In fiction the best enemies are the ones the reader almost likes.

Captain Ahab has the great whale.

Huck has his Pap.

Whoville has the Grinch.

Holden Caulfield has himself.

Readers love all of these bad guys a little bit, because the best enemies are not flat, one-dimensional characters.

In modern non-fiction, our daily walk-about lives, we have come to strip the humanity off of our antagonists.  While it might help a cause to characterize our enemies in the most black-and-white terms, it hurts the protagonist and his/her non-fiction story. Read the rest of this entry »

I went to hear Donald Miller speak on Monday.  I arrived a few minutes late, but really just in time.  As I was approaching the doors of the gargantuan church someone was moving toward the same destination from an opposite parking lot.  He beat me to the door by a second or two, so he held it open for me.  Donald Miller was a few minutes late too, and playing the role of my personal doorman, though when he entered the building they did not ask him for $15.  I said, “Hey, nice to see ya,” as if we were estranged and uncomfortable friends.  Don didn’t say, “You too, I read your crumby blog all the time.  How ya been?”  He looked at me in silence, the way the credit guy at a car lot looks at a loan applicant. Read the rest of this entry »

After an hour of reading the Gospel According to Matthew this morning, I was left with one major question.  Hundreds of small questions like: “Why does this text say that?  What is Jesus trying to say?  I wonder what the Greek words are for things like ‘laborer’ and ‘vineyard’ and ‘Caesar Salad?’”  They all added up to produce this one great question: “Why do we distill the beauty of the story to produce principles?”

The Bible reads like a curious storybook of increasing wonder at the nature of God, and somehow we generally arrive at a bulleted list of principles.  Oddly, there are no books of the Bible dedicated to truncated lists without purpose.  Sure there are genealogies, the list of rules in Leviticus and sections of books like Nehemiah and Chronicles that provide lists.  But these all have the purpose of connecting people to the story, like a parent explaining to their child about how their great-great-great grandfather fought in the war, or did some other significant feat.  Even the Levitical Law provides an avenue to understand the righteousness of God.  It is not a bullet list.

The red words don’t boil down to simple sentences or alliterations.  They attempt to stick inside the heart of the hearer.  “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”  The sad truth about the information age resides in the desire to compile lists of data.

“10 ways to skin a cat.”

“3 keys to a happy marriage.”

You get the idea.  In between the ways and means of skinning that cat and remaining happily married are stories that might reveal larger life questions; “Why that darn cat needs to be skinned, or why should I even keep at this marriage thing, especially in light of my current level of happiness?”  The truth isn’t in the list of “how-to” principles.  It’s wrapped up in story and learned through history.

(To my pastor friends working on a teaching for this weekend: ditch your list of silly principles.  We’ve heard the 5 C’s to a happy new year, and we thought it sucked the first time!  Tell a great story this week, one that is easily pasted onto a human heart.)