Story: Recapture the Mystery

(Steven James. Grand Rapids: Fleming H. Revell: 2005, 208
pages.)

Review by Kevin Miller

In a recent article[1],
I criticized overzealous evangelicals for tripping over themselves to make the
gospel relevant. Underlying this evangelistic fervor, I conjectured, is not so
much a love of Christ as a fear that the gospel can’t stand its own. If we
don’t do something to jazz it up or dumb it down, non-Christians won’t get it.
Steven James’ new book Story: Recapturing the Mystery is a prime
example of my hypothesis. Billed as “a postmodern retelling of the Christian
story,” it is essentially a collection of brief personal essays, poetry, and
black and white photographs that attempts to jazz up the gospel while at the
same time dumbing it down. It’s the worst of both worlds.

It’s difficult to put my finger on exactly what rings false
here. The best I can say is that James—like many other Christian authors
commonly labeled as “postmodern” or “emergent”—sounds like the smart kid in
class who knows the right answers but pretends he doesn’t so he’ll fit in. I’m
all for making the Bible accessible to the masses. But if we’re going to do it,
let’s do it honestly, and let’s do it well. Unfortunately, I think James blows
his opportunity here on both counts. A good example is his opening essay on
creation. Here’s a wonderful chance to hook readers with some probing questions
about life’s origin and purpose, to give them a glimpse into the glory and
wonder of God. Instead, James opts for passages like the following:

“God finally got tired of the cloak of darkness, so he told
his first story. He spoke and light appeared.

‘Let there be,’ he said. And there was.

I’m not exactly sure why he did it. I don’t think anyone
knows his precise motivation. Personally, I think he got sick of the darkness.
I think since God is love, he couldn’t stand the thought of spending eternity
alone in the dark without someone to love. He needed companionship, because
love gives, shares, sacrifices, woos. It has to. Or else it isn’t love.”

Pay attention to the last paragraph. James begins by coming
alongside the seeker and pretending like he has no idea why God created the
universe. Then he rushes in with a trite, Sunday school level theory that burns
like acid on the face of intellect. For starters, it’s obvious James has no
idea what the term “eternity” (time without beginning or end) means. Otherwise
he would never say that God couldn’t stand the thought of spending eternity
alone in the dark, because if God truly is without beginning or end, he had
just spent eternity doing just that! Furthermore, if you look at the Scriptural
account of Creation, it wasn’t God who was in darkness; it was the earth
(Genesis 1:2). And surely God was not in need of companionship, seeing as he
exists in three persons—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—who are the epitome of
community and selfless adoration. I’m sorry, but if I were a non-Christian, I
would have put the book down right there, assuming James was nothing more than
a poorly educated wolf in sheep’s clothing—an old school propositional
apologist who figured the way to be postmodern was to phrase every statement as
a question.

Theological quibbles aside, however, what is sorely lacking
in this book is the one thing that would endear it to modern and postmodern
readers alike: authenticity. Please don’t confuse this term with
“sincerity.” I believe James is quite sincere, but his musings in this book are
far too safe and trite to be authentic. What James and others seem unable to
understand is that people of a postmodern bent don’t just respond to any
narrative. They respond to narratives that ring with the genuine cry of human
experience that logical, propositional arguments for God do not, narratives
that recognize that life is often dirty, painful, messy, disappointing, and
unpredictable, that we don’t have all of the answers and that it is unlikely we
ever will. But amidst the muck and grime and grief, there is always a glimmer
of hope, a reason for taking that next, boot-sucking step. That light is nothing
less than Christ, the Light of the world (John 8:12).

James’s impulse is correct here: In our story-based culture,
Christians need to develop fresh ways of telling and re-telling their stories.
But such innovations should never be motivated by fear of the gospel’s
irrelevance. The gospel is relevant today, tomorrow, and forever. We can rest
in that fact. We don’t need to jazz it up, and we certainly don’t need to dumb
it down. All that is required is an honest, authentic expression of our
experience with Christ. Offer that up to the world, and trust God to take care
of the rest.