The genre of literature that dominates the landscape of Scripture is narrative. There is some captivating as well as some shocking narratives. In many cases, we have been taught about the human characters within these narratives and how to discover ourselves in those characters. Who hasn’t tried, like Abraham, to help God bring a promise to its conclusion well before its time and in another way than it would naturally occur?

These stories, whose plots and characters are so intriguing, allow us in a powerful way to see God at work with his people. The Old Testament makes up seventy-five percent of Scripture and forty percent of its material is narrative. (Fee and Stuart, How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth, 89). There are many kinds of narratives in the Old Testament. As readers we must understand the characteristic of Old and New Testament narratives as a first step toward becoming a competent reader of the Story which Scripture presents.

Story. Bausch’s Perspective [Thirteen Characteristics of a Good Story]
In his book Storytelling, Imagination, and Faith, (Bausch, Storytelling: Imagination and Faith, 29-80.) William Bausch relates thirteen characteristics of a good story. These story characteristics are:

1. Stories provoke curiosity and compel repetition. Good
   stories are gripping. We want to hear them over and over again.
2. Stories unite us in a holistic way to nature. A good
   story causes us to feel connected to nature and for a
   believer to the God of creation of nature. That connection
   makes us have a feeling of holism.
3. Stories are a bridge to one’s culture, one’s roots. We
   have common stories that evoke our identity to past
   generations and our roots. We have clan, tribe, culture,
   family, and individual stories. It is even possible that an
   outsider can get a glimpse of a culture by looking at its
   stories.

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What if story, not propositions, is the cause of our actions? What if story, not propositions, gives us our worldview? What if story, not propositions, is at the root of the way we function as human beings? What if we changed our story from one of cultural consumerism, as an example, to God’s EPIC Adventure, which provides another view of the world? Wouldn’t it follow that we would change how we would relate to the world around us? What if story is the medium through which we develop our hopes and dreams, our joy and anger, our self-expression and fears?

Stories cause us to have emotions (joy, peace, love, fear, etc.). Stories bring ideas to us. We see ourselves in the characters presented in stories. Stories explode our curiosity. Stories are about sending and receiving. Stories include conversation that goes both ways providing interaction. It appears that we could all benefit from the effect of story.

As long as story captures our interest we have an almost infinite capacity to hear and repeat it. In today’s economy those who market and advertise know the power of story. It seems that story is one of the most powerful and effective tools that we have at our disposal to convey information with which we may engage people. An audience may be immersed in the story that provides them with the information that they need to take an action. More

Stories are not just a bunch of fragmented stuff that just happens. Stories are moving accounts that are headed for a destination. So when we hear or tell a story, it is a whole entity. We need to guard against putting fragments together (Wright, Scripture and the Authority of God, 20.) that produce the creation of a different story and then pass it off as if it were God’s story.

The Story of God that Scripture presents is to be told as a challenge to the story of the present world. God’s EPIC Adventure is subversive and will subvert the dominant paradigm when told and enacted. The telling and living of this Story challenges the authority of this present evil age. In telling and living God’s Story we are undermining the current worldview of what the world is and offering the world a new worldview. The Story we tell and live is that there is only one God. He is the creator of all that there is. He not only created the world, but he lives within his creation. He is not up there and we are down here (dualism). He is not a landlord who made the world and left it to run on its own (deism). He is not an absentee landlord (agnosticism). He is not absent (atheism). (N. T. Wright, Bringing the Church to the World (Minneapolis, MN: Bethany House Publishers, 1992), 21.) This Creator God is transcendent over his creation and is deeply wounded by its fall away from goodness to sinfulness. He was loving enough that he was willing to get his hands dirty, as it were, to bring about its recreation.

The Story of God is about the world that was created by God and functions as an open invitation for all who choose to participate. The hearer can make the Story his or her own by turning away from idols that hinder one from making the Story one’s own and worshiping the God who is revealed in this Story. (Wright, Bringing the Church to the World, 152).

Knowing the Story is not an end in itself. The Story is there so that the Creator God may be glorified and that his creation may be redeemed. It is our task to be the vehicles through whom this magnificent Story is told and retold, not just in words but also with drama, art, or any form of creative expression. We have been entrusted with a great and wonderful privilege.