Stories: The Things Upon Which We Build Our Lives.
Stories have always been the way we transmit important ideas from one generation to the next. Stories, which also can be called narratives, can be simple and reveal a single thought: Honesty is the best policy. Or, they can be so big as to be called metanarratives and convey an entire view of the world. The Bible contains such a metanarrative: Christianity; the Torah contains a metanarrative: Judaism; and the Communist Manifesto contains another metanarrative: Communism. Metanarratives are all around us.
Not Any Story Will Do!
The importance of which stories are told, and who tells them, has always been known. Because We Don’t Sail Alone contains small stories, which reveal one or more of the godly virtues, and/or their attending vices. Consider the following thoughts, written about twenty-five hundred years ago.
“You know that the beginning is the most important part of any work, especially in the case of a young and tender thing; for that is the time at which the character is formed and the desired impression is more readily taken….Shall we just carelessly allow children to hear any casual tales which may be devised by casual persons, and to receive into their minds ideas for the most part the very opposite of those which we should wish them to have when they are grown up? We cannot….Anything received into the mind at that age is likely to become indelible and unalterable; and therefore it is most important that the tales which the young first hear should be models of virtuous thoughts…”
Plato, The Republic