So there I was minding my own business and a friend recommended I take a peek at Walter Brueggemann's The Prophetic Imagination. I like prophets, and I like imaginations. What could possibly go wrong? The book tried to warn me I suppose, in its own subtle way. The dedication page was meant to be a warning flag, as Brueggemann warmly dedicates the book to all his "sisters" in ministry. I suppose he might be only referring to all the deaconesses he knows, but somehow I doubt that.

Brueggemann jumps right in, insisting that conservatives and liberals both have problems, and we need to return to the scriptures and specifically the prophetic imagination to get all straightened out. We need to re-embrace biblical tension. We need to recover a more relational theology built on the pursuit of justice and mercy and freedom without allowing the systematizers to engineer us into a well-ordered, apathetic, and impotent straight jacket. He says he wants a covenantal consciousness to have as much of a say as systematic theology. We need faithful, honest criticism of the current establishment, coupled with imaginative and inspiring hope for the future and not allow these values to be co-opted by the ever lurking bureaucrats who want to give us a make-over and market this product on late night TV. So far so good: Down with infomercials, down with quenching the Spirit, and three cheers for embracing biblical tension.

A Little Something from the Vaults (Volume 15.6)

Modern Christians have forgotten the art of storytelling, and this is a significant loss. C.S. Lewis described the problem well in The Horse and His Boy: “Aravis immediately began, sitting quite still and using a rather different tone and style from her usual one. For in Calormen, storytelling (whether the stories are true or made up) is a thing you are taught, just as English boys and girls are taught essay writing. The difference is that people want to hear the stories, whereas I never heard of anyone who wanted to read the essays.”

Stories are powerful, even the false ones. And for those who are not steeped in the story of Scripture, we have to say the false ones are especially powerful. When it comes to having a need to orient all beliefs within a story, mankind is incorrigible. And we do this for the same reason that we stick to the ground when we walk—this is how our Creator decided to do it. This is how God created our minds, and we cannot really think in other ways. Initially, this approach may seem odd or confusing. But learning to think of the gospel as a story is a central part of recovering a right understanding of the gospel.