This article first appeared in Priests and People
Encouraging the Christian Hero
By Dwight Longenecker
Dwight Longenecker is the editor of a book of conversion stories
called The Path to Rome and author of Listen My Son –a
devotional commentary on the Rule of St Benedict for parents.
He writes on film, theology and culture for various publications
in Britain and the United States. In this article he explains
how a wider appreciation of story can help to keep the faith
alive.
Movies Myth and Mass
The mortal sin of the movie maker
is to bore. His business is entertainment and if he bores his
audience he terminates his career.
At first this sounds like the recipe for bigger explosions, more
lurid sexual adventures and flashier special effects. But the audience
isn’t stupid. Titillation, pyrotechnics and gore only entertain
them so long. If the film isn’t driven by a powerful and compelling
story line even the most immature audience will yawn. In fact,
the more immature the audience, the more impatient they will be
of a bad story line.
In this high-tech age one of the most enduring truths is that
everyone loves a good story. Hollywood story consultant Christopher
Vogler has outlined the formula for a good story in his book The
Writer’s Journey. Basing his ideas on the work of the mythologist
Joseph Campbell, Vogler shows how a good story is structured. Sound
story structure is based on a model which is as old as human communication
itself. It is a structure which is woven through all the great
myths, fairy tales, sagas and folk tales of humanity in every culture
and in every age. The good story follows the path of the hero on
his extraordinary quest to find some great treasure. Understanding
how story works can help ordinary families tell stories and relate
the stories they see in film and in storybooks to the spiritual
quest.
The classic story can be outlined
in ten stages. 1. The hero is in his ordinary world. 2. The hero
meets a mentor figure 3. The
hero hears the call to adventure 4. The hero refuses the call 5.
The hero steps out on his adventure 6. The hero faces death 7.
The hero is resurrected 8. The hero claims the prize 9. The hero
returns home 10. The hero offers the prize for his home people.
These stages enormously vary from story to story, but the rough
outline provides a plan for stories which are reflected not only
in the world’s great myths and legends, but in the great sagas
and stories of the Scriptures as well. The spiritual journey requires
a departure from our comfort zone to step out into a world of unknown
realities. It involves danger and the loss of ‘not less than everything’ in
order to experience new life. To spiritual hero is on a quest to
discover the treasure buried in field, a lost coin or the pearl
of great price. Once the hero discovers salvation his role is to
journey home and share it with others.
This story line is reflected in all
the Old Testament sagas. Abraham, Jacob, Moses, Joseph, and Joshua
all have to step out in faith
and leave their old world to follow God’s promise. The Old Testament
heroes face conflict and death only to experience forgiveness,
new life and resurrection. The mythic story line is there in the
basic outline of the gospel itself. Jesus steps out of his little
world of Nazareth to embark on his divine mission. He faces the
enemy, dies and is resurrected to bring salvation to the world.
The gospel story is mythic in this powerful way, and works on us
like every other myth. As Tolkien said to C.S.Lewis, ‘Christianity
works on us like any other myth, with the difference that it is
actually true.’ If Jesus’ own story follows the outline of the
mythic hero, he also calls his disciples to the same heroic quest.
They are to leave their nets and follow him out of their ordinary
world and into a world of faith. They must face darkness and difficulty
if they are to succeed. They will have to take up their cross and
die with Christ. With him they will also have to rise again in
order to experience salvation. The dynamic of this universal story
is woven into the Christian message and into the fabric of human
experience. Understanding it helps us and our children to make
sense of the whole sweep of the Judeo-Christian tradition, as well
as the eternal longings of each human heart.
It’s Storytime
This mythic story line is abundant
throughout popular culture. It occurs in comics, novels, film
and fiction. Wherever it occurs
it can help to enlighten the truths of the gospel story. I can
remember watching Disney’s classic The Jungle Book when
my children were four and five years old. At the climax of the
film Baloo the Bear sacrifices his life to save the boy Mowgli.
As he lies seemingly dead the panther Bagheera actually quotes
Scripture saying, ‘No greater love has any man than he lay down
his life for his friends.’ At that point the Bear winks and wakes
up. Professional theologians and high brow Christians may throw
up their hands in horror at such a trivialisation of theology,
but when Baloo woke up my four year old said, ‘That’s what Jesus
did.’ This example from a children’s classic shows how the storyline
of redemption runs through stories in popular culture. Hollywood
has understood how the great stories work and so the same heroic
quest permeates many films. Most Disney classics follow the formula,
and with creative permutations the same story line is there in
films as varied as Alien and The Matrix through to Jerry
Maguire, Wizard of Oz, Saving Private Ryan, Shawshank Redemption,
Indiana Jones, the Terminator films and many others.
These stories may not teach the faith explicitly, but they keep
alive the storyline which runs parallel to the authentic religious
quest.
For faith to be kept alive and vital
for the next generation story must be revitalised. In our intellectual
and academic approach
it is easy to forget that the Scriptures are not primarily a collection
of theological treatises; nor are they simply a law code. Neither
are they historical liturgical documents. The scriptures are the
story of God’s relationship with his people. The most ancient and
the most relevant way to keep the faith alive for our children,
therefore, is through storytelling. We sit down to share secular
videos and storybooks with our children, do we trouble ourselves
to use the media to help them nurture their faith? There are excellent
Bible story books for all age groups in the bookshops. (Often the
evangelical bookshops are better supplied with a good variety than
are the Catholic bookshops). In addition, there are a whole range
of videos which tell the Bible stories and the lives of the saints.
Keeping stories alive help to nurture
the faith at many practical levels. In Catholic worship I am
astonished at how infrequently
we hear stories within homilies. Stories from real life help to
incarnate the faith. They hold the congregation’s attention. They
apply the spiritual truth in practical ways. There are many resources
for preachers which incorporate stories and illustrations to make
spiritual points, and yet I rarely come across preachers who use
story and anecdote in their homilies. Within children’s liturgy,
catechesis and school lessons there is often a worthy emphasis
on imparting doctrine, morals and spiritual principles, but how
often are these incarnated in a vital and challenging story of
faith? Bible stories, the stories of saints and the stories of
heroic men and women of faith like Edith Stein, Martin Luther King
Jr, Maximillian Kolbe, Mother Teresa are all available to keep
the faith of our children alive.
A Faith Worth Living
Our parish priest is fond of telling us that faith is supported
by the three legged stool of family, school and parish. Our worship
at Mass will not be vital and absorbing for us or for our children
if the faith is not also nurtured in the school and especially
in the home. How can we expect the Christian faith to be exciting
for our children if we are not excited by it? Perhaps Mass is boring
for our children because we are bored by it ourselves.
At the end of the day stories of faith are all well and good,
but each one of us need to be living the story of faith in our
own lives. Do our children ever see us make a real sacrifice because
of our faith? Have they ever known us to take a step of faith and
obedience which may cause us hardship? Have they ever seen us risk
anything at all for the faith we profess? Can I expect my children
to be have a heroic faith if my own faith is a yawning matter?
For the story of faith to be real it has to be real in our own
lives. Week by week, day by day in the most ordinary ways our families
and our communities must witness the faith story living through
our social involvement, our ethical decisions, our moments of natural
daily prayer, our love for one another and our commitment to truth
no matter what the cost. When our lives become faith stories the
realities of the Church become our realities.
In other words, the Mass is boring
for those who put nothing into their faith outside church. For
those who make an effort, Mass
becomes the place where the stories of faith are focussed and expressed
through the ritual of the liturgy. It might be imagined with my
emphasis on sacred storytelling that I am an advocate of the Mass
as sacred drama and making the Mass as ‘entertaining’ as possible.
Certainly there is room for a better quality of liturgy. We need
more vibrant, inspiring preaching and well played hymns that are
not ashamed of inspiring a fervent and heroic faith. However, I
believe it is a mistake to turn the Mass into either a meaningful
family meal or an ornate dramatic performance. Whatever our proclivities,
it is a mistake to try to make every Mass entertaining.
Heaven in Ordinary
It’s a sad fact that people who are easily bored are boring people.
To appease those who are bored by making mass more entertaining
is to pander to the problem. Instead the Mass must be maintained
at the ritualistic level which the liturgy demands. This is important
because ritual is at once below us and above us. People complain
that mass is boring, but most people are bored both by what is
beneath them and by what is greater than them. We might think Mass
boring because it is beneath our attention, when in fact the opposite
is true and we are beneath it. In fact everything worth doing is
hard before it’s easy. Playing an instrument, learning to ski,
learning to like opera, building a business or making a family
all require dedication, discipline and commitment. Like all these
things, the mass is above us. It is the most sublime expression
of the eternal truths of our faith made real day by day and moment
by moment. We must come up to its level. It should not be brought
down to ours by turning it into entertainment.
But in saying this, the Mass is also
below us. It is simple. It is real. It is ‘heaven in ordinary’. The ritual of the Mass becomes
like the rituals of family love. They operate at a profound—almost
unconscious level within our lives. If the Mass must not be brought
down to the level of entertainment, neither must it be brought
up to the level of entertainment. While it takes us to the very
threshold of heaven, it is also as ordinary and dutiful as going
to school, visiting Granny, leaving for work each morning, going
to the dentist or shopping for the weeks’ groceries. For the Mass
to be real it must be ordinary, and it is the ritual of the mass
which keeps it so. To turn it into entertainment is to draw attention
to that which is more powerfully lived at a much deeper level.
In conclusion I believe faith is kept
alive by a renewal of the sacred stories of faith wherever they
exist in our culture. With
an understanding of the hero’s quest we should be able to see the
gospel dynamic within a whole range of popular stories. We should
also keep alive the Bible stories, the stories of the saints and
the stories of heroic men and women in our age and our communities.
Most of all, we must strive for the heroic Christian life in our
own lives and families. Christopher Vogler writes, ‘The hero is
one who is willing to sacrifice his own needs.’ So if we are to
live the heroic Christian life, then part of the sacrifice may
be the ordinary routine of attending mass together. It is there
as we take part in the ritual sacrifice of Christ that our own
faith story is empowered and we share in the mystery of redemption
at a level that is deeper than our understanding and higher than
all we can ask or think.
