Just a Story? There's No Such Thing

This weekend, the movie The Shack, based on the book of the same name was released and opened third at the box office.  I believe this book to be heretical and don't expect any more from the movie and have shared a few posts on my social media regarding it.  There are enough of those, so that's not what this post is about.  This post addresses the most common response I have received with regard to these posts.

"It's just a story."
"Come on, it's just a story.  It's not scripture."
"It's just a story.  Lighten up."
"It's not supposed to be the Bible.  It's just a story."

Here's the thing; I'm not sure there is any such thing a just a story.

Stories have a powerful effect on us.  It's why people write them.  Before there was even writing, there was storytelling.  It's why we teach literature to students and read books to children.  It's why there are book quotes in my twitter feed.  It's why I was upset when Atticus Finch let me down in the sequel to To Kill a Mockingbird.  It's why a teenager quotes Harry Potter to me almost daily.  It's why I think about The West Wing when I consider what might be happening inside the white house.  The stories we read become part of our collective consciousness.  They become part of us and our shared beliefs.  They affect our thinking in ways we aren't even conscious of.

I'm not a fan of censorship, so I'm not advocating boycotts or book burnings.  I am, however, a big fan of self-censorship.  I believe we must take care in our own lives about the stories we choose.  This is especially true when a story is about God.  I don't know much about William Young; he may be a perfectly lovely man.  The only thing I know about him for sure is that he is fallen and has, therefore, a fallen imagination.  Do I want his imagination to become part of my theology?  Do I want a woman named Papa to bleed into my thoughts about the Creator?  Even if the effect on my thinking remains small, we aren't talking about a small effect on my thoughts about dogs or space aliens.  We are talking about the way I think about God.  THIS. IS. IMPORTANT.  This isn't something for me to lighten up about.

We live in a world of books, movies, music, and art of various kinds.  There is no way to consume it all, so we make choices.  It is our responsibility as teachers to help our students make wise choices, and we cannot do that if we are modeling passive consumption.  We must use wisdom for ourselves as well.  I'm not suggesting that we insulate ourselves into a bubble that only include art that agrees with our worldview.  The world is a more complex and interesting place than that.  I am suggesting that we don't judge a work of art casually because it is JUST a work of art.  Francis Schaeffer's great work Art and the Bible gives four criteria for judging a work of art faithfully.  Only one of those four is the worldview of the artist and the message the work communicates, but it is one of the four.  Those responding, "It's just a story" are leaving it off the list entirely.