Searching for the Self: Classic Stories, Christian Scripture, and the Quest for Personal Identity

by Adrian T. Smith

“The Holy Scriptures are story-shaped. Reality is story-shaped. The world is story-shaped. Our lives are story-shaped.”686 Indeed, we humans may literally (biochemically) be hardwired for and by stories. As evidence, consider the research of Paul J. Zak, a neuroeconomist (yes, this is apparently an academic discipline nowadays). Zak showed participants a short, poignant film about a father coming to terms with his toddler’s losing battle with cancer.687 The film was classically crafted to follow the five-phase dramatic arc of tension (discussed in chapter 7 of this book). The result: viewers’ brains showed increased levels of cortisol (the chemical associated with distress) and oxytocin (the chemical associated with empathy). However, if viewers were presented instead with merely the bare, undramatized facts of the account, this produced little if any emotional or chemical response. Accordingly, when God re-shapes us, He uses the gospel narrative—in many media. Here are some of the rich media through which we internalize the gospel narrative. Formal expositions of Scripture. Private meditation upon Scripture. The church year. Prayer. Ritual. Conversation with fellow-disciples. We won’t discuss all of these here, since many of them feature elsewhere in the book. Here are the cross-references for some of these topics: • Expositions of Scripture: In Part 4, I provide extended commentary on several biblical texts, as a lens for exploring various dimensions of a life lived insi...