My point there is that the writers of the biblical narratives were storytellers. They recalled the past \u201coften the very distant past, not \u2018objectively,\u2019 but purposefully. They had skin in the game. These were\u00a0their<\/em>\u00a0stories. They wove\u00a0narratives<\/em>\u00a0of the past to give meaning to their present\u2013to persuade, motivate, and inspire.\u201d (pp. 75-76)<\/p>\n Stories work. Stories are powerful. Stories move us deeply, more so than statistics, news reports, or textbooks. We all know that. We only need to think about what holds our attention and makes us long for more\u2014that book, film, or TV series that we wish wouldn\u2019t end quite so soon, that story told of some deep, personal, transforming experience, whether painful or joyous.<\/em><\/p>\n The Bible, then, is a grand story. It\u00a0meets us and then invites us to follow and join\u00a0a world\u00a0outside of our own, and lets us see ourselves and God differently in the process. Maybe that\u2019s really the bottom line. The biblical story meets us where we are to disarm us and change how we look at ourselves\u2014and God.<\/em><\/p>\n The Bible calls that change repentance. Maybe stories are where repentance can happen best. From what I can see, I think the Bible\u2019s storytellers would agree.\u00a0<\/em>(129).<\/p>\n And then I stumbled upon\u00a0this article,\u00a0\u201cThe Science of Storytelling: Why Telling a Story is the Most Powerful Way to Activate Our Brains.\u201d<\/a>\u00a0It was nice to see someone coming at this from a scientific angle.<\/p>\n Below is a snippet, but be sure to visit the site and read the whole article for yourself.<\/p>\n ****<\/p>\n We all enjoy a good story, whether it\u2019s a novel, a movie, or simply something one of our friends is explaining to us. But why do we feel so much more engaged when we hear a narrative about events?<\/p>\n It\u2019s in fact quite simple. If we listen to a powerpoint presentation with boring bullet points, a certain part\u00a0in\u00a0the brain gets activated. Scientists call this Broca\u2019s area and Wernicke\u2019s area. Overall, it hits our language processing parts in the brain, where we decode words into meaning. And that\u2019s it, nothing else happens.<\/p>\n When we are being told a story,\u00a0things change dramatically<\/a>. Not only are the language processing parts in our brain activated,\u00a0but any other area in our brain that we would use when experiencing the events of the story are too<\/b>.<\/p>\n If someone tells us about how delicious certain foods were, our sensory cortex lights up. If it\u2019s about motion, our motor cortex gets active: \u201cMetaphors like \u2018The singer had a velvet voice\u2019 and \u2018He had leathery hands\u2019 roused the sensory cortex. [\u2026] Then, the brains of participants were scanned as they read sentences like \u2018John grasped the object\u2019 and \u2018Pablo kicked the ball.\u2019 The scans revealed activity in the motor cortex, which coordinates the body\u2019s movements.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n A story can put your whole brain to work<\/b>. And yet, it gets better:<\/p>\n When we tell stories to others that have really helped us shape our thinking and way of life, we can have the same effect on them too. The brains of the person telling a story and listening to it can synchronize, says Uri Hasson from Princeton:<\/p>\n \u201cWhen the woman spoke English, the volunteers understood her <\/em>story, and their brains synchronized. When she had activity in her insula, an emotional brain region, the listeners did too. When her frontal cortex lit up, so did theirs.\u00a0By simply telling a story, the woman could plant ideas, thoughts and emotions into the listeners\u2019 brains.\u201d<\/b><\/em><\/p>\n Anything you\u2019ve experienced, you can get others to experience the same. Or at least, get their brain areas that you\u2019ve activated that way, active too . . . .<\/p>\n ***The original version of this post appeared in December 2014. For my other books on biblical interpretation, see\u00a0Inspiration and Incarnation<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0(Baker 2005\/2015) and \u00a0The Sin of Certainty<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0(HarperOne, 2016).***<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n![\"187euru1qwc8ojpg\"](\"https:\/\/thebiblefornormalpeople.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/187euru1qwc8ojpg-150x150.jpg\")
In\u00a0The Bible Tells Me So<\/a>![\"\"](\"http:\/\/ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com\/e\/ir?t=inspirandinca-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0062272020\")
Our brain on stories: How our brains become more active when we tell stories<\/h4>\n
![\"ForTheBibleTellsMeSo\"](\"https:\/\/peteenns.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/ForTheBibleTellsMeSo-196x300.jpeg\")
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