Telling A Better Story

"What we do comes out of who we believe we are." –Rob Bell

I’ve heard another one of my other favorite authors, Donald Miller (Christian hipster alert), talk about the importance of story in our lives and, particularly, the role of God as the author of our own stories. I’m not going to get into the recent blogosphere squabble Don started by talking about men authoring love stories for women or anything like that. I’m not going to unleash my thoughts on feminism or, heaven forbid, dating. I actually wrote the following part of this post over a year ago—before Rachel Held Evans’ response to Donald Miller’s post with “My story is more interesting than that”—for reals.

What I am going to talk about and what I agree with both of them on, is that stories matter. The stories we tell ourselves and the stories we believe we are living matter a great deal.

If we believe the story that life is meaningless, we’re going to act like nothing matters. If we believe that the problems of the world are too big and too complicated to make a difference, we’re not going to do anything to make a difference.

Maybe you believe that you are nothing more than a body to be lusted after or rejected.

There’s a better story.

Maybe you believe that you are what you produce.

There’s a better story.

Maybe you believe you’re too busy to make a difference.

Maybe you believe you don’t have any skills or talents that are useful.

Maybe you believe, deep down, that if people knew the real you they would be disgusted.

There’s a better story.

Maybe you believe your past mistakes will dictate your future.

Maybe you believe you are powerless to help.

There’s a better story.

It doesn’t exactly sound like the normal Christian activities: pray, read the Bible, go to church….practice letting God author your life story? (I guess Jesus take the wheel comes pretty close to the idea). My love story with God is really just the story of letting God write my story--how meta is that? Or at least letting God’s story about me be the main story I believe.

What story do you believe?

Check back next week to read more about the ways I’ve learned to believe and live a better story.