Evangelical Reformed Christians, who are troubled at the loss of meaning in our Christianese when we gather the courage and speak to those around us, this blog is for you. The ultimate goal is to write a story which parallels that story which God has written and intervened within, and which we, every day of our lives, are characters in. Thus, my name for this story is The Story of the Author.
The general plan to write this has been on my mind for the greater part of a decade, and now doubts which were putting me off are disappearing. I do not yet have every aspect figured out, so this site will contain a combination of notes, both old and new, concerning how to write the story, and tries at writing parts of it.
Consider that about 40% of the Bible consists of straight-out narratives, and a large portion of the rest employs narrative within the other genres. God created the human mind to understand stories first, and then other ways of arranging words, such as poetry, commandments, and explanations. When we look at great authors in church history, we see that many of them, including John Bunyan and C.S. Lewis, included stories in the books they wrote.
The idea here is to write a story that reflects a Reformed Evangelical understanding of the nature of God’s relationship to this world in a way that the modern mind can understand. The planned form is a two-tiered story. On one tier is “the author”, who represents God, and on the second tier is the story he writes, representing this world and the people in it.
Of course, the Bible is unique in being both inerrant and communicating the Gospel; I do not aim to write an inerrant story that can substitute for the Bible. Instead, I aim to provoke thoughts in the mind of the readers that, with the Holy Spirit’s blessing, will soften the soil so that the next time they read some Scripture or hear it preached, it may sink deeper and eventually bear more fruit. To borrow language from the Bible, I softened the ground, Paul planted the seed, and Apollos watered it, but God made it grow.
I welcome comments and feedback from brethren in the faith, experienced writers, and anyone else who sees relevant insights.
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