Stories and stories.

It is truly amazing the sort of material that crosses my desk each day. I get updates about and from Palestine-Israel, news releases from the World Council of Churches about climate change, peace and disarmament, ecumenical co-operation, or cluster bombs, commentary about US foreign policy, or requests for support for various actions to make the world a better place.

And then I go home, and while eating dinner watch the news and see a multitude of personal and communal tragedies; and there is this very real temptation or desire to turn the whole thing off. We are buried under an avalanche of stories and events and perspectives (which I am adding to with this blog), and sometimes it is almost too much to bear.

So we sift and block out. We take an interest in some issues, and let others simply pass straight through our heads into another space. The only way to survive really.

One of my filters has to do with a desire to hear the stories of those on the margins. One of the most important things I ever learned was the need to trust the voice of those who are being oppressed, not those who are the oppressors. Too often we ask those who abuse, imprison or illegally occupy for clues to the way forward, when in reality they have no interest in a way forward. The present reality works well for them, and any change they agree to will work for their benefit.

The stories that people tell are crucial to our reflections as Christians. I have had a love affair with the works of Stanley Hauerwas for many years. I really appreciate what he says about narrative, character and virtue. But I think there is a real weakness in Hauerwas’ thought. One gets the impression that he thinks there just ‘is’ a Christian story waiting to be discovered, or that his reading is somehow a neutral reading. He does not deal with the way in which our readings are always socially interested and protect interests. Nor does he take seriously enough the way in which following Jesus demands a character and set of virtues that lead to care of the least and the search for justice for the marginalized.

I think this is because when he talks of narrative he has too narrow a view of what this means. I think ethics is about the character and practices which emerge from a genuine engagement between two stories – mine and the Bible – around the meaning of fullness of life. I think Hauerwas does not take seriously enough my story, and thus pretends a neutrality that is harmful to those who do not sit where he sits.

The stories keep pouring over us, and some of them engage us and our account of the Christian faith in ways that lead to new ways of being in the world.