Storytelling/Narrative as a Pedagogical Model

CONTENT WARNING: The narrative below includes references to sexual assault. This third-person narrative captures a first-person experience of childhood sexual abuse and its intersection with embedded belief systems. For those who would rather not read the narrative, you are encouraged to skip #1 below and begin your exploration of this model with #2, Commentary.

1. Personal Narrative (retold) as an Example: Enid’s story 

Enid was 22 years-old when she emailed her campus pastor midway through the spring semester of her senior year of college and asked for an appointment. She knew that if she did not tell someone her story then, she may never be able to find the words to do so. College had been such a formative and safe place for her that she decided now was the time to give voice to this story that she had buried since she was 12 years-old. Now was the time to tell it. Now was the time to speak of the ways that this story had destroyed her hope for her future and her relationship with God.

Enid’s email indicated that she had been struggling with something that was weighing heavily upon her. Her email also stated that this struggle was placing a difficult burden on her day-to-day living and on her faith, and she was hoping that a conversation might help her find some peace. She indicated that she was not really searching for answers; rather, she simply wanted to tell someone her story.

When Enid arrived at the appointment, she was visibly shaken, nervous, and with her first words she indicated that she had almost decided to cancel. But then she took a deep breath and said, “I was 12 years-old when it first happened.” Over the next 90 minutes, Enid told how she had been repeatedly sexually assaulted by a neighbor. She told how afraid she had been, how the neighbor had threatened her, how she had tried to bury the experience when the neighbor moved away, and how she figured that it had been at least partially her fault anyway. After all, she had worn her bikini when she was helping her brother wash his car in the driveway.

As Enid told her story, speaking almost as if she was reporting about someone else’s experience, she noted the pain that the experience itself had been. She talked about how hard it was to be triggered in her memories at unexpected times and places. She stated how this childhood trauma had made it difficult for her to be in relationship with anyone, and she named how angry she was that she would go to hell because of this.

When her pastor invited her to say more, Enid indicated that she used to believe that God was loving, kind and forgiving, but she also stated that she believed God expects us to forgive others as we have been forgiven. She referenced the Lord’s Prayer and said that the words about forgiveness almost made her sick to her stomach. She talked about how she had tried and tried to forgive the neighbor who had assaulted her, but she couldn’t, and she wasn’t certain that she wanted to anyway, and if she couldn’t – or wouldn’t – forgive her neighbor, God couldn’t – and wouldn’t forgive her, because God forgives as we forgive. Thus, because her neighbor assaulted her when she was a child – something for which she could not forgive – she was damned to hell. If that was the case, she wondered aloud, what was the point in believing in God anyway? Furthermore, what was the point in living?

1. Commentary: Enid’s life experiences tugged against her theological narrative, causing it to unravel in the face of its inadequacy to be life-giving amid her personal tragedy. God’s forgiveness, in her narrative, was contingent upon her forgiveness, and for Enid that narrative no longer worked. Enid believed that her life story, her personal narrative, would have a tragic end because her theological narrative imposed a particular meaning upon her life experiences.

Had her story remained untold, her life experiences would have continued to tug against the threads of her embedded theologies with nothing to replace them. When her experience became spoken narrative however, space was made for new theological meanings to emerge, and Enid began to re-story this experience, her theological understandings, and essentially her whole life.

Storytelling (Narrative), as a pedagogical model, whether personal, historical, or viewpoint, assumes the intentional creation and stewardship of a context and environment that is open, supportive, empathetic, and person-centered so that the principles of what storytelling does, outlined in #4 below can be leaned into and most fully realized.

1. Why tell stories?

1. Narrative inclination

2. Because we remember

3. To remember

4. Make meaning

1. What does storytelling do?

1. Nurtures Identity formation – Enid was trying to figure out who she was in light of her story. Hearing Enid’s story nourishes our own identity formation and the identity formation of Christian community in light of her experience

2. Inspires and Informs – Enid’s story inspired a conversation and the subsequent insights that would not have otherwise been possible. It provided critical information about her life and beliefs. The re-telling does both for new audiences of her story

3. Creates Empathy and Understanding – Enid’s story draws the listener in

4. Evokes Feelings – Both in the teller and the hearer: Sadness, Sorrow, Confusion, Frustration, Trauma

5. Stirs Imagination – What might empower Enid to re-story her experience? What might the hearer imagine?

6. Interprets Experience – In the telling of her story, Enid interpreted her experience. How might the hearer interpret?

7. Promotes Integration – In the telling of her story, Enid was integrating her experience with her contextual belief system. How might the hearer integrate her story into their contextual belief system?

8. Provokes Change – In the telling of her story, Enid opens the possibility to a different interpretation and integration. How might the hearer be changed in belief, thought, and action?

9. Shapes Beliefs and Actions – The telling does something (potentially) to Enid. What might the hearing do to the hearer?

10. Fosters Community – Enid no longer holds the story alone. What does it mean for others to hold this story, too?

1. New Catechism as a “Hearer and Conversation Partner”

1. An Incarnational Theology: Our whole humanity is valuable, so much so that God becomes human, too.

1. Scripture: John 1:1-18; Galatians 4:4-5; Titus 3:4-7; John 1:1-4; Colossians 1:15-23; Luke 2; John 4:1-42

2. Your experience and your story matter to God

3. Your experience and your story are known by God

2. A Sacramental Expression: Extraordinary promises become tangible, tangled up with ordinary things.  

1. Scripture: John 2:1-12; Luke 24:13-35; Acts 8:26-40; Matthew 6:25-34

2. Everything on your life’s journey has already been claimed by God

3. In the water, bread, and wine, God’s love is really-real for you

3. The Living God: God is revealed in ancient traditions and the evolution of human experience.

1. Scripture: Isaiah 43: 1-7; Isaiah 43:19; Lamentations 3:22-23; Romans 6:1-11; II Corinthians 5:16-21; John 8:1-11; Luke 8:22-24

2. God’s forgiveness for you is real, trustworthy and true

3. Your experience reveals an interpretation and integration that can be reconsidered and re-storied

4. Your experience reveals something about God that needs to be said in new ways

4. God and Human Suffering: God is deeply familiar with suffering and death, and stays in solidarity with us. 

1. Scripture: Isaiah 7:9-19; Matthew 1:18-25; John 11:1-44; Luke 13:10-17; Mark 5:21-43: Psalm 22; Psalm 130

2. You do not bear this suffering alone

3. God enters into this suffering with you

4. Brokenness does not win

5. Death does not win

5. Sin and Human Nature: God delights in our goodness, not our grind toward perfection. 

1. Genesis 16; Genesis 21:8-20; Genesis 34; II Samuel 11; II Samuel 13; Psalm 139

2. You are good

3. You did not cause this to happen to you

4. This is not your fault

5. In this experience you were sinned against

6. The Word: respect for scripture’s authority doesn’t discount other ways God is still speaking. 

1. Scripture: Isaiah 55:11; Hebrews 1:1-3; Matthew 15:21-28; Luke 5:27-32; Acts 10

2. God speaks through those who tell you of God’s love for you

3. God speaks through those who sit with you in this pain

4. God speaks through you telling your story

5. Caution: discernment about what is the “word of God” is critical. Enid’s story demonstrates this necessity

7. Mercy: God’s reputation for mercy before judgment inspires our systems for liberation and love.

1. Scripture: Psalm 145:8-9; Luke 15; Luke 23:34; John 21:15-19; Jonah 3; Psalm 51

2. God looks upon you with mercy

Summary: The principles of a New Catechism provide lenses through which we can see God in the midst of our own stories and the stories of others, hear God speaking, and discover God acting, by drawing us into deep interaction and conversation with the richness of scripture, not to somehow mine the biblical text for a hidden and elusive meaning, but so that meaning can emerge through this dynamic, ongoing interaction between real human life and the life-giving, Living Word.