures of what you see and either put them in a journal or make a file in your phone. You can title the file “Beauty I Have Seen.” Or if you see something beautiful in a magazine, you could cut it out and paste it into an actual journal.

For many, beauty is most clearly revealed in creation (most easily through sight). For example, you will likely see trees and flowers, green grass, a blue sky, a bird soaring. But also be open to beautiful smells (honeysuckle), tastes (chocolate), sounds (rainfall), and touch (a cool breeze). The human voice can produce incredible beauty. Each year at our annual spiritual formation conference at Friends University, our student choir, the Singing Quakers, enters the auditorium and surrounds the audience. They then sing beautiful sacred music. I look out at the crowd as I sit on the stage, and energy, power, and light shine on the audience members’ faces, many of them weeping, nearly everyone smiling. Remember, beauty is “that which, when seen, pleases.”

Beauty (as well as goodness and truth) is not ultimate (the last) but penultimate (the second to the last). The point is not the beautiful sunset, the violin concerto, or the painting. That would make the beautiful thing ultimate, thus making it an idol. Beauty is designed to point to something else—God. God is the Creator of all things, so when we experience beauty it is right and good to thank God for it, as God is the ultimate. So in your journal find a way of giving thanks for the beauty you have experienced. Let “wow” be your way of giving thanks.

A final word: do not worry about when you do this exercise. Some find it best to do this in the evening since the day is still fresh in their minds. Others are better able to start their day with this exercise, as they might be tired in the evening.

2

Falling for Shrunken Stories

Each treeis known by its own fruit.

Luke 6:44

I grew up as a Christmas and Easter Methodist. Our family called ourselves Christians, but it was not an important part of our lives. I found church boring. When I turned eighteen, something happened to me. Though my life was outwardly good, I was inwardly empty. So I began a spiritual quest. I wanted to connect to God but did not know how. I shared this hunger with my close friend Jeff, and it turned out he felt the same way. Jeff reminded me that his family had also gone to our church, so he suggested we go to church that next Sunday.

The church service felt cold, and the sermon was dry. We noticed in the bulletin that on Wednesday they had a “seeker’s meeting” where we could learn what the church teaches. So we decided to attend.

Gospel Story 1: The Do-Good-Works Gospel

Jeff and I were excited to learn about God: Would this be the answer to our prayers? The minister welcomed us, along with ten others, into the parlor. After a brief introduction, the minister began sharing what he and those in his church believed. He started out with a shocking statement: “Jesus was not divine. He was not the Son of God any more than any of us are sons and daughters of God. Jesus was a great teacher, as were Socrates and Gandhi.”

The room was silent. “But the Bible says that Jesus rose from the dead,” I said.

“Yes, it does, young man. But you see, the Bible is merely mythology,” he explained. “It was written in ancient times, when people created myths about the gods to explain the universe. We in the twentieth century have progressed from those days. We have science, and that has replaced superstition.”

“So,” my friend Jeff asked, “what is the point of Christianity?”

“It is trying to be a good person and to do good things. Trying to live an ethical life, to right society’s wrongs, and to engage in social justice causes,” the minister said.

It was a puzzling meeting. I took a lot of notes, and at the end the minister gave all of us a free copy of his book, The Endless Search, explaining to us that God, as well as life’s meaning, could never be grasped. “Life is an endless search, and you never reach any kind of certainty.”

Jeff and I sat in my car afterward and talked for an hour as the snow fell. Finally, I said to Jeff, “What do you think about all of the things he said?”

“Seems like a waste of time to me,” Jeff said.

“Me too,” I agreed.

The False Narrative