Our lives are always being written, and by forces outside of us just as much as by our own decisions and ideals. In fact, I'd argue (and many people smarter than I have argued) that we're never completely the authors of our own lives. Even the "self-made" individualism is a script we're given by cultural forces in the air we breathe.
Most of the decisions we make, and the reasons we make our decisions are scripted -- we're either fulfilling or responding to or reacting to ideas in our world, things we grew up doing or hearing, or things we or others have been taught. As the writer of Ecclesiastes in the Old Testament says, "There is nothing new under the sun." Even the "new" gadgets are just a reworking for a new time of what's already been done.
And the ways we respond or react to what we've been taught or grew up with are not just responses from our own imaginations and personal ideals. Our triggers to react, to act differently, to make different decisions are shaped by what's around us. Nothing is personal and private. Even the idea that we have personal and private thoughts or ideas or decisions is a mirage, a product of certain psychological and philosophical thinkers who lived before us. We and our private and personal decisions and thoughts are always a product of what's around us and what made us who we are.
In other words, our lives are always being written. And it's usually not our own personal story that's giving the shape to the story of our lives. We are individuals who are immersed in something bigger than our own lives, always.
But we can at least be aware of this and live to give ourselves over to a particular story, rather than just being at the mercy of the most powerful and influential story in the culture around us.
Why not be written by God's story? I know this sounds a bit cheesy, but hear me.
God's story is always a story that is not normal. God's story is always a story of lifting up the weak, the insignificant, the struggling. God's story is not a story that values "winning," but that sees triumph in losing. God's story frees people from dependence on patterns and systems of the world, to live lives in the fullest sense, free of burden. God's story is not a national one, an ethnic one, or a social one. God's story is about humanity made in God's image. God's story is about forgiveness of the unworthy (that you, and me, and our enemy). It blows all the human categories and lifts the scales from our eyes to truly see what life's about.
This blog is about trying to hear and understand this story, God's story, so that it might be the one that writes our lives. So click around. Hopefully the reflections in this blog will help your life to be shaped and written by God's story.
Let the story be yours.
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