The Glory of the Story

Even if you don't realize it, much of our developmental and continued learning integrates the concept of stories. Aesop's fables are of course the most well known combination of story and lesson. However, the use of stories to teach are far more varied and subtle. Teachers use examples and object lessons. Math is brought to life in word problems. Pastor's illustrate with terse or humorous stories. Hypothetical questions and scenarios are used in problem solving. It is often integral to combine a memorable story or story feature to some aspect of truth distribution. The Bible is truly no different. The Bible is constructed of 75% narrative (story), 15% poetry and 10% direct didactic teaching. Jesus himself utilized stories to communicate much of his lessons while on earth. The question I have is if stories are so clearly important, why do we focus so much of our Bible study on avoiding the narrative sections. We teach the stories to our children because we know that they remember the life lessons through the stories. Why do we neglect to continue this as adults? Do we think we are so smart that studying stories is beneath our conceptual comprehension? Do we feel that stories are not an efficient use of our learning time? Much of the world learns through a story motif even today. I think we would do well to re-learn how to read and develop lessons through interaction with Biblical stories.