Your Two Stories
There are two stories playing at the same time and you are in both.
One is playing inside you.
The other is the outside story, which looks like the bigger of the two (but might not be).
Both are important. They play together.
The inside story is uniquely individual but there are common elements.
For one thing, there is the mystery. It isn’t at all clear what the purpose of life is at the personal level.
There is also pain, many types and intensities, along with pleasures of many types and intensities.
Addictions and other distractions come along as people attempt to heighten pleasure and lessen pain. They are best brought to heal by accepting the reality of both and finding healthy ways to manage them.
So, what is this outside story we are in?
First, like the inside one it is shrouded in mystery. My take is that all of us think that if we can figure this one out, everything will fall into place and we will be happy.
With this as the only acceptable outcome, most of us then try to find the simplest explanation that fits our happiness requirements.
It is a testament to the power of our mind’s ability to manage thoughts that we can so easily disappear anything that doesn’t fit our understanding of what this outer story is. Everything that doesn’t fit our worldview is thrown into a box, taped shut, labeled with something like, “Only stupid people think this!” or “Conspiracy Theories!”, and then tossed into the middle of The Sea of Forgetfulness.
Fortunately or unfortunately, as we grow and hopefully mature, some of these boxes wash back up on shore and their contents spill back out. We discover, for example, that we were raised a certain way and that others were raised differently. At first we automatically defend as normal what we have experienced, but later, hopefully, we learn the incredible value of listening and reading the thoughts and experiences of others. Our outer story begins, often against our own wills, to deepen and expand.
There is a classic old joke about the drunk who lost the keys to his house one night. He was outside on his hands and knees under a lamp post when a policeman walks by.
When asked what he is doing he explains the problem.
Then the policeman asks, “How do you know you lost the keys here?”
“Oh, I didn’t lose them here, but the lighting is better here than where I actually lost them.“
This, I think can be said about any outside story with too many black boxes someone refuses to seriously investigate.
In other words the simplest explanation about life is automatically wrong.
It’s too small.
Cults and other social movements, even based on sound truths, are a way of simplifying life for many. They tell their followers what to think and not think. Sadly they are wrong being still too small.
Instead, the real story, although always shrouded in deeper mysteries I will not uncover in this lifetime, is able to harmonize both my inner and outer stories.
Final Thought and Mystery
To me, the most disturbing and confounding story of all, the one that swallows the depth, meaning, and significance of all others is the cross. It was a singular event, a still point, if you will, of this turning world.
How could the horrific and humiliating death of one man, someone who lived a backwater life in an obscure age and time, have caused such a tsunami that continues its disruption and liberation of humanity against every demigod’s will past, present, and, most surely, future?
I have personally discovered that the cross is the antidote for both my inner turmoil as well as for every relationship problem I have ever or will ever face. Dissect out the meaning of the cross and you will find both truth and love, both the Twelve Steps of Recovery and The Beatitudes, both the richest poetry and sublimest of music.
And how does it do all this?
I have no idea, and yet, it still does, making it, indeed, the greatest story ever told.
Here is how the Apostle Paul put it.
For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.
For it is written,
“I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.”
Where is the one who is wise?
Where is the scribe?
Where is the debater of this age?
Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?
For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe.
For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.
For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.
“Therefore if the Son makes you free, you shall be free indeed.”
John 8:36