To Tell a Good Story

I will leave most of the talking to the video you'll find linked below, but I will provide a brief primer on the topic. We have forgotten how to tell stories. As a society we have lost the general ability to share meaningful stories that excite others and almost wholly rely on paid actors (in the literal and non-literal way) to pass the stories along to us. Outsourcing is a very American activity, and we've chosen to outsource one of the tools we use to relate to others, and thus we have trouble relating to others now.

For example, we outsourced the story of the cosmos to the high school teacher, the history of the country to the politician, the morals to the therapist, the games to the athlete, the legends to the moviemaker. And now, the children do not know God, the man does not know the value of his work, the woman does not know the value of her care, all persons are racist, all persons both lower than the animals and their comfort greater than the sum of humanity, the country does not know peace, the voter does not know his consequences, the spouse does not know love, the family does not know its members.

We have outsourced so much and given it to those who were passionate enough to seize hold of the right to tell the story of reality, and now we live in that reality. To reclaim the story is the duty of the Christian. Christ battled with the Pharisees in retelling the story they were spinning, telling that these rules and laws they had put in place as a means to salvation were bunk, and that they missed the point. God is the ultimate storyteller - He is unfolding the story now as you read this. Our duty as Christians is to reflect God in all ways, and to be a storyteller is one way in which we have failed to reflect Him today.

The topic comes from The Rescue Project, and I recommend everyone go check them out. This is their first video project, "Why Stories are Important".

https://watch.actsxxix.org/therescueproject/season:2/videos/ch-1-why-stories-are-important

Written for the VME Catholic Society for the Smoke&Flame Men's Bonfire, by Ethan Hall