A script, as in drama script, is the last metaphor possibility I suggest in The Bible as Improv.
Each metaphor has it’s own unique contribution and limitations. But a drama script is a particularly helpful one. This is not one I came up with. NT Wright first used this in an article that if you haven’t seen is worth the read sometime. He further develops it in his massive opening volume on Christian origins entitled, The New Testament and the People of God. Again most of you reading this blog will be familiar with his work, if you haven’t read the first 3 volumes of what will be his life’s work you need to (volume 2, volume 3. two more are forthcoming) He suggests that maybe the bible as we have it is the first four acts of a five act play or a drama. The fifth act however is lost and that situation needs to be remedied. So we have a couple options.
Hand the script to some writers and have them write the concluding act. Or….hand the script to some gifted actors/actresses and ask them to “perform” the fifth act. Wright’s posture is that God has opted for the second approach. The assumption is the actors have to immerse in the script of the first four acts to know the plot, storyline, character development, and to pick up on the hints of how the storyline comes to climax and resolution.
The fifth act is then improvised and performed in the context of the script and the community. Both of those are important. The goal in the fifth act is not to repeat, recite, or re-enact the first four acts. This is what I think so much of the church is doing as they read the bible…in the owner’s manual for life approach. The drama score approach says we are NOT trying to reenact the first four acts we are trying to build on them. We are not trying to memorize and recite the first four acts we are trying to use them as hints and clues about how we are to improv in our context.
The drama troupe, the community of the church, is able to reflect in together how well we are improvising and how faithful it reflects continuity with the first four acts and at the same time wrestles with and contextualizes God’s activity in a new world.
I am sure there are other metaphors equally or more valuable, I just don’t know what those are. But I do know this, our lives are storied creations. If we don’t have an approach to text that takes seriously the shape of our existence the biblical text will increasingly be a dry dusty archaic volume.
What does it mean that our lives are a storied existence and what does it mean to what we even think conversation is? That is where we are headed….
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What does it mean that our lives are a storied exsistence?
It means that each person’s reality is different because no two people have the same story.
What does it mean about what we think conversation is?
Conversation becomes a way to share our stories so we can see a glimpse of the larger story that we are all living within. We are re-storying each other through conversation with a bigger story that turns our singular I into a larger WE. The posture required to enter this type of conversation is not easy to achieve in our modern world of rhetoric and certianty. It requires a sense that everyone is equally right and equally wrong. This is ego shattering for experts and empowering for those who are foolish.
“God chose the foolish things of this world to shame the wise.”