Letter #116: True Story

The Surprise Ending is Joy

Sport.

Well, once we started on this Hollywood metaphor, I suppose we were destined to confront some dark ideas about idolatry and deception and, worst of all, sequels. But let’s not end there. Because idolatry is a kind of falsehood. And if there is such a thing as falsehood, there must also be such a thing as truth.

At bottom, all this Hollywood talk is about storytelling. That’s what religion is. Religion, philosophy, any system of ideas about the invisible patterns of life — whether Christian or pagan or anything else — these are forms of storytelling. They superimpose a narrative of meaning on the events of life.

Foolish people (and I won’t call out Yuval Harari by name because that would be unkind) believe that this meaning is pure fiction, a contingent set of values whose existence depends on our mutual belief. After all, material life has no meaning. You’re born, you grow old acting out your randomly evolved instincts, and you die. Anything else is an invented overlay.

And, of course, this makes sense, if you’re an atheist or some other sort of buffoon. But anyone who has ever been in love or seen a child born or said a prayer or listened to Bach or had a friend or done something wrong or something right knows full well that fiction can tell a truth no other words can say.

Again, stories can be false and deceitful, but that means they can be true as well. And the proof that you are living out a true story is joy — the peace beyond understanding — experienced not in a moment of happy feelz but in a core serenity emergent over slow time.

A central theme of the Christian story is that a conflict exists between the ordinary life of the world and the life we are meant to live. There is something within each one of us that hates God and loves death. And while the undeniable pleasures of success and wealth and sex and mind-altering substances all confirm us in that death-love, Christ’s resurrection confirms the still, small voice that says, through sacrifice, we may be reborn to a different order of existence.

I don’t think that existence is a story of suppressed desire. I think it is a story of harnessing desire to the image of God within.

For me, one thing that sets the Christian story apart is that it can’t be told alone. Like any really good movie, it’s a collaboration. Prayer, meditation, ritual — these may serve to get us in character. But the Christian story has to be acted out in loving relationship with others. All the others. Yes, even those others. Because in this Hollywood, there’s only one writer-director. The rest of us just play our parts in the story until, with hope and faith, we finally become the characters we were pretending to be.

Love, Dad