Today I’m thrilled to host my first guest post on this blog, and I’m even more thrilled that it’s from Cindy Brandt. Over the past year or so, Cindy has regularly challenged and inspired me with her writing, especially her widely-read post “How I Kissed Evangelizing Goodbye,” in which she calls on us to “listen to other people’s stories as if your salvation depended on it.”
Cindy has a new ebook, Outside In, highlighting some of the voices we need to start listening to—and making space for in our churches. Read her post below, then get her book.
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I have never met Ben IRL (in real life) before. There is the small challenge of seven-thousand-six-hundred-and-eight-point-oh-seven miles between my city in Taiwan and his in midwestern America. Yet the modern marvel of the internet connects us despite geographical distance. Because of blogging we have had opportunities to engage with each other’s writing, and over social media, I know he has adorable little ones and that he leaves his Christmas lights up until March.*
I won’t speak for Ben, but our interactions online have enriched my life as our stories intersect one another in these small ways, whether it’s delighting in the pictures of his little Oliver’s meme or in celebrating his beautiful Bible storybook.
We are writing new stories all the time. I bring my mosaic of accumulated life experiences into every interaction with other dynamic people I encounter in life, and when our stories connect with one another, we create new ones together. As we listen and learn from each other’s experiences, our hearts open a bit larger, our understanding grows a bit deeper, and our lives get a lot richer. This is the magic of stories. When the storyteller speaks their story, it serves to elaborate someone else’s story. Good stories don’t demand or take from their audience, they add value to their lives, empowering them to live more fully into their own stories.
As Christians, I believe our best chance of impacting other people’s lives is to intersect God’s Story with theirs. Doctrines and systematic theology tell us about God, while God’s Story shows us how to enter into life with God. Propositions and agendas demand a decision, while a good story compels and woos one’ heart.
The Story of God is a living, ongoing narrative, embodied both in the text of Scripture and in the context of faithful communities. It doesn’t remain static, but evolves and expands as it touches lives and creates new stories.
However, sometimes we have not told this story in the right way. We have used it not as a living story, but as a definitive script. We have said, if you want to be part of the story, you must become a character and read the lines. People are not liberated into living their own stories more fully, they are flattened and captured into a confined narrative. We limit the gospel when we require people to act a certain way, speak certain words, and even believe certain things in order to be part of God’s story.
An encounter with a living God’s story never erases or diminishes the story of the person who approaches it. That’s not how it works. God’s story affirms, validates, and celebrates the beauty of each individual story as they are. But our lives never remain the same after we intersect another story—the power of stories is such that it affects profound change in our lives. It doesn’t strip us of the rich history and mosaic of our accumulated life experiences, it makes us, as Dr. Seuss says, “you-er than you”. Somehow transforming us into more fully human, more fully ourselves.
As stewards of God’s story, we must take care to not misuse the story of God as a way of diminishing individual experiences, or absorbing them into a dominant script. This does grave injustice to the stories we bring.
In my book, Outside In, I identify ten different kinds of people, those who doubt and those who grieve; people who are sarcastic or intellectuals, those who are single or disabled, or any combination of the above and I examine how they could have had their experiences marginalized by the community of God. My hope is that we can work to ensure God’s story is one that affirms the real experiences of every person, and allow their unique and beautiful stories to encounter God’s story in a way that transforms all of our stories—moving forward the Story of God in all its vibrant diversity.
Cindy Brandt writes about faith in the irreverent, miracles in the ordinary, and beauty in the margins. She is more interested in being evangelized than evangelizing, a social justice Christian, and a feminist. She blogs at cindywords.com, tapping words out from the 33rd floor of a high rise in Taiwan, where she lives with her husband, two children, and a miniature Yorkie.
*Yes, it’s true. I left the Christmas lights up till March. Here is photographic proof of my shame…
But IN MY DEFENSE, this is March in Michigan we’re talking about. If you want to take down the lights any sooner, you have to bring a crowbar because they will be frozen to the roof.
Ben Irwin 