Storytelling

I understand N.T. Wright's point about storytelling, but it must be remembered that in doing so, we are imitating a Divine Person, one who was very much more in tune with reality than we are. So we can find the inaccuracies in the stories we told four years ago stultify. Even avid storytellers can become aware of this, but their hobby of choice leads them to think more stories are appropriate. Simply change the story, exchange one context for a slightly different one, and move on. It isn't that simple.

Many people believe that the Nazi propaganda machine, as a weapon of war, was brilliant- that it was extremely effective. In actual fact it hastened the destruction of Germany. The propagandists said Germany couldn't lose, and in the beginning the propaganda seemed to be true- they had some early wins. Eventually, however, they were saying Germany was winning when it wasn't. This led to extremely serious problems. Leaders in the field couldn't classify anything as a retreat. True battle conditions were hard to ascertain; there were men and battles lost due to the constraints the propaganda placed upon their actions. Total loss became inevitable.

And that's the concerning point, for which I went ahead and used the Nazi example, even though I didn't want to, because they get way too much press. We tend to accumulate constraints. New stories tend to increase the number of constraints, unless one repents and/or rejects the old stories, which hardly ever gets done on an intellectual level because we don't feel we were doing anything wrong when made them up. People do reject these things on an instinctive level all the time, for life notoriously ignores the ideals of men, but men do love the things they dream up, so they will still have a soft place in their heart for their broken creations, even if they don't and can't live by them.