Three Stories

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Three Stories

March 24th, 2008 by Michael Spencer

In
my preaching to students from all over the world and many different
backgrounds, I am always looking for shorthand ways to communicate the
Bible’s message.

For example, I’ve taught my students over the years to say “He
(Jesus) lived a perfect life for us, and died a perfect death in our
place.” I use this sentence over and over, hoping the Holy Spirit will
use it to implant the essence of the Gospel into their memories and
hearts.

I routinely talk about the Christian story as “Christmas, Good
Friday, Easter and Pentecost,” using these four holidays as a way to
talk about the major points of the New Testament message. We are
invited into each one of these stories, often on several levels.

Recently, I’ve been using another shorthand reference that seems to
be effective. In characterizing spiritual beliefs, I talk about “three
stories.”

The Feel Good Story: In The Feel Good Story, the
point of everything is whatever makes you feel good. God is there to
fill up your wish and want list. You should be having a good time. The
big problem is that you don’t have what you want. The point of your
personal beliefs should be, first of all, feeling good about yourself.

The Feel Good Story doesn’t ignore God, sin or spiritual truth. It
claims to know a lot about all these subjects, but the point of that
knowledge is for you to know just what it takes to have a “great life”
all the time. You are in the center of The Feel Good Story.

The Feel Good Story is easy to listen to, and it fits very easily
into what a lot of churches want to say to those who aren’t Christians
(and, more and more, to those who are.) It goes well with “church
growth” and “prosperity” messages. The culture we live in is all about
“feeling good,” so it’s not hard to find people who are looking for a
God who will help them get what they want in order to feel good.

But The Feel Good Story isn’t the story of Jesus or his offer of
salvation. It uses Jesus as a “happy pill” to get whatever we want. And
what we want changes as often as the culture can send us a new product
or suggest a new experience. The Feel Good Story has a simple,
pragmatic point: God wants you to have everything you want now.

Beware of The Feel Good Story. It always lies and it always
disappoints. Following Jesus sometimes feels wonderful, and sometimes
it feels hard, lonely and difficult. God’s promise of a pain-free life
without disappointment are always for a world to come, not this world.

The I’m Good Story: In the I’m Good Story, religion
gives us rules to obey so that we will know we are good and others are
bad. This can be very simple or very complicated, but the bottom line
is that religion tells me what to do, I do it, and as a result, “I’m
good.”

The I’m Good Story has always been around, crowding out the Gospel
with the more appealing, easier to control story of how each of us can
do more good things than bad and know that we deserve God’s love, favor
and, of course, heaven.

The I’m Good Story seems to have a lot of the Bible on its side.
Everyone knows the Tern Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount.
There’s plenty for us to do, and if we make a serious effort, we can
say that, in comparison to others, we love others, do what is right and
avoid what is wrong.

In fact, The I’m Good Story misreads the Bible and misses it’s most
important message: God’s gift of grace that counts those who aren’t
good, as good, and gives us a new reason to be good.

The other side of the I’m Good Story is being able to easily know
who isn’t good. Again, in comparison to one another, it’s obvious that
most religious people are “better” by their own scorecard. The I’m Good
Story enjoys pointing the finger at those who are different from us,
and concluding they are “bad.”

There are many different versions of The I’m Good Story. Some are
quite childish, but others are very sophisticated and complex. In the
end, all of them tell us we’ve accumulated enough “good boy/girl
points” to be in good standing with God.

Sadly, you can hear the I’m Good Story at all kinds of churches that
ought to know better than to use it to try and produce “good” behavior
or people who care about others. Righteous actions come from the story
of God’s grace through faith, and the work of the Spirit in shaping our
characters around that story. While similar actions can come from
obeying God’s law, if that obedience isn’t grounded in faith, what is
produced will not be the fruit of the Spirit.

Beware of the I’m Good Story, and it’s false security of having
impressed a scorekeeper God who is playing a religious game with us.

The Grace Story: The Grace Story is immediately
different, because it is not so much about us, or about what we feel
and do, as it is about God and what God has done for us that we cannot
do for ourselves. God’s love, acceptance and continued kindness to us
are undeserved. Nothing makes them come to us or stay with us. God
simply loves us, and we can be assured and insured by that love, in
this life and the world beyond.

The Grace Story is told to us in the many stories of and about
Jesus, such as the lost sheep and the lost son. In all of these
stories, God finds what is last, least, lost, lonely and even dead and
brings it all back to life. We watch Jesus living out The Grace Story
in his actions and ministry.

The Grace Story invites us to recognize the grace of God, and to
join in a life that relies on that grace for everything. The Grace
Story isn’t the Feel Good Story, but it finds its joy in the grace of
God more than in the gifts of God, so there is real joy overflowing.
It’s also not the I’m Good Story, though it gives us the greatest
motive for obedience and the assurance that we still belong to our
loving Father even when we fail to “be good.”

The Grace Story magnifies the cross and resurrection of Jesus. It
shows us a covenant-making, promise-keeping God who puts forward his
Son as the mediator for a broken and hurting world. The Grace Story
empowers worship and fills all of life with a worshipful meaning.

Each time we come to the table of Jesus in the Lord’s Supper, we’re
coming into The Grace Story that tells us “Jesus is the lamb of God
that takes away the sins of the world.” We’re invited to sit, to stay,
to eat, to share and be be accepted into the Kingdom of God by the
grace of Jesus alone.

The Feel Good and I’m Good Stories do exactly what we expect them to
do: give us what we want and confirm that we are good people. The Grace
Story does the revolutionary thing; the truly unexpected thing. It
treats sinners and undeserving people as honored guests. It doesn’t do
what we want, but meets us at a place of joy and fellowship with God
that we have been taught to deny, erase and ignore.

The Grace Story has the potential and the power to change our lives
not just at the level of feelings or behavior, but in our deepest
motives and identities. The Grace Story removes the pretense and meets
us at our worst and most vulnerable with God’s perfect, all-sufficient
agape love.

The Good News of Jesus Christ is the grace story. Jesus came as the
God-man at Christmas, lived a perfect life that we had not lived, died
in our place and for our sins on Good Friday, rose from the dead on
Easter morning, then ascended and sent the Holy Spirit into the world
on Pentecost. This is the story that God’s people tell again and again.
It is the story they invite you to believe when they as you to “accept
Jesus Christ as Lord.” The Grace Story is an invitation to believe and
belong.

These three stories allow me to talk about the Good News of Jesus in
contrast to other ways of seeking to find meaning and significance in
life. They aren’t a full systematic theology of Gospel explanation, but
I can say as much about sin, etc. as I choose in any of the stories.

Perhaps this will be helpful to some of you. I think they work in
everything from a children’s sermon to apologetics with adults.