As an avid reader and a wannabe writer, I’ve always loved stories. Some of my earliest memories of church and faith are stories, whether stories from the Bible or stories of saints and Christian heroes. As I’ve begun teaching my own children, I’ve noticed they also learn better from stories. I can present the same concepts of faith, science, social studies or other topics to them in a textbook or a storybook, and they are more likely to remember the story.
Narrative theology is a way of teaching our faith from stories. This should be obvious, since the Bible itself is one long story and Jesus often used stories in His teachings. However, often we think of the Bible as dry, dull historical facts (especially those lists of names in the Old Testament!). Jesus’ parables have become as well-known and uninteresting as Aesop’s fables; everyone now knows the meaning behind the parable of the sower or the Prodigal Son. Narrative theology invites us to dig deeper.
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What is Narrative Theology?
Father Thomas from the Abbey of Our Lady of New Clairveaux explains, “Narrative theology, understood in a general way, develops theology using ‘story.’ The core of narrative theology means interpreting and expressing life’s ‘ups and downs’ of our relationship with God in the context of Scriptural truths, teachings, and insights that flow from this Word of God. I believe that we can articulate and understand the experience of our relationship with God (and stimulate it) by looking into our life’s story via Sacred Scriptures.”
Our own lives are stories, and we can see our stories as a continuation of the story begun in Genesis. God is the author the story, from the beginning of time to the present day. In Scripture, we see the ups and downs of God’s people — the challenges and difficulties they faced, and the ways in which God worked in history to redeem and rescue His people. With that lens, we can look at our own life stories (and teach our children to do the same) and trust in God’s plan for our lives too.
I began listening to Father Mike’s Bible in a Year podcast just after my separation from my first husband. As I grappled with my own experience of broken relationships, I heard the stories of broken relationships in the Old Testament. The story of God’s people is a story of human hurt and error and God’s promises being fulfilled despite those hurts and errors. Seeing how God worked, over and over again, in the lives of the families of the Old Testament, gave me hope for my own family, despite the struggles we were currently facing.
Using Narrative Theology to Help Our Kids Learn
Often, we separate stories from learning. We read novels and fiction for fun, and we read encyclopedias and textbooks to learn. We may drop the Bible into the latter category — something we need to read to learn about our faith, but something we find boring. I’ll be the first to admit that there are some incredibly boring chapters in the Bible. (Genealogies and ritual laws, anyone?) What we need to do, as parents and teachers, is help our kids see the stories of the Bible as part of the bigger story. They may know about Noah’s Ark and David the shepherd boy and Daniel in the lion’s den, but do they know how these stories fit within both the Bible as a whole and their lives as part of that story too?
Teacher and podcaster Mike Schramm explains we need to realize “that all little human stories reflect what C.S. Lewis calls the ‘Great Story’ when beautifully wrapping up his Narnia series.” He adds, “Just as the Pevensie children experienced a smaller story so that they would be better prepared to recognize the ‘Great Story,’ so too had all of humanity been given little stories by God, implanted into the very nature of rational humanity, in order to recognize how Jesus fit in to their stories when he came.”
How does Jesus fit into our stories? How do we make the Bible stories more than just “fun” stories and random facts but a core part of our lives? This is where we as parents can help our kids make these connections between the stories and their lives. For example, I often compare Bible stories to other stories we’re reading or listening to. Kids with certain interests may connect with saints who shared those interests. Kids going through certain struggles may connect with saints who have gone through those struggles.
The power of stories is in the emotional connections they create for us. We find facts and lists dry and dull because they raise no emotions in us (besides boredom). Stories draw us in with details, conflict, characters whom we either love or hate. It is in this emotional connection that the learning happens, that familiar stories can move from simply dry facts to personal experience. This is the power of the TV show The Chosen, which delves into character and motivation and situations in a way that pull us into the story, makes us feel all the things and thus connect more deeply with the events portrayed in the Gospels.
Teaching Faith Through Stories
A reader emailed me to ask, “In your homeschooling curriculum, do you find that ‘Narrative Theology’ (teaching faith through stories) is more effective than direct instruction? Specifically, does a child learn virtue better by ‘living’ through a character’s struggle in a book than by memorizing a rule?” My answer is yes. Most of us learn best through personal experience rather than just rote memorization. Stories allow us to share another person’s experience and learn from that. The most powerful stories make us feel as if shared experiences are personal experiences.
Lectio divina is an ancient practice of the Catholic Church in which a person prayerfully enters into a small portion of a Bible story. Using our imaginations, we do our best to picture what is happening in that story and become one of the characters in the story. Elizabeth Manneh explains that lectio divina “is a way of becoming immersed in the Scriptures very personally. It draws on the way Jews read the Haggadah, a text read during Passover that retells the Exodus story. Haggadah means ‘telling’ and along with being a physical text, the word captures the practice of telling and retelling a story.”
Lectio divina involves carefully reading a Bible passage a total of four times, while thinking and praying upon it. This devotion is simple enough to do with children, whose imaginations may help others immerse themselves in the story too. Manneh adds, “When we practice Lectio Divina, we can imagine we’re actually involved in the events of Scripture — for example, hearing God’s words to the Israelites in the desert. It’s an intensely personal experience.” It can be done anywhere and anytime, and there are also guides available to help families and parents with this.
And, of course, good stories can help us get started with lectio divina or just give us space to internalize the virtues and faith of saints before us.
Here are some of our favourite Bible and saint stories to help you get started:
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