Mike Cosper is the Pastor of Worship and Arts at Sojourn Community Church. He is also an accomplished author and music producer. His latest book The Stories We Tell: How TV and Movies Long for and Echo the Truth looks at mankind’s addiction to stories and how that relates to the gospel.
1) As you thought through this book and this idea, was there a particular story, song, or movie that has resonated with you?
I think the seeds for this book began stirring for me as a teenager, reading the works of Jack Kerouac. On the Road made me love reading and opened my eyes to broken beauty—the beauty that’s revealed in the lives of deeply broken people. When I read his electric descriptions of people like Carlo Marx and Dean Moriarity, it made me want to experience life more fully and more fearlessly. It also confronted my faith in Jesus. How could the good and the beauty in these (often debauched) lives square with what I believed about Jesus and the Bible?
These questions rolled around in my mind for a long, long time. When I watched Mad Men, I immediately thought, “This story is about the fall. It’s about why we’re broken.” Shortly after, I started wondering if Redemption History—Creation, Fall, Redemption, and Consummation—didn’t somehow help us understand all of our stories. Perhaps we’re always trying to answer questions that this larger narrative forces us to ask.
2) I think Christians have a complicated relationship with art and culture, swinging wildly from either isolation and withdrawal or unqualified acceptance. Is there a third way?
Certainly. I think one pole, which I call the “church lady” is fearful that the world will corrupt us. The other—the “anxious teenager” is trying to figure out how far is too far. The church lady needs to believe the gospel. In Jesus, we’re absolutely safe from the corruption of the world. A movie, a TV show, or a story isn’t going to steal our souls or drag us to hell. On the other hand, the anxious teenager needs to hear the empowering message of the gospel too. Not so they can simply resist their desires, but so the gospel can move them towards better desires. There is a better way to live than titillation and voyeurism.
Most of our methods for engaging culture are about behavior management. We want people to stop making objectionable content so we’re less tempted to consume it. But the gospel’s standards are totally different. It doesn’t call us to simply resist temptation, but to better desires, to “rightly ordered love,” as Augustine might say.
Perhaps we’re trying to answer questions that this larger narrative forces us to ask.
3) You say in the book that our stories offer a liturgy of sorts. Can you explain?
The church’s liturgy, which serves as our reference point here, tells a story that reveals our highest hopes and greatest loves. We remember that God is holy, we are sinners, Jesus saves us and Jesus sends us. Stories that tell a single arc—like movies and novels or well-creafted longer TV shows—do the same thing. They tell a story that reveals some kind of ultimate hope. In romantic comedies, it’s the ideal of romantic love. In Quentin Tarantino films, it’s redemptive violence. In police dramas, it’s some concept of justice.
When we watch these stories, over and over again, they have a deep impact upon us. They get to us through our imaginations, and as James K.A. Smith says, “When our imagination is hooked, we’re hooked.” Over time, if we’re unaware of it, we can come to see the world the way they present it to us, and our desires get attuned to whatever object of ultimate hope they hold out for us.
4) How can pastors faithfully use story in their exposition of the Scriptures?
First, they need to remember that Scripture is first and foremost a story. The story of scripture is a benchmark by which we can understand the other stories we encounter. It’s not a kid’s bedtime story. It’s dark, bloody, and often very puzzling. It is meant to evoke not just our intellect, but our imagination and affections. Preaching should aim at the whole person in just the same way, and I believe allowing the story of the Bible to shape our preaching (and worship) is the best way to do so.
Second, I think they need to understand how stories shape the way people see their lives. The formational power of our stories both in scripture and in culture is tremendous. Not only that, the way I understand myself is a story. “I was born here, I met my wife, we got married, had kids, I took this job …” That’s a story that I’ve edited. It’s not my whole life. It’s the story I tell that helps me understand who I am.
In preaching the gospel, we have the opportunity to help people see their stories through the lenses of God’s story—Creation, Fall, Redemption, and Consummation. “I was meant for a perfect world, but born fallen, and condemned by my sins. By God’s grace, Jesus saves me, he sends me on his mission, and one day he’ll return to make all things new.” The gospel doesn’t erase our stories; it illuminates them and promises us a happy ending.
In preaching the gospel, we have the opportunity to help people see their stories through the lenses of God’s story
5) How can pastors equip their people to read and consume the stories of the age?
I would encourage pastors to focus their efforts in two ways. First, listen to your church and understand what they’re watching and why they’re watching it. Meet them where they are. Then, try and understand what people love about their favorite shows. When you locate the desire that attracts us to shows/movies, you also locate the show’s formational impact on its viewers. In other words, what we love about a show is where the show is likely to have its most profound impact on our thinking. If we’re watching for the love story, then the show is going to be shaping the way we think about love.
In almost any pop culture artifact, there’s something good. The hunger for fame and glory has roots, as C.S. Lewis described so beautifully in The Weight of Glory, in a faded sense that we were meant for something more. We long for redemption and restored glory and beauty, and reality TV is an expression of that deeper longing, albeit a flawed one. Reality TV is all about the desire to be seen, to matter, to have a life that’s put on display and celebrated. It’s a shadow of a better glory, a better redemption, and a better way of being displayed before all of creation that God promises to all of his children.
Pastorally, I don’t think our primary task with pop culture is to condemn it for its flaws. People are well aware of its flaws long before we point them out. It’s better, then, for us to ask why these stories are told, and why we watch. In answering that question, we’ll almost always come back to the core of what it means to be human in a fallen world, and it will point us to the hunger for redemption that only the gospel provides.
Daniel Darling is vice-president of communications for the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission. He is the author of several books, including his latest, Activist Faith.
