G.K. Chesterton said, “I had always felt life first as a story: and if there is a story there is a story-teller.”

Have you noticed how “Story” has become such a buzzword in the last several years? Why do we hunger and thirst for movies, streaming shows, podcasts and social media? One reason may be because we’re trying to recover that feeling that our lives are a part of a story that matters. If everyone already felt like they were a part of a good story, they wouldn’t talk about it. It would be like how you don’t notice your toe till you stub it. Everyone’s talking about story, because their sense of story has been lost. 

Personally, I’ve always felt a little lost, like something was wrong, but I didn’t know what it was. I felt a little like I was falling through empty space – not having come from anywhere or going to any place, just falling. A lot of us live with a constant undercurrent of anxiety –  the endlessly-blinking neon question mark, asking, “Is life pointless? Is any of this going anywhere?” 

I understand that this is how most people feel at this point in history. It might be a little bit comforting to find out that there’s a reason we feel that way. I mean that feeling of meaninglessness or storylessness didn’t just come from nowhere, it’s the result of a long string of actual historical trends in culture. 

By the way, this is something I love – finding books, friends or podcasts that trace the history of ideas. My go-to podcast for that kind of thing is Mars Hill Audio Journal. But studying the history of ideas gives us options, because we discover ways of thinking we didn’t know existed.

So, here’s a very, very short history lesson. Have you ever heard of The Enlightenment? It lasted from about 1715-1789. It changed the way people thought about life and the world and led to our modern view. What’s the modern view? I’m glad you asked. Ken Myers (the host of Mars Hill Audio Journal) says, “In the modern view…the chief task is not to conform the soul to reality, but to remake reality to fit human desires. In the modern view, the universe is just matter, known by mathematics, but there is no moral order inherent in things. There is nothing there to which we should conform.” The idea is that there is no meaning to be a part of, if life is going to mean anything, it’s up to you to make your own meaning. Guess where a phrase like “You do you” got its start. Or, “life is what you make of it.” Can you hear the hopelessness and apathy tucked away in those snappy catchphrases? They do sell products because they offer a false sense of liberation from limits, but they really signify a way of being in the world that is lonely and aimless.  

The main thing you need to know is that the Enlightenment was the first time people, on a large scale, began to imagine life without God. A drastically new way of seeing the world was introduced that said, essentially, you didn’t come from anywhere, you weren’t created by a loving God, and you’re not going anywhere, there’s no loving God working to bring you home, in fact there’s no such thing as home. 

By today’s standards, those seem like a totally normal things to think, don’t they? But, before the so-called Enlightenment, the majority of people used to just automatically understand themselves, from the moment they were born into the world to the moment they left it, as being sort of embraced or held, “hemmed in before and behind” within a much bigger story – a story with a loving, redeeming God as the Storyteller. That was normal. 

Well, since the Enlightenment, the dismantling of the human story snowballed. Where are we now? We long for that embrace that began to be stripped from us centuries before we were even born. We’re trying to break the endless free-fall and land somewhere in a story that matters. Meanwhile, all this time God has been trying to tell us the true story about who we really are; we are the children of the loving Creator of the Universe; yes, lost for a while, but reclaimed by Jesus and called to follow him to our true home. Unless we see that we have come from somewhere, and that we are actually going somewhere, life will have no shape to it; it will be a meaningless ball of randomness. 

What I’m trying to get across is that the idea that there is no God and the idea that life has no story is a very recent historical phenomenon. The vast majority of humans up until just a few hundred years ago automatically thought of themselves as being a part of a meaningful cosmic storyline. But, guess what: there’s an anti-story story. There is a story that says there is no story. That’s the story our world believes today. Do you understand? Unbelief is itself a belief in a particular story that says there is no story. It’s worth asking, “what stories am I believing? Who exactly is telling the stories that shape my thinking? Do I trust those storytellers? Do they have real authority?”

You are being told stories all the time by some of the most incredible well-funded storytellers on the planet. As an artist, pay close attention to their skill, learn to be as great at your craft as they are at theirs. And then, tell all kinds of stories and make all kinds of things that bring the truth within reach. Tell stories that help people discover that there is a story and they are being called to take their place in the tale by the Great Storyteller Himself.  

The world needs good storytellers. If you are an artist, you are a storyteller too, and the joy of your craft is to discover and delve deeply into the true story that God himself has told through Creation, the Scriptures, and the Church. You are being called to discover that you are a part of that living story that is still being told and will be told for eternity. 

You really did come from somewhere – the God who is love called you into existence.

You are going somewhere – Jesus has opened in himself a way home.

You have a story right now – you are an heir in God’s family and his collaborator, making sure the story told on earth is the same as it is in heaven.