Take a look at some of the upcoming or newly released movies next time you’re in a theatre. Fantasy books-turned-movie such as Eragon, Stardust, The Golden Compass and The Seeker have popped out in rapid succession, making me wonder if there’s something going on here that we should be paying attention to. While these movies may be a blatant attempt by studios to cash in on the box office returns of the Lord of the Rings, Narnia, and, of course, the now ubiquitous teen hero, Harry Potter, I think there’s more going on here.
See, from the studios’ perspectives, they’re just making what they think will sell to the most marketed to audience in our culture—teenagers. But what is selling is worth noting. All of these stories have something in common. Young people setting out on dangerous quests to change the world.
And these stories present possibilities to ponder such as people have a purpose and a destiny, and concepts like you can’t use evil as a means to an end because in the end, evil will always win. Teens are gobbling up stories that involve young people risking their lives for others, sacrificing their wants and needs for the protection of others, enduring great hardship to achieve their goals.
Such stories stir something in our spirits, dawnings of a realization that maybe, just maybe, we’re in a story that’s bigger than we are.
I was privileged to hear Sarah Arthur, the author of The God-Hungry Imagination (Upper Room Books, 2007), speak. She read a passage from The Two Towers where Aragorn and his traveling companions, Legolas and Gimli, encounter the Riders of Rohan and inquire after their friends the hobbits, who have been kidnapped. When the Riders haven’t heard of Hobbits, they try asking about “Halflings” and one of the Riders responds:
“Halflings! But they are only a little people in old songs and children’s takes out of the North. Do we walk in legends or on the green earth in daylight?”
“A man may do both,” said Aragorn. “For not we but those who come after will make the legends of our time.” (p. 434 of the one volume edition).
In this short exchange there’s a sense of past, present, and future, along with the possibility of legends walking the earth. In her book, Arthur observes: “without a past or a future, it’s difficult to find meaning in the present” (p. 26).
We live in a world that has lost its stories. With the modern age came a sort of snobbery towards things in the past because what we had accomplished in the present was so amazing and so advanced that suddenly past generations looked benighted and hopelessly behind where we found ourselves rapidly ascending towards the pinnacle of technological and scientific breakthroughs.
Without a past, however, there’s no way to learn and get a vision for our place in a larger story, or have hope for a future. Mere achievements alone do not suffice.
And our young people are longing for connection to a narrative that is bigger than they are. As Arthur puts it, “ the church is the living story we’re inviting young people to participate in” and then asks, “What kind of story is your church telling?” (p. 30).
In order to reach our young people, “we must become bards: poets charged with the task of keeping and imparting the stories, languages, values and beliefs of a culture. We take the many texts of our hearers’ lives and thread them through the warp and weft of the Christian narrative until patterned meaning emerges” (p. 31). We take their stories and help them fit into Christ’s story, giving them a past, present and a future as they learn to be his disciples.
And we can build on the opportunities presented us in the stories they are connecting to now in the form of the books and movies mentioned and show them how legends really do walk the earth in the God-man, Jesus Christ, and what that means for their lives.
What story is your church telling?
Post a Comment