Phillip Pullman on the Power of Story

For all of you who wonder why I will be quoting Phillip Pullman, he of "I want to kill God" fame (well, that's not exactly the way he would put it - it's a little more nuanced than that) and the "His Dark Materials" series, let me assure you that I haven't switched teams. 

The December issue of The Atlantic has an article by Hanna Rosin called "How Hollywood Saved God," which is a review/discussion of the new movie "The Golden Compass" which is based on Pullman's book of the same title.  It's an interesting article showing how the atheistic sentiments of Pullman's work are too much even for Hollywood, leading Hollywood to tame down some of the atheism in the movie, at least for this first one in the series.

But there is a great quote from Pullman in the article that I find spot on.  Pullman is a committed atheist who still looks back wistfully (in some ways) at his Sunday School days and he appreciates the power of story. Pullman says:

“‘Thou shalt not’ might reach the head, but it takes ‘Once upon a time’ to reach the heart.”

That's a great line and I don't mind quoting Pullman on this. 

Rosin goes on quote Pullman:

“We need joy, we need a sense of meaning and purpose in our lives, we need a connection with the universe, we need all the things the Kingdom of Heaven used to promise us but failed to deliver,” he said in a 2000 speech.

Of course I am going to take umbrage at the thought that the Kingdom of Heaven has failed to deliver on it's promises - for one thing the Kingdom of Heaven is not yet here in its fullness, and I think it is on schedule.  At the same time, if Pullman wants to say that the citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven have failed to deliver on their promises in the here and now, he'll find little argument from me.

I had a good time sharing a good dinner with my good buddy Good Will Hinton last night and he told me of a preacher he once heard who was taking a valiant stand against the emergent church by claiming that the gospel, or the truth, or something like that, is not narrative.  We had a good laugh over that one, being as the Bible itself is mostly narrative.

But, if you are a Christian, especially a conservative one, and are still squeamish about the idea of the Bible/gospel as story/narrative let me ease your mind a bit.  A guy with far more impeccable and conservative credentials than myself or GoodWill or Phillip Pullman - Paul Tripp of the Christian Counseling and Educational Foundation - once gave a great description of the Bible.  It is a theologically annotated story.  The story is the main thing, the annotations are supports for the story.

Tim Keller also has a good explanation of this. Keller is a big fan of Lord of the Rings (which would be much to the chagrin of Pullman who considers it to be "infantile work") and says that the story is the point.  However, it's a fairly complicated story and you can find yourself wondering what the difference is between an Elf and a Dwarf, or Boramir and Faramir.  But you can get a dictionary or encyclopedia that will tell you who Boramir and Faramir are, and what the difference is between elves and dwarves, and this will help you understand the story better.  You need both, and we need to see the Christian faith as both story and proposition.

And we need to realize that Pullman is right, and in fact, he is very much in line with the wisdom of that great Christian Blaise Pascal who said the heart has it's reasons that reason knows not of.  Christian apologists have spent years and years attempting to show the reasonableness of Christianity, and have claimed many victories.  Yet the religious landscape around us suggests that whether or not we have persuaded many heads, we continue to lose ground in capturing hearts - so let me join the chorus of those who are saying that we need to learn better to speak the language of "once upon a time."