May 16, 2025 • 14 mins
The Bible isn't a jigsaw puzzle—It’s the grand story of God’s design for His creation. Thursday on Mornings with Eric and Brigitte, author Daniel Schwabauer will show us how the Bible makes all the more sense when understood through the language of story.
The God of Story: Discovering the Narrative of Scripture Through the Language of Storytelling
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Episode Transcript
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S1 (00:02):
You're listening to Moody Radio South Florida 89.3 and this
is Mornings with Eric and Bridget.
S2 (00:08):
Stories are powerful. Stories help us frame and make sense
of situations and the world around us. I mean, we
know this very early on. Even as kids, we can't
wait to tell our, you know, mom or dad. Tell
us another story, right? We just we love stories even
from the earliest ages.
S1 (00:26):
Yes. And those stories are told about when they were
either a child or, you know, something that happened in
your life when you were younger, as a as a
baby that you don't remember, but you love to hear
that story, so you get a connection point. Stories are also,
you know, come out of the imagination. I've just started
reading in the past few days. Uh, the Lord of
(00:46):
the rings. This will be an epic adventure for me
as it's not a short book, let's put it that way,
or a short series of books. But I decided to
spend some time there and start reading that and being
a part of that story. And that just came out
of the mind of a man and who was a
linguistic of renown. Anyway, it was just. I'm ready to
(01:06):
I'm ready to start that trip with those friends. And
that's really what it becomes, right? You start this trip
with friends you've never met, but you've read about them.
So they become part of part of your story, almost.
S2 (01:18):
Well, story is powerful, and I'm glad that you started
reading that, because the next book we're talking about right
now says it was written for those who've ever been
to Mars or Narnia or even middle Earth and discovered, yeah,
I'm at home here. In The Power of Story, Daniel
Schwarber is joining us. And you know, there is something
(01:39):
so powerful of these worlds that we can have in
our minds, isn't there?
S3 (01:46):
Hey, good morning guys. Um, yeah, we are story creatures.
We were wired for story by our creator, and in my, uh, estimation,
understanding scripture is actually a lot easier when you're fluent
in the language of story and when you're literate in
the language of story and not just thinking of stories
(02:06):
as escape. Though they are often escape. They're also super
important in helping us understand the world that we live
in and the God we serve.
S1 (02:15):
Okay, so fluent if I if I know a foreign language,
that's why I could maybe converse with you. But I
don't really think you're fluent until you can write in
that language, until you can, you know, order off the menu.
But B, even beyond that, have a good conversation with
somebody and then be able to re, uh, write that
(02:36):
back to you. So I think you need to be
fluent in that. Do I have to be fluent? You
said the the language of story. Do I have to
be able to write a story or tell a good
story to be fluent in storytelling?
S3 (02:47):
Well, no, I don't think so. I think you can
understand a language when, uh, even so, I would distinguish
between fluency and literacy. So you can be fluent in
a language but not able to read or write it.
And the same thing is true with the language of story.
We are immersed in stories as a culture. This period
of time, we probably have more accessible. Stories that are
(03:08):
are technically good than any other time in human history.
I mean, we carry around a movie theater in our pocket.
Pretty much everybody does that. Um, but. So we're good.
We're good at recognizing stories we like and why we
like them, but we're not very good at understanding the
grammar and the, uh, elements of story that make stories
(03:30):
work on us as human beings. Which is why I
say I don't think we're literate in it. That was
one of the goals of, uh, for writing this book
for me, was to help people understand that the same
tools you use when you're watching a marvel movie, or
when you're reading the wonderful Lord of the rings books
by J.R.R. Tolkien, that when you're reading those, you're going
to use, um, certain, um, interpretive tools of of understanding
(03:58):
that a character arc actually is meaningful. And it shows
you something about what the author intended, and it will
make you feel things. And the Bible is meant to
make us feel things. It's not just a repository for
propositional truths. It's not just a menu list of good traits.
It's actually told us about two thirds to three fourths
(04:19):
of it is told either in metaphorical poetry or in narrative.
And so it is, um, it is written in, uh,
in my opinion, it's written in Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek and story.
And it's not impossible to understand it. Most people are
have a lot of, uh, they have a lot of
understanding of what story is and how it works. They
(04:40):
just don't know that they can read this, read the
Bible and see those same things in Scripture.
S2 (04:46):
So what are those narrative principles of storytelling that we
can see in God's Word?
S3 (04:53):
Well, the five basic elements of story in, in, uh,
most high school literature classes are the ones that I
use in the book with theme, context, characterization, uh, voice
and plot. And, um, those those are a little technical sounding,
but they're really not very hard. The thing to remember
(05:13):
when you're reading the Bible is if you read it
as a story and you don't just shut it off, every,
you know, you read a few a little section or
a collection of verses you're used to reading. Um, if
you do that, you're only going to see in it
what you've already seen in it. Uh, my my wife
likes to say that our Bible cups are already full,
and because they're full, we can't fill them up with
(05:35):
anything else. If you read the Bible and you say,
what in the world is going on here? Why did,
for instance, why did Jesus speak in parables? And the answer,
I think, according to Jesus in Mark chapter four, is
that things are hidden so that they can be disclosed
or revealed, because stories are about revealing truth to us,
(05:56):
but they won't reveal truth if they're not hidden. So
I know that's a little that sounds a little professorial,
but when we read the Bible, we're looking. We tend
to be as Westerners, we we think we're looking for clarity.
Really what we're looking for is something like revelation, and
revelation can't happen if there isn't something that's a little
hard to get, that's a little clouded and mysterious. And so, um,
(06:21):
when we read the Bible, if you if you read it,
if you start reading it as a story and bigger,
say bigger chunks and say, why do I feel upset here?
Why does this seem creepy? Well, it could be that
the authors, you know, meant that story to be offensive
in the sense of, you know, the thing that happened
was bad. It was meant to be understood as bad. Um,
(06:43):
just because it happens in the Bible doesn't mean it
doesn't mean it was a good thing, right? And sometimes
we miss the underlying character arcs and the plot simply
because we're looking for something like a sermon rather than
looking for a story.
S1 (06:59):
So then how do we use our maybe imagination? You know,
as I'm reading Lord of the rings, I'm kind of
creating this world in my own mind. It might be
different than the world you create in your mind as
we read through it. How does our imagination play into this?
S3 (07:15):
That is a great question. And Lord of the rings
is a great example of that, because Tolkien was intentionally
writing in something that he referred to as mythopoeia myth making,
but it was myth making as deeply connected to his
Christian faith. And we are as Christians, we tend to
be more willing to employ our imaginations when we read
(07:36):
things not in the Bible. And as a result, we
get more often out of books like Lord of the rings.
We see connections in them better because we're letting our
imagination work. The Bible was written. There's nothing wrong with
reading it silently to yourself, but it was written as
as a text, primarily to be heard, not read visually.
(07:57):
And that's important because you make different connections listening than
you do when you're reading silently. And to answer your question,
one of the one of the problems in using our
imagination is we've kind of been taught in the West
since the enlightenment. Since the Reformation, we have been taught
not to imagine things. We have a kind of fear
(08:17):
of using the imagination. And I'm not saying that anything
you imagine is exactly what the Bible is saying. I
am saying that it was written as a story, and
stories are intended to be kind of played out on
the movie screen of your mind. So when you read
the story of King David, I think we're meant to imagine,
let's say, just the story of David and Goliath. We're
(08:38):
meant to imagine Goliath. The descriptions that are given to
us are meant to paint a picture of this terrifying
warrior that, you know, in the natural sense, David would
have no hope of defeating. And we can we can
imagine him differently. Uh, all three of us could imagine
him different ways, but we're probably not imagining him the
(08:58):
way he was when we listen to that story. And
that's okay. Um, that's. The Bible isn't necessarily right there
trying to give us a perfect picture of what Goliath
looked like. The Bible is trying to show us the
faithfulness of God and the calling of David, even as
the as a shepherd boy.
S1 (09:17):
So did my old Sunday school Flannelgraph or the the
pictures that were created in a book. Does that help
this or hurt this? Actually?
S3 (09:25):
Well, I think it can help. There's nothing wrong, in
my opinion, with, um, visual images that are helping you
to understand the story. In fact, we have a as
the Protestant church in the West has a history of
iconoclasm from the Reformation, where we went around and smashed
statues and tore up tapestries and broke stained glass windows
because we were kind of afraid of giving the wrong images.
(09:48):
And I think that was going too far, uh, for
the for the simple reason that, um, the every story
has to have sensory images attached to it or it
won't work as a story. And the gospel story of
Jesus really is meant to be understood in story terms,
not only in story terms, but, um, certainly in story terms.
(10:10):
And the early church, um, universally thought this was the thing. Um,
it's not just a matter of understanding the concept of
penal substitutionary atonement. They weren't. That concept didn't get them excited.
What got them excited was Jesus died for my sins,
which is kind of the same thing. But they they
(10:32):
told the story and they tried to embody the story.
And I think we've kind of turned it. We've made
it too conceptual. Um, and in doing that, we've kind
of made the story itself look more like text than, uh,
people living and breathing and doing terrible things, and then
(10:56):
encountering the Messiah and discovering that he was God, come
in human form.
S2 (11:04):
I feel like I have still a million questions to ask,
and our time is slipping away. But, uh, what do
you say to the believer who's listening? Who? Who fears
that being too creative or too imaginative Somehow dilutes the
the truth that's in God's word.
S3 (11:24):
Well, that's a great question too. And I have no
intention of saying that anything that I imagine is, is
the way the Bible, you know, really unfolded. Um, but, um,
the fear of, of imagining, of using the imagination when
reading the Bible, I think, is not really a biblical ideal.
(11:46):
And if you just if we just like my interpretive
philosophy is how did Jesus do it? He's never wrong.
So my my understanding of Scripture is how did Jesus
interpret this? How did he approach this? And he made
speaking in parables so fundamental to his teaching that if
we assume that, um, parables are purely conceptual, we're going
(12:12):
to miss what's going on in parables. And I think
you can this is sort of intuitive if you just
read the parable of the Prodigal Son. It's really hard
for me. I've read that so many times. It's really
hard for me to read that and not be moved,
because I can place myself not only in the role
of the prodigal, but also in the role of the
(12:33):
older brother who resents the prodigal coming back. And as
I get older, I'm finding that, um, I almost think
we need to place ourselves in the role of the
father in the story, who is looking for the return
of the prodigal as we see this. Uh, you know,
many have noticed that, uh, younger people seem to be
(12:53):
walking away from the church in big numbers. And I
think the church needs to understand that we're going to
have to welcome them back. Um, we need we need
to at least be ready if they're if if some
of these, uh, young people decide that they've been living
in the pigsty long enough and they want to come home, um,
(13:15):
they don't want to. We don't want them to come
home and find that the door is locked and the
lights are off. Right. So that's the sort of thing that, um,
when you when you when you read Jesus's parables, he
was almost always asking people to imagine things that were
not quite the way they expected. And that's the beauty
of storytelling, is that it can it can, uh, kind
(13:37):
of force you to lean in and ponder in a
way that, um, flat statements of truth don't.
S2 (13:46):
You're stretching some of us, right? We're just. You're right.
We weren't, uh, kind of geared towards that way of
reading the Bible, but I see what you're saying. It's
exactly what Jesus did and the tools he utilized in story.
And that's why your book, The God of Story, and
I think your background is so helpful for us as being,
(14:07):
you know, studying theology and literature and bringing those two
together so that we can understand God's Word at a,
at a really a deeper level. Uh, so I encourage
our friends to check it out. The God of Story,
we've got a link to Daniel's book at our website
right now. Eric and Bridget. Dot.
You're listening to Moody Radio South Florida 89.3 and this
is Mornings with Eric and Bridget.
S2 (00:08):
Stories are powerful. Stories help us frame and make sense
of situations and the world around us. I mean, we
know this very early on. Even as kids, we can't
wait to tell our, you know, mom or dad. Tell
us another story, right? We just we love stories even
from the earliest ages.
S1 (00:26):
Yes. And those stories are told about when they were
either a child or, you know, something that happened in
your life when you were younger, as a as a
baby that you don't remember, but you love to hear
that story, so you get a connection point. Stories are also,
you know, come out of the imagination. I've just started
reading in the past few days. Uh, the Lord of
(00:46):
the rings. This will be an epic adventure for me
as it's not a short book, let's put it that way,
or a short series of books. But I decided to
spend some time there and start reading that and being
a part of that story. And that just came out
of the mind of a man and who was a
linguistic of renown. Anyway, it was just. I'm ready to
(01:06):
I'm ready to start that trip with those friends. And
that's really what it becomes, right? You start this trip
with friends you've never met, but you've read about them.
So they become part of part of your story, almost.
S2 (01:18):
Well, story is powerful, and I'm glad that you started
reading that, because the next book we're talking about right
now says it was written for those who've ever been
to Mars or Narnia or even middle Earth and discovered, yeah,
I'm at home here. In The Power of Story, Daniel
Schwarber is joining us. And you know, there is something
(01:39):
so powerful of these worlds that we can have in
our minds, isn't there?
S3 (01:46):
Hey, good morning guys. Um, yeah, we are story creatures.
We were wired for story by our creator, and in my, uh, estimation,
understanding scripture is actually a lot easier when you're fluent
in the language of story and when you're literate in
the language of story and not just thinking of stories
(02:06):
as escape. Though they are often escape. They're also super
important in helping us understand the world that we live
in and the God we serve.
S1 (02:15):
Okay, so fluent if I if I know a foreign language,
that's why I could maybe converse with you. But I
don't really think you're fluent until you can write in
that language, until you can, you know, order off the menu.
But B, even beyond that, have a good conversation with
somebody and then be able to re, uh, write that
(02:36):
back to you. So I think you need to be
fluent in that. Do I have to be fluent? You
said the the language of story. Do I have to
be able to write a story or tell a good
story to be fluent in storytelling?
S3 (02:47):
Well, no, I don't think so. I think you can
understand a language when, uh, even so, I would distinguish
between fluency and literacy. So you can be fluent in
a language but not able to read or write it.
And the same thing is true with the language of story.
We are immersed in stories as a culture. This period
of time, we probably have more accessible. Stories that are
(03:08):
are technically good than any other time in human history.
I mean, we carry around a movie theater in our pocket.
Pretty much everybody does that. Um, but. So we're good.
We're good at recognizing stories we like and why we
like them, but we're not very good at understanding the
grammar and the, uh, elements of story that make stories
(03:30):
work on us as human beings. Which is why I
say I don't think we're literate in it. That was
one of the goals of, uh, for writing this book
for me, was to help people understand that the same
tools you use when you're watching a marvel movie, or
when you're reading the wonderful Lord of the rings books
by J.R.R. Tolkien, that when you're reading those, you're going
to use, um, certain, um, interpretive tools of of understanding
(03:58):
that a character arc actually is meaningful. And it shows
you something about what the author intended, and it will
make you feel things. And the Bible is meant to
make us feel things. It's not just a repository for
propositional truths. It's not just a menu list of good traits.
It's actually told us about two thirds to three fourths
(04:19):
of it is told either in metaphorical poetry or in narrative.
And so it is, um, it is written in, uh,
in my opinion, it's written in Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek and story.
And it's not impossible to understand it. Most people are
have a lot of, uh, they have a lot of
understanding of what story is and how it works. They
(04:40):
just don't know that they can read this, read the
Bible and see those same things in Scripture.
S2 (04:46):
So what are those narrative principles of storytelling that we
can see in God's Word?
S3 (04:53):
Well, the five basic elements of story in, in, uh,
most high school literature classes are the ones that I
use in the book with theme, context, characterization, uh, voice
and plot. And, um, those those are a little technical sounding,
but they're really not very hard. The thing to remember
(05:13):
when you're reading the Bible is if you read it
as a story and you don't just shut it off, every,
you know, you read a few a little section or
a collection of verses you're used to reading. Um, if
you do that, you're only going to see in it
what you've already seen in it. Uh, my my wife
likes to say that our Bible cups are already full,
and because they're full, we can't fill them up with
(05:35):
anything else. If you read the Bible and you say,
what in the world is going on here? Why did,
for instance, why did Jesus speak in parables? And the answer,
I think, according to Jesus in Mark chapter four, is
that things are hidden so that they can be disclosed
or revealed, because stories are about revealing truth to us,
(05:56):
but they won't reveal truth if they're not hidden. So
I know that's a little that sounds a little professorial,
but when we read the Bible, we're looking. We tend
to be as Westerners, we we think we're looking for clarity.
Really what we're looking for is something like revelation, and
revelation can't happen if there isn't something that's a little
hard to get, that's a little clouded and mysterious. And so, um,
(06:21):
when we read the Bible, if you if you read it,
if you start reading it as a story and bigger,
say bigger chunks and say, why do I feel upset here?
Why does this seem creepy? Well, it could be that
the authors, you know, meant that story to be offensive
in the sense of, you know, the thing that happened
was bad. It was meant to be understood as bad. Um,
(06:43):
just because it happens in the Bible doesn't mean it
doesn't mean it was a good thing, right? And sometimes
we miss the underlying character arcs and the plot simply
because we're looking for something like a sermon rather than
looking for a story.
S1 (06:59):
So then how do we use our maybe imagination? You know,
as I'm reading Lord of the rings, I'm kind of
creating this world in my own mind. It might be
different than the world you create in your mind as
we read through it. How does our imagination play into this?
S3 (07:15):
That is a great question. And Lord of the rings
is a great example of that, because Tolkien was intentionally
writing in something that he referred to as mythopoeia myth making,
but it was myth making as deeply connected to his
Christian faith. And we are as Christians, we tend to
be more willing to employ our imaginations when we read
(07:36):
things not in the Bible. And as a result, we
get more often out of books like Lord of the rings.
We see connections in them better because we're letting our
imagination work. The Bible was written. There's nothing wrong with
reading it silently to yourself, but it was written as
as a text, primarily to be heard, not read visually.
(07:57):
And that's important because you make different connections listening than
you do when you're reading silently. And to answer your question,
one of the one of the problems in using our
imagination is we've kind of been taught in the West
since the enlightenment. Since the Reformation, we have been taught
not to imagine things. We have a kind of fear
(08:17):
of using the imagination. And I'm not saying that anything
you imagine is exactly what the Bible is saying. I
am saying that it was written as a story, and
stories are intended to be kind of played out on
the movie screen of your mind. So when you read
the story of King David, I think we're meant to imagine,
let's say, just the story of David and Goliath. We're
(08:38):
meant to imagine Goliath. The descriptions that are given to
us are meant to paint a picture of this terrifying
warrior that, you know, in the natural sense, David would
have no hope of defeating. And we can we can
imagine him differently. Uh, all three of us could imagine
him different ways, but we're probably not imagining him the
(08:58):
way he was when we listen to that story. And
that's okay. Um, that's. The Bible isn't necessarily right there
trying to give us a perfect picture of what Goliath
looked like. The Bible is trying to show us the
faithfulness of God and the calling of David, even as
the as a shepherd boy.
S1 (09:17):
So did my old Sunday school Flannelgraph or the the
pictures that were created in a book. Does that help
this or hurt this? Actually?
S3 (09:25):
Well, I think it can help. There's nothing wrong, in
my opinion, with, um, visual images that are helping you
to understand the story. In fact, we have a as
the Protestant church in the West has a history of
iconoclasm from the Reformation, where we went around and smashed
statues and tore up tapestries and broke stained glass windows
because we were kind of afraid of giving the wrong images.
(09:48):
And I think that was going too far, uh, for
the for the simple reason that, um, the every story
has to have sensory images attached to it or it
won't work as a story. And the gospel story of
Jesus really is meant to be understood in story terms,
not only in story terms, but, um, certainly in story terms.
(10:10):
And the early church, um, universally thought this was the thing. Um,
it's not just a matter of understanding the concept of
penal substitutionary atonement. They weren't. That concept didn't get them excited.
What got them excited was Jesus died for my sins,
which is kind of the same thing. But they they
(10:32):
told the story and they tried to embody the story.
And I think we've kind of turned it. We've made
it too conceptual. Um, and in doing that, we've kind
of made the story itself look more like text than, uh,
people living and breathing and doing terrible things, and then
(10:56):
encountering the Messiah and discovering that he was God, come
in human form.
S2 (11:04):
I feel like I have still a million questions to ask,
and our time is slipping away. But, uh, what do
you say to the believer who's listening? Who? Who fears
that being too creative or too imaginative Somehow dilutes the
the truth that's in God's word.
S3 (11:24):
Well, that's a great question too. And I have no
intention of saying that anything that I imagine is, is
the way the Bible, you know, really unfolded. Um, but, um,
the fear of, of imagining, of using the imagination when
reading the Bible, I think, is not really a biblical ideal.
(11:46):
And if you just if we just like my interpretive
philosophy is how did Jesus do it? He's never wrong.
So my my understanding of Scripture is how did Jesus
interpret this? How did he approach this? And he made
speaking in parables so fundamental to his teaching that if
we assume that, um, parables are purely conceptual, we're going
(12:12):
to miss what's going on in parables. And I think
you can this is sort of intuitive if you just
read the parable of the Prodigal Son. It's really hard
for me. I've read that so many times. It's really
hard for me to read that and not be moved,
because I can place myself not only in the role
of the prodigal, but also in the role of the
(12:33):
older brother who resents the prodigal coming back. And as
I get older, I'm finding that, um, I almost think
we need to place ourselves in the role of the
father in the story, who is looking for the return
of the prodigal as we see this. Uh, you know,
many have noticed that, uh, younger people seem to be
(12:53):
walking away from the church in big numbers. And I
think the church needs to understand that we're going to
have to welcome them back. Um, we need we need
to at least be ready if they're if if some
of these, uh, young people decide that they've been living
in the pigsty long enough and they want to come home, um,
(13:15):
they don't want to. We don't want them to come
home and find that the door is locked and the
lights are off. Right. So that's the sort of thing that, um,
when you when you when you read Jesus's parables, he
was almost always asking people to imagine things that were
not quite the way they expected. And that's the beauty
of storytelling, is that it can it can, uh, kind
(13:37):
of force you to lean in and ponder in a
way that, um, flat statements of truth don't.
S2 (13:46):
You're stretching some of us, right? We're just. You're right.
We weren't, uh, kind of geared towards that way of
reading the Bible, but I see what you're saying. It's
exactly what Jesus did and the tools he utilized in story.
And that's why your book, The God of Story, and
I think your background is so helpful for us as being,
(14:07):
you know, studying theology and literature and bringing those two
together so that we can understand God's Word at a,
at a really a deeper level. Uh, so I encourage
our friends to check it out. The God of Story,
we've got a link to Daniel's book at our website
right now. Eric and Bridget. Dot.
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I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Cold Case Files: Miami
Joyce Sapp, 76; Bryan Herrera, 16; and Laurance Webb, 32—three Miami residents whose lives were stolen in brutal, unsolved homicides.  Cold Case Files: Miami follows award‑winning radio host and City of Miami Police reserve officer  Enrique Santos as he partners with the department’s Cold Case Homicide Unit, determined family members, and the advocates who spend their lives fighting for justice for the victims who can no longer fight for themselves.