Narratives

SF deep dive 1: how hidden scripts shape us

Here’s a quote from What Jesus is Like:

“Emily P. Freeman writes in her new book, How to Walk into a Room, “how we are formed informs how we walk into rooms.” The context behind this quote is that we never walk into a room on equal footing as others in the room. She writes, “There are narratives at play and relational challenges at work and memory upon memory running for free just beneath the surface.”

Postcard #2:

Narratives are often the hidden scripts we believe about things. These hidden scripts are shaped by everything that has ever happened in your life story and all you know from experience as a human. The false narrative I explored in What Jesus is Like was the idea that we must be superhumans if we are Christians. In a post from last year, I wrote about being a sinner versus a saint.

We may understand that God is good because that’s what the Bible says, but life may have taught us that maybe God isn’t good. We are more apt to believe what our lives have taught us than what may be true. When we believe something, it is written in our brain through neural pathways. The more we act out of our beliefs, the deeper the neural pathway is written in the brain. This means the brain rewards us when we keep doing things we may not want to keep doing. However, the wonderful news is that the brain’s neuroplasticity can be rewritten.

We can learn new things and new ways of being in the world. When we start acting in new ways, our brain will begin writing new pathways and rewarding itself to do new things. But, the first time you do the new and better thing or something different, the brain will try to get you to do the old, familiar thing. You will feel more fear or anxiety, and you will have to tell your brain - “Hey brain, I’m in charge. This is what God says is better for me. It’s okay to try new things.” You will probably need a lot of care and compassion for yourself.

For example, recently, I set a new boundary in a relationship. I knew it was appropriate to make the relationship safe, but there was a lot of resistance in my internal self and from the other person. So, I had to rely on what I knew to be true in other ways to be fully self-differentiated and able to make this new change.

Narratives often unconsciously inform what we say and do. There are three centers of intelligence in a person. If you are familiar with the enneagram, you may already know these: the head, the heart, and the gut. Narratives are truths we’ve taken in about God, self, our life, or our community, and often, one of our intelligence centers picks up information and acts on it before we’ve had time to realize it. Slowing down is more important than we’ve perhaps been taught in helping us determine our underlying stories.

We are constantly getting a formation, whether intentional or not, whether Christian or not (Dallas Willard), and whatever we believe shapes who we are and who we will become. The foundation we’ve received from the moment we entered the world taught us how to be in the world. Some of us had compassionate and caring childhoods, which taught us about God. Some of us came from angry households, which taught us about God. Most of us experienced some mix of things. We may come from great households and still come to conclusions different from our parents' expectations. Some of us are designed so that we are more sensitive. Others are created with more of a harsh edge. These things shape our thoughts and feelings about God, self, others, and life. This is why “how we are formed informs how we walk into rooms.”

Here are some false narratives I have heard, experienced, or even previously believed. Remember, these are false, not true:

• God is impossible to please.

• Heaven is up.

• Salvation is all it takes to get to heaven.

• Respecting our shepherds means we never question them.

• I am a terrible mom.

• Women are less than men.

• Jesus could never heal me.

• I am too much.

• God will not listen to me when I sin.

• If you go to that liberal church down the road, you are a heretic.

• I don’t love my kids if I am not invested in every detail of their lives.

• As a Christian, it is always my job to correct people.

• I’m lazy (so bad, horrible, etc) because I haven’t recently worked on my _____ (fill in the blank with a hobby or chore).

• Christians are dirty, rotten sinners.

• If someone abuses me, it must be my fault.

• Repentance is humble or humiliating apology.

• Fear and shame are good motivators.

These narratives are like subtle messages that we’ve taken into our lives, and we move out into the world due to what we believe. They are often like little balls that we juggle internally. As we juggle these false narratives, we subconsciously learn to lie to ourselves and others about what the world is like as we believe them. We learn to internalize our dissonance and pay less attention to it. Learning to pay attention to your life is one of the most significant ways to come near God. He is always speaking to you in your life.

Pulling the narrative thread can make it challenging to be in the world because you will begin to see them everywhere you go. Finding that much of the world, even the Christian world, is built on falseties can be properly disorienting. But reorienting yourself to the real world - the kingdom of God (the place made of true narratives) - is one of the highest works we do this side of heaven.

Narratives tell us where we’ve been, are, and will go. We want to unlearn false narratives and find what is good and true. Then, we will be headed in a life-giving direction.

Once discovered, a good rule of thumb about a narrative is to ask yourself - does this story lead me toward freedom?

Each narrative thread we pull requires different types of questions. Here are some about God:

• What kind of God do I believe in if I believe this story?

• Does this God sound like what I know about love?

• Does it make God more expansive? generous?

If you are curious about narratives, read James Bryan Smith's The Good and Beautiful series to learn more. I may develop a short curriculum around this topic, too.

My next post will hopefully be a little shorter and about Faith Streams.

Take some time to think of one narrative you might believe. How does it inform who you are? If it is false, what might the true story be instead? If it is true, how do you lean into that? Share your thoughts in the comments.

P. S. Here’s a map for the journey on this series: SF Deep Dive.