Fictionology

Given that my sense of humor is extremely “Onionesque”, I don’t know why I continued for so long to rely on others to fill me in on the latest “news” from that wonderful satirical source. I’ve now subscribed, but I am grateful to John Wilkins for drawing to my attention the recent piece about how Scientology is losing ground to a new competitor, Fictionology.

The article is satire, but I think it can provide a starting point for some interesting and perhaps even serious conversation. What would it look like if we recognized that most of the stories we tell are fictional? Even when we attempt to write history, if we go beyond a presentation of the raw data and tell a story, we are to a greater or lesser extent producing a work of historical fiction. What if we took seriously the fact that the stories in the Bible tell us about the ways humans thought about God, and that our allegiance or otherwise to various stories tells us about what we think about God and about the nature of reality?

For such a long time so many of us have been so committed to exalting facts above all else. Perhaps it is time to not only recognize how much of the stories from the past that we value and the new stories we weave are fictional, but also to recognize the value of fiction, because it tells us so much about what we believe, who we are, what we value, and how we wish the world could be.

When we imagine God, it is probably true to say that we cannot ultimately get outside our imagination. But if by God we mean that all-encompassing reality that is transcendent and ultimate, perhaps this shouldn’t worry us too much. For human imagination both draws on and is part of that reality, and thus to some tiny extent may give us insight into reality itself.