My new friend Ian - who happens to be an author, musician, and church planter among Muslims in Malaysia, and who will be worshiping with us this Sunday, btw! - offers this answer by sharing his insights into "story" (beauty in the world of words and imagination):
I grew up in Indonesia, came to America when I was 17, imported my childhood sweetheart, married her, did the whole Green Card thing and punched out four kids along the way. After 15 years in the States we headed back to Southeast Asia to dabble in Church Planting among Muslims.Sound interesting? We invite you to join us for lunch at our place this Sunday afternoon after worship for an informal lunch with Ian and his family. If you are interested in thinking about how the arts are vital to how we speak of redemption in a secular culture, you won't want to miss it...
I never went to college or university, but I have written a number of historical novels, dicked around with song-writing and composition, picked up a certificate in audio engineering and worked (briefly) in the film world. I love theology and philosophy, cultures and sociology and everything else - but when I step back from the odds and ends of my life, I realize that all these interests derive from an obsession with story-telling.
I know that in this Post-Whatever-it-is Age all narratives are supposed to be local, unique and special - but that’s a crock. In all the films, books, folk-tales, advertising and Faiths I’ve absorbed, I’ve only ever found two great, opposing narratives in play.
In the first (and by far the most popular!), men must reach out to God by paying the debts for their sins. If God is pleased with their sacrifice, he responds with blessings. The sinner is punished and dies, while the innocent receives the life he deserves.
In the second great narrative (and by far the most primordial!), God reaches out to men and pays the debt for their sins. Those whose debts are cleared then respond to God's sacrifice with gratitude and praise. In this narrative, the innocent one dies for another’s sin, while the one who deserves death receives life.
I am the teller of the Primordial Tale. This is why so often in my stories the truly good, the truly innocent, are overborne by evil and die even for the sake of the killer: this is the most ancient story, the most terrible truth, a shadow of the Beauty so wonderful and terrible that if we spoke it plain the words themselves would tear our voice to tatters...my heart cringes even as I write of such terror; I am able to do so only because I know that the horror of the sacrificed Innocent is so much greater, so much more irreconcilable than I could ever imagine in these feeble tales: if God had not written it first, and hinted in his own Story at its incredible breadth and depth, I would not even know how to dream of so terrible a salvation.
It is the Primordial Story that drives me, that keeps me writing - but if I thought that this Story’s indwelling was only local, unique to me or to the ‘Faithful’, my heart would fail, my pen would fall still. No, it is because I believe in the universality of this Story that I am able to press on.
The Primordial Tale is etched upon every human heart, whether Muslim, Buddhist Secular Humanist or what-have-you. It is written in such a way that the pattern, the rhythm, the inevitable denoument resonates within every spirit, for good or ill.
I am convinced that an audience’s level of resonance is in direct relation to an artist’s faithfulness to the Primordial Story. No matter how symbolic the shadow, no matter how distanced the listener: if the Tale is truly told, if there is excellence intermixed with the flying edges of that terrible Beauty, there will be, there must be a response: horror for everyone -
and then, later, joy for those who live, who did not deserve to.
~ Ian Chris
