Plotting God

Christianity for the Next 1000 Years

In the beginning, the elohim created skies and earth.

Welcome.  I hope my return here finds your return here to be satisfying and happy.  

I have been applying the elements of good storytelling to the Bible. Recently, I wrote about character and setting.  Now, I turn to plot.

There are two primary plots in the Bible, three if you are Christian. The first plot tells the story of God. The second plot tells the story of Israel. The Christian plot adds a new twist, what the early theologian Arius would call a "tertium quid," or third something.  I mean that not as a theological statement, but as a plotting statement.

Plot is the sequence of events in a story. In the Bible the plot is not so much a sequence of events, but a rendering of experiences, themes, and motifs gathered within an anthology of literature concerned with Israel's relationship to God.  The sequence of events is Israel's history, imagined and real.  

Just as there are elements of a story, there are elements of a plot too. Exposition is the first one, also called the basic situation, wherein the information of the story is narrated.  It is the actual rendering of who, what, when, where, how, and so forth.  

Complication is also an element of plot.  When I teach fiction writing to my students I tell them that their characters must squirm in the wind.  Life, such as it is, abounds daily with complications. 

Riveting stories necessarily must do so as well. I tell my students if their story is boring to create a hole for their character to fall into, and, often, they take that literally. So I get stories with big holes or lots of little ankle breaker holes.

The climax is that part of a story we are all waiting for as we read or watch a movie. A good plot has a satisfying climax.  

For example, when Moby Dick slams into the Pequod, leaving Ishmael as the sole survivor, the climax serves the duo function of transmitting a symbolic meaning and providing an exciting, conclusive event in the life of the narrator.

In Moby Dick, a story of biblical scope and scale, the symbolism suggests that evil wrecks its destruction, but something is saved.  

Sound familiar? 

In the story of God there is no climax since history keeps moving along.  According to the apocalyptic tradition, we are awaiting a climax of cataclysmic proportions whereby God flushes this crappy world down the divine toilet and replaces it with a new sky and earth.

We are told that the new world will be inhabited by the most devout believers.  That should give us all pause as we contemplate where we want to spend eternity.

For Christians, the climax happened after God raised Jesus from the dead. 

Finally, the last element of plot is the denouement or resolution of the story.  This one is tricky.  As long as history keeps expanding college textbooks, there is no resolution. 

The same story of greed, oppression, poverty, rape, greed, rapine, murder, greed, destruction, and greed goes on and on with extinction in sight. 

Christians believe a resolution may well be unfolding.  We will see it when we see in history the advent of peace and justice based on love.  According to Jesus of Nazareth, God’s rule is already here.  He and a handful of others were the first signs of its emergence.

Surely, there is more than a handful today who would choose to love. 

Blessings…