“It’s Only a Story” 

by Joseph Stoutzenberger

Whenever I brought up Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden in my college teaching, a student from a Catholic high school invariably would say: “My religion teacher told us that it’s only a story.” I knew what they meant: the bible isn’t giving us a factual account of the creation of the world, as if the biblical writers were news reporters describing first-hand events as they happened. (“Stay tuned to find out what happened on the third day.”) I always cringed when I heard that word “only.” I would have preferred that their high-school teacher had said: “It’s a rich and meaningful story,” or simply, “It’s a wonderful story.” The “only” tended to leave students dismissing the great stories of the bible as not being powerful and poignant, and it risked lumping every biblical account into the fiction section of the library.

By the time I began teaching, some scholars had been exploring the wisdom found in myths, folk tales, and fairy tales. Mircea Eliade, Joseph Campbell, and Alan Watts were among those who inspired us to take more seriously ancient and modern stories. Campbell wrote a book titled The Power of Myth, based on a popular PBS documentary about his research. A number of Catholic writers made good use of stories as well, such as John Shea and Father William Bausch. Human beings are story-telling animals, presumably like no other. We are finding out more and more about the intelligence and emotional life of other animals, but it’s hard to imagine dolphins and monkeys gathering together after one of their numbers dies and telling stories about them. Human beings seek meaning, and stories are a major vehicle for trying to make sense of the human condition. Today, scientists attuned to theology and theologians attuned to science are telling us that the universe itself is a story that has been developing for over thirteen billion years. The human story is a recent but wonderful outgrowth of that story. Tune in a billion years from now to see how that story progresses!

One consequence of the recognition of the importance of stories was the trend to look upon the bible itself as literature. Colleges offered courses on “the bible as literature,” but there were English courses, even on the high-school level, that treated bible stories as they would other stories. The story of Adam and Eve was placed next to the lyrics of Joni Mitchell’s song “Woodstock,” in which she pleads that “we’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden.” The Babylonian creation myth was contrasted with the biblical stories of creation. The Book of Job lent itself to comparison with other stories that explore the precarious nature of humanity and human suffering. The Bible is indeed literature.

Where does that leave Christians, especially modern Christians, who want “the facts”? If you have ever attended a funeral service for someone you knew only slightly, you might hear a eulogy filled with surprises. You might discover that the old man you knew had, when younger, played music in a band or was active in the Ironworkers union he had been a member of. You might hear that the Irish grandmother who died used to hide guns for the IRA in her bakery shop back in Belfast. If successful, a eulogy seeks to take the composite of a person’s life and shape it into a coherent story. The story is based on facts but also conveys the significance of those facts. A mother of four has children and grandchildren, in-laws and relatives, and connections to a wide community of co-workers and friends. Each story is knitted together and makes a large quilt that reveals who the person is and was.

The Jesus story is like that, at least in the gospel retelling of it. Gospel writers saw the overall message of Jesus foretold in his leaving the comforts of home to preach a message of hope to poor people and challenge to the rich. Accounts of healing and forgiveness hinted at the message he commissioned his followers to carry on. The grand story of his suffering and death, rejected by powers that feared his message of justice for the lowly and comfort for the afflicted, encapsulated the meaning of his entire life. Stories circulated about his presence even after his death, leading to his promise of salvation reverberating to this day. There are plenty of facts about his life, and clearly, there are embellishments and even fictionalized ways of conveying his message, but it is in the coherent story that the meaning of his life is revealed. 

Christians in different camps argue over the factual nature of the words, deeds, and especially the resurrection of Jesus. In doing so, they overlook that they share a common belief about his message: God is love, Jesus embodies that love, and God’s love surpasses death. In 1949, Fulton Oursler called it “the greatest story ever told” and wrote a popular book about it. Christians pray that, in the end, their story is bound up with and finds meaning in the story of Jesus.