The Fuller Blog
What was it like growing up in your family? Many people have specific defining moments or scenes that stand out in memory: episodes of warmth and connection, or perhaps coldness and distance. Or take your experience of local congregations. On the one hand, you may have had the privilege of worshipping among people who demonstrated a flawed but sincere pursuit of God. On the other hand, you may have been profoundly disillusioned by the cliquishness, hypocrisy, and abuses of power you witnessed.
Our past has a hand in shaping the people we are today: the habits and attitudes with which we approach relationships; the things we value most dearly; our pet peeves and lingering fears; our dreams of the future.
And each of us has a story to tell—or a collection of stories, more or less cohesive. Each of us is the main character in a tale that tries to reconcile the past we’ve already experienced with the present we now live and the future we anticipate. The plotline that takes shape in our imagination influences which events we notice, and which we ignore; the story gives form to how we think about the people in our lives, who become the dramatis personae in our own little morality play.
Trouble is, while we may treat others as if they were characters in our stories, they perceive us as characters in their stories. Those who play the villain in my script are the heroes and heroines of their own; to them, they are the protagonists, and we, the antagonists.
So what happens if everyone insists on sticking to his or her own story?
In a work of literary criticism entitled Aspects of the Novel (1927), E. M. Forster made a now famous distinction between what he called flat and round characters. Flat characters are essentially one-dimensional; they play more as stereotypes than real people. Round characters, however, are allowed more complex motivations and thus are more fully realized. The reader is made party to their internal conflicts, the better to appreciate and identify with their heroic struggles.
Thus, the main protagonist of a novel is typically round, and the characterization deepens as the plot progresses. But that character may be surrounded by any number of comparatively flat ones: the sleazy lawyer; the vain aristocrat; the rapacious corporate raider; the mad genius with delusions of grandeur. The protagonist plays off these characters in a way that brings his or her own depth into sharper relief.
This is quite a normal feature of storytelling, even in a text as short as Jesus’ parable of the prodigal (Luke 15:11-32). The younger son, with his repentant change of heart, is rounder than his surly and resentful brother; the father is given greater dimension by having to react to both. But Forster’s distinction made me wonder: in the tales we make of our own lives and experiences, to what extent do we need others to be flat characters in order for us to be round by comparison?
Someone has hurt me. When I tell the story, that person is a one-dimensional character with a single motivation. I know, of course, that there are always the proverbial “two sides”; I can entertain that idea as an intellectual proposition. But if it makes it harder to tell the story I prefer, I will probably keep the other person flat.
The irony is that despite my desire to render myself as a rounder character—the many-faceted hero or heroine of my own story—flattening others can flatten the world by reducing it to basic black and white distinctions. Gone is the nuanced complexity of an Alyosha Karamazov or Anna Karenina. Instead, possibly without realizing it, I find myself striving to be James Bond to someone else’s Goldfinger.
Even more tellingly: there’s often an unacknowledged element of idolatry in all of this. By their very nature, novels often have omniscient narrators, who invisibly and infallibly tell you everything you need to know about the characters and their motivations. But we are not omniscient, and it is always a dangerous thing to play God.
The good news, if we will receive it as such, is that we’re invited to open the horizons of our stories to a more transcendent one, in which all have sinned, all are in need of redemption, and all are invited to participate in the transforming grace made available by the story’s Hero. This thing called “the Christian life” is indeed an adventure—but we should think of it less in terms of making God part of our story than God making us part of his.
Who knows: with our horizons thus broadened, we might be able to imagine new possibilities for ourselves, for the other characters with whom we walk and talk, and for our relationships.
Cameron Lee is Professor of Marriage and Family Studies at Fuller Theological Seminary in the School of Psychology. He is a licensed Family Wellness Trainer and a member of the National Council on Family Relations. Lee’s current project is the development of the Fuller Institute for Relationship Education (FIRE), which seeks to help congregations create sustainable marriage and relationship education ministries through the low-cost training of volunteer leaders. Lee is also a teaching pastor and licensed minister in the congregation where he is a member. He is the sole or senior author of six books, including three on the lives of clergy and their families. Lee’s most recent book, written with his colleague Jim Furrow, is Preparing Couples for Love and Marriage, a practical resource to help busy pastors in their ministry of premarital preparation.
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