Having Trouble Making Sense Out of Life?

The Big Story of Your Life!

“The same impulse that makes us want our books to have a plot makes us want our lives to have a plot,” wrote William Kilpatrick in his 1993 book, Why Johnny Can’t Tell Right from Wrong. “We need to feel that we are getting somewhere, making progress. There is something in us that is not satisfied with a merely psychological explanation of our lives. It doesn’t do justice to our conviction that we are on some kind of journey or quest, that there must be some deeper meaning to our lives than whether we feel good about ourselves. Only people who have lost the sense of adventure, mystery, and romance worry about their self-esteem. And at that point what they need is not a good therapist, but a good story. Or more precisely, the central question for us should not be, ‘What personality dynamics explain my behavior?’ but rather, ‘What sort of story am I in?’”

The Big Story of Your Life!

Get the Question Right, Then The Answers Will Come! “ Questions precede answers,” notes Buzzard in The Big Story: How the Bible Makes Sense Out of Life. “There’s no use talking about answers unless we first get our questions right. You and I have our question: What sort of story are we in? Throughout the ages people have given many different answers to this question. Your neighbors, coworkers, and local bookstore all offer different answers to our question. If you filled the room you’re in right now with a mixture of both atheists and deeply religious people, you’d hear fifty different stories from all these people. But they all believe the story that they think makes sense out of their lives.”

The Big Story of Your Life!

The Biggest Big Story – “The Big Story, the story we need,” writes Buzzard in The Big Story: How the Bible Makes Sense Out of Life, “is the old and ongoing story of the Bible. The Bible is a collection of ancient manuscripts written over fifteen hundred years by over forty different authors that tells one big story about God and people. It’s a strange story. It’s good story. It’s a complicated and challenging story. It’s a thrilling story. It’s a story that’s still moving, a story in which you play an important part. It, I think, is the only story big enough to make sense out of everything you’ve been through and everything you and the people you love will face in the future.”