Where does story excel not-story? Why should you read a story instead of a work of philosophy or science or theology? Fun is an answer, but not a complete one. We still want a better reason, something we can tell other people without feeling a little ashamed. Why should we read stories, though? Why are they ubiquitous in human history, written or oral or pictorial? The simple truth is this: stories teach certain parts of life in a way non-narrative simply does not match.

Getting Started

To start with, of course, we must acknowledge one pertinent fact. Stories are necessary to teach narrative facts, whether the history of the world or of the past five minutes. Non-fiction stories have an obvious role in life here. However, while the rationale for using stories to convey what just happened is clear (we need to know what’s going on to react), the question is just which remains: why worry about the story of others, of history? A facile answer may be given; Scripture indeed does contain history. But this is an answer without a reason, regardless of its sufficiency to motivate us (though only to read those particular stories; it does not necessarily generalize, when the underlying principles remain unseen), and I am not content with it, however compelling. Why does Scripture use narrative to teach us? What’s so important about history that non-narrative does not suffice for? Why do stories, including and beyond those given as special revelation, matter?

The question is of what benefit we get from narrative which we do not get from non-narrative; in other words, it’s the question of what narrative is uniquely suited to teach.

In one area, at least, narrative is quite outmatched: teaching propositional or scientific knowledge. Narrative just isn’t well suited to the sort of information you find in a book on physics or mathematics, particularly, and indeed most attempts to convey such through narrative do so by splicing in non-narrative elements. As for philosophical or theological truths, narrative is well suited to these, in a certain sense, but as a comparison of Romans and 1 Kings shows, there are ways in which narrative simply isn’t suitable. Conveying a theological argument or system is often better accomplished outside of narrative.

Narrative, however, has four potential excellencies: to convey meaning-connection, aesthetic conscience, human nature, and applied wisdom (experience).

Meaning-Connection

Stories excel in communicating a world of meaning. They appeal to the wholeness of the soul, to reason and emotion and memory and instinct and conscience and all the other faculties (however you divide them) of the internal self, and they harness these to give weight to the world. A story communicates on an emotional-instinctual level the values of its author.

Consider The Lord of the Rings. Before reading that book, certainly, I had a sense of the value of home, of the importance of connection thereto, but it was nascent, unformed. After seeing the Shire, though, I learned a greater love for home; I learned too an aspiration for what home can be, even in this flawed world. By relationship, then, I learned to more deeply understand and value the heavenly home Christ promises (John 14:2). Other works assisted with this development. Lepanto¹ offered these lines: “And he smiles, but not as Sultans smile, and settles back the blade…. / (But Don John of Austria rides home from the Crusade.)” Once again the idea of home is given meaning, context as the justification of the righteous man’s strife, an idea only further reinforced by the battlecry offered by one of Chesterton’s heroes: “And the voice valedictory! / Who is for victory? Who is for liberty? Who goes home?”²

Story conveys meaning because it connects the parts of man to the parts of the world outside man to the image of God in all of this. Meaning itself descends from God, from the purpose He gives to all (Is. 6:3-4) and from the reality He delegates (Col. 1:17). The story then declares this meaning to us in a way we are less equipped to avoid, because it appeals not just to reason, where our countless self-deceptions linger, but to all the rest of us, to the Image of God in its totality, even to the flesh which shall some day be reborn (1 Cor. 15:35-49).

Aesthetic Conscience

‘Aesthetic conscience’ may sound strange and even nonsensical, but I have a very particular meaning here. By ‘aesthetic conscience,’ I mean “A sense of what coheres to ultimate reality (to God) and to each other element of derivative reality (creation).” As this definition is a little opaque (unless you’ve steeped your brain in the same soup of thought I have), let’s look at some examples.

Imagine you’re driving along the highway. You’re passing through the countryside, and the last exit was twenty minutes ago. Then you see a Olympian-sized swimming pool, sans fence or accompanying building but with more than enough lifeguards, and it’s set up right next to the road. In fact, if it weren’t for the ditch, it’d be sloshing over onto the asphalt. That’s odd, right? Of course… but think about how you came to that conclusion (or how you would come to that conclusion). In all likelihood, you had no need to analyze the logical improbability of such a sight. No, you recognized the oddity instantly, not because of some precise chain of argument but because it didn’t fit.

Chesterton also provides an example in Chapter 2 of The Blatchford Controversies:

Just as we have all been Agnostics so we have all been Pantheists. In the godhood of youth it seems so easy to say, “Why cannot a man see God in a bird flying and be content?” But then comes a time when we go on and say, “If God is in the birds, let us be not only as beautiful as the birds; let us be as cruel as the birds; let us live the mad, red life of nature.” And something that is wholesome in us resists and says, “My friend, you are going mad.”

Then comes the other side and we say: “The birds are hateful, the flowers are shameful. I will give no praise to so base an universe.” And the wholesome thing in us says: “My friend, you are going mad.”

Then comes a fantastic thing and says to us: “You are right to enjoy the birds, but wicked to copy them. There is a good thing behind all these things, yet all these things are lower than you. The Universe is right: but the World is wicked. The thing behind all is not cruel, like a bird: but good, like a man.” And the wholesome thing in us says. “I have found the high road.”

Put simply, what I’m driving towards here with ‘aesthetic conscience’ is an innate awareness of beauty (reflection of Him in relationships) in all parts of life: in assessing plans, in evaluating art, in judging a social situation, in considering a theological or philosophical statement, etc.³ Crucially, failures of beauty tend to rise from errors of logic or morality, from incongruency with a true element of reality. This is part of why the intention of the speaker or writer very much matters- a good intent retains some beauty that an evil intent disdains, even if the actual message (like: ‘Don’t squirt mustard at your sister’) is the same in both cases).

In writing, this concept of fittingness is incredibly important. A writer must develop a sense for what fits together and what does not. These judgements are not illogical. If my aesthetic conscience is accurate, its judgement will coincide with logic because it is a compression thereof. A thing will be fitting because it is logically coherent. The distinction from logic as such, here, is the process of apprehension. I call it ‘aesthetic’ because it is the same process which allows us to note when a picture is tilted, even when we can barely perceive a tilt, the same process which declares visual or auditory beauty whether or not we have an explicit justification for recognizing it. After all, we can call music beautiful without any knowledge of musical theory.

This aesthetic instinct is important not just for writers but for everybody. In the broadest sense, it is the skill of discerning what ought to be said at a funeral, what gestures will comfort a loved one, what symbolic governmental over-reach must not be suffered in silence, and a thousand other things. Combined with explicit logic (which has its place in all of those as well), it takes our understanding, our experience, and our reason, synthesizes it all, and warns us when we go astray. Alone, of course, it leads only to mysticism, but neither is it disposable, for without it logic veers easily into the fanaticism of a single wrong premise.⁴ This instinct is the fire alarm of the soul, and without it man is much more vulnerable.

Stories excel in teaching this aesthetic conscience both because of their holistic approach to the human experience and because of their inherently aesthetic nature. Stories, fiction particularly, are art, and as such the reader is trained by them to recognize beauty in a place of beauty, similarly to how he might be taught to recognize animals in a zoo. Moreover, the story portrays a world somewhat simplified in its mechanics but with an identical level of moral complexity; thus, the moral aspect of the aesthetic conscience is magnified.

Further, the meaning-connections already discussed have an intimate connection to aesthetic conscience. To properly value each part of life is to develop an instinctive ability to weigh each element against the rest, to feel on some level how they are similar or different; in other words, proper valuation of the world around us is a critical element of an accurate aesthetic conscience. The aesthetic conscience is thus developed by the story, both by direct tutoring (particularly in meaning/ valuation) and by experience (as the reader is given opportunities to test his aesthetic instinct and develop it thereby, with the story to correct and redirect him when he errs).⁵

To Be Continued

Today I’ve gone over two potent uses of story; next week, God willing, I’ll get through the other two on my list. For now, consider these two elements and how they interrelate. Story’s holistic view of the world and holistic relationship with the audience allows it to inculcate an instinctive understanding of meaning and of beauty. In this way, it leads us to a better relationship with that world, with our own nature, and with God. In some, this is accomplished straightforwardly; we can accept the teaching with minimal modification or discard. In other stories, the process is more adversarial; if you read Voltaire’s Candide, as I did, you will find that you are strengthening your aesthetic conscience in large part by its conflict with the story, not by incorporating the story’s teaching.

See you here next week!

God bless.

Footnotes

1 – Lepanto, by G.K. Chesterton, is my current favorite poem.

2 – From the closing chapters of The Flying Inn, by G.K. Chesterton. Not only is it the funniest book I’ve ever read, it is incredibly insightful.

3 – Like the moral conscience, I believe that the aesthetic instinct/ conscience is a part of the Image of God in man, a part of our reflection of Him. Indeed, it is connected to the moral conscience and to what might be termed a verity-conscience, the unsettling awareness in fallen man of the nature of God, because they are all parts of a recognition of Him necessitated by our reflection of Him. This also means that sin, as with the moral conscience, degrades the aesthetic conscience.

4 – This is a difficult, numinous concept that I’m almost certainly going to have to return to at a later point. Hopefully I write a better summary and remember to link it here. Regardless, I’ll explain that last statement as the article’s flow did not allow. The ‘fanaticism of a single wrong premise’ is when somebody takes a bad premise and builds from it to their own destruction. Lord Ivywood, from The Flying Inn, is an example (though he has more than one wrong premise). The aesthetic instinct helps restrain this tendency because, when it operates properly, the man realizes something is wrong very early on, before his whole worldview is skewed irreparably, and in the grace of God finds (via logical analysis, often) the premise which leads him astray.

5 – Of course, this relies on the story being right, if it stopped here. The story can also train us by allowing our aesthetic conscience a chance to disapprove, to alert us to a problem we can then seek to understand. Thus a story which pretends an unfitting element is, in fact fitting, that story is a trial by fire (all stories being imperfect thus, bar Scripture, this aspect is present throughout, but a sufficiently God-honoring story will often be beyond the reader’s aesthetic conscience to detect flaws in, at least until said instinct has been exercised thoroughly on easier targets).