Why Do Humans Need a Story for Reality?
Why Do Humans Need a Story for Reality?
by Frank Turek & Phoenix Hayes
In his book Moral, Believing Animals, Catholic author Christian Smith describes humans as“ animals who make stories but also animals who are made by our stories.” 1 Rather than some primitive device utilized by our ancestors to explain how the cosmos came to exist, or how the leopard got his spots, storytelling remains a method for understanding reality that we still use today. Our reliance on stories never went away, the stories just changed.
Stories are important because we’ re not goldfish living from one disconnected moment to the next. Stories shape our beliefs and behavior. The award‐winning author Joan Didion famously wrote,“ We tell ourselves stories in order to live … We look for the sermon in the suicide, for the social or moral lesson in the murder of five. We interpret what we see, select the most workable of the multiple choices.” 2 In other words, we all need stories to find meaning in our pain, direction when we’ re lost, and purpose when we feel despair.
In fact, if you really want to understand why a society looks and acts the way it does, you don’ t have to look much further than the stories they’ ve adopted for themselves. It’ s inside these stories that our ideas about human value, rights, and liberty quietly sneak in. Those stories become the lens we use to decide what counts as“ good” or“ bad,” what deserves protection, and what we’ re willing to ignore.
For example, how do we decide whether someone is a brave freedom fighter or an evil terrorist? It all depends on the story we believe. Do we believe all people have intrinsic value and dignity and civilians shouldn’ t be targeted in any conflict? Or, do we believe that anyone we’ ve labeled as an“ oppressor” or an“ infidel,” civilian or not, deserves to die? The overall story we believe informs how we answer those questions.
Are we made in the image of God and given a purpose? Or, are we products of blind evolutionary forces and have no objective value or purpose? Our view depends on the story we believe.
Which overall story is true? Which one truthfully answers life’ s biggest questions about origin, identity, meaning, morality, and destiny? Where did we come from? Who are we? What’ s the meaning and purpose of life? How should we live? What happens after we die? What’ s our ultimate destiny?
When people uncritically dismiss the Christian story as outdated or foolish, it’ s usually not because they’ ve carefully examined it— it’ s because they don’ t like it. Meanwhile, they rarely acknowledge, let alone defend, the story they’ re already living in. The fact is no one operates story‐free. We’ re all operating within a grand story( a meta-narrative) we’ ve adopted, the one we think explains reality best.
I( Frank) have made a detailed case for Christianity being the true story of reality in the book I Don’ t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist. But the bottom line is that the Christian story is true, and any story that opposes it is engaged— knowingly or unknowingly— in a war on reality.
Notes
1. Christian Smith, Moral, Believing Animals: Human Personhood and Culture( Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 93( emphasis added).
2. Joan Didion, The White Album( New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1990), 1.
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