Why Stories?

Sometimes, when I have tried to justify why it’s worth my time to write stories outside of my nature to do so, I have wondered why stories matter. What use does it have for society? Now that’s a rather utilitarian way of thinking about it when I put it on the screen. Anyhow, I think that by a couple things I’ve come across, I know why now.

My dad sent a Luther Alexander devotional that he had sent me before about appreciation for the arts and for artists. I quoted it last year on Valentine’s Day. Alexander said that artists make the intangible tangible and what is unseen, seen. Why do people get angry when they read a fictional story? Because that work of literature is saying something about the unseen in reality. Would you not agree that not all in reality is visible?

Meanwhile, I just finished breezing through Arglefumph’s YouTube walkthrough of the computer game called Professor Layton and the Miracle Mask. I am amazed that the storywriters could pull off the nonsensical plot points and still make the game succeed business-wise. (However, its weight is more in all those puzzles. And some of the plot is hilarious.) Still, the game’s story did point out something about a story’s power.

Trying not to give spoilers, one of the characters was deceived about reality because he was told through stories and letters what had happened in his past. Because of this he became a villain, not realizing how wrong his ideas were. The stories he listened to were not dissimilar from his life, but they twisted the truth. That is often the most damaging type of story.

One could say that stories and their ideas help us inform our world views. They don’t just paint a picture of our mundane activities and adventures, they also give us sight into how the world works, what human nature is, and even who God is, or at least what He’s like. Although the visible things of the world wither and fade, the unseen things will last and we know it, for “He has set eternity in the heart of man” (Ecclesiastes 3:11.) Stories, no matter how serious or how lighthearted and comedic, can inform us in some way about eternal things. Wow!