Day 010: Why Do We Need a Master Story?

Meaning is one of the greatest needs in human life, one of our deepest hungers —perhaps it is, in the final analysis, the most basic need in the realm of the human experience.”

~ Dallas Willard, Renovation of the Heart ~

The Bible reveals the True Master Story that gives us answers to our foundational life questions in a way that gives us hope and direction for life. Consider this:

Life is like arriving late for a movie, having to figure out what was going on without bothering everybody with a lot of questions, and then being unexpectedly called away before you find out how it ends.”

 ~Joseph Campbell, Creative Mythology~

If you think about it, our life is very short compared to the larger flow of History. How could we figure out what Life is really about if all we had were our own observations from our brief time on planet Earth? We need a larger view, a higher view that helps us make sense of things.

The Master Story helps us see the “big picture” and
make sense of all the details of life. 

Life comes to us as a Story. There is a Beginning, a Middle and an End. Things are moving along. There are characters. But what is the plot? In order to make sense of life, we need a Master Story that explains both the “big picture” of everything and the “little picture” of all the details of our lives. We are convinced that the Bible gives us THE Master Story which explains all other stories.

We are all living according to some Master Story that answers three foundational life questions: 

Where have we come from? [The Past: The Question of Origin] 

Where are we heading? [The Future: The Question of Destiny] and 

Why are we here? [The Present: The Question of Meaning and Purpose]

The Master Story gives meaning to life.

Discovering the true answers to these questions gives us a way to think about life. The way we answer these questions shapes the choices that we make in life. Without a way to answer these questions, making sense of life can be very difficult, if not impossible. The way we answer these questions either leads us toward hope or despair.

Someone has described an Epic as “THE story of all things.” This is an apt description of The Master Story revealed in the Bible. As the “story of all things,” the Bible should be viewed as a whole, taking note of how the independent parts work together to give us the “big picture of life.” This week we are going to do a “fly over” of this Story so you can see how it all fits together. We are going to present it as a single book with several chapters.

The Bible is not a “divine rule book.” It is not an “instructional manual” for life. It does tell us a lot about life and how to live it, but not in the way a manual does. The Bible tells us THE Story about life on Earth in the larger framework of an eternal perspective. It is a narrative that answers our foundational questions about life. It also guides us in what we should think about and value. 

A Master Story has often been called a metanarrative. The prefix meta points to something that is behind or beyond other things. Something that is meta is something that helps us understand “the big picture” of the details. Metadata – a word that has come into popular language out of computer sciences – is data that helps us understand other data. A metanarrative is a Story that is behind, beyond, above all the other stories that helps us understand these smaller stories.

The Master Story of the Bible gives us Hope.

Romans 15:4
For everything that was written in former times was written for our instruction, so that through endurance and through encouragement of the Scriptures we may have hope. {NET}

One of the most incredible truths that we can discover is that the One who created us wants to be known by us. God, our Creator, our Heavenly Father, has spoken to us so that we can discover the meaning and purpose of our lives. 

In the Romans passage above we hear that everything written in former times was written for our instruction. This means the whole Bible. The Written Word of God has been given to us so that we may know the way to God, the Heavenly Father. Notice also that this instruction was given to us so that as we endure, keeping moving forward, being encouraged by the Scriptures themselves, we may have hope!

Hope
is the confident expectation that all things—especially my life—will turn out well because
Father God will be who He promises to be and do what He promises to do.

Someone has said, 

“A person can live forty days without food,
three days without water, about three minutes without air,
but not three seconds without hope.”

Think about that. Hope nourishes our souls. Without hope, our lives are meaningless. The good news is that Father-God has spoken to us in the Bible so that we may hope in His Son, the Lord Jesus.

What three big ideas did you learn about The Master Story today?

*You can find a complete list of all the MilktoMeat readings here.