What is the story you are living? I would suggest that this is the most important question we can answer. Why? Because many of the biggest questions in life are tied to it. What is the meaning of life? Is there life after death? What is truth? Where does truth come from? These questions matter to all of us. And they can only be answered if we understand the story we are living in.
That is the problem.
Most of us are not prepared to understand our story. And how could we be? If we are honest, only the author of the story could fully explain it. Yet we do not even know who that author is. Surely the author is not one of us. If one of us were writing the story, it would likely be much happier than the one we know. There would be no danger, no poverty, no illness. No, the author is not among us.
Perhaps, as some believe, there is no author at all. Perhaps there is no given story, only a world of matter, energy, chance, and human choice. In that view, meaning is not discovered but made. We ask our questions, tell our stories, build our values, and make our way through a universe that does not answer back. There is a certain honesty in that view. But if it is true, then the deepest questions of the human heart lead to no final answer beyond the ones we make for ourselves.
And yet those questions do not go away. They are deep, stubborn, and shared by people everywhere. They seem to point beyond us. So if there is an author, and that author is not one of us, then the author must be different. Before we can answer the great questions of life, we must understand the story. To understand the story, we must know the author. To know the author, we must find the author.
And so we begin.
How do we find an author? If our story were a book, we would simply turn to the back cover or the last page and read the author bio. But we do not have a book. So how can we find and know our author?
We begin with the only thing we have in front of us: the story itself. Could it be that the author is shown in the story? That seems possible, since the parts of every story come from the mind of the author. If we hope to find and know our author, we must study the story we are living.
So where do we look?
We look at the characters. Every story has them. Most stories have a main character. Is that me? Is that you? I doubt it. Writers speak of heroes and villains. So who is the hero of our story? Who is the villain? And what about the rest of us? Are we near the center of the story, or are we standing at the edge of something much larger than ourselves?
We look at the plot. Plot is what happens in a story. If we are in a story, and if that story has an author, then there must be a plot. But as characters inside the story, we do not have the script. We are trying to read the whole book while living inside one chapter. That makes the plot hard to understand.
We look at the setting. The setting shapes the mood and sets the limits of what makes sense. Texting would not fit in a medieval story. Wrong setting. So what is the setting of our story? It seems to be Earth in the twenty-first century. Yet perhaps, like Neo in The Matrix or the Pevensies in The Chronicles of Narnia, we may one day find that our story is larger than it first appears.
We also see conflict. Every story has conflict, and ours certainly does. Good and evil are in conflict, and somehow we are caught in the middle. We may not all define good and evil in the same way, but we know the struggle is real.
And then there is the ending. The hero wins. Evil is defeated. Wrongs are made right. Though not every story ends that way, we hope ours will. Yet we do not know how our story ends, and that uncertainty shapes how we live now.
So we turn to the story and begin our search.
First, the characters.
We may like to think of ourselves as the hero. That is the role we would choose, is it not? The one who stands firm when darkness closes in. The one on whom the victory of good over evil depends. If we were the main character, we would expect some great purpose. We would expect to change the world.
Does that sound like you? Like me? Probably not.
And if not us, then who? There are many powerful and gifted people in the world, yet even the best of them are flawed. Those who seem heroic at one moment often reveal selfishness or darkness later. The people we look to for rescue rarely seem big enough for the role. Surely there must be a hero. All stories have one. Yet we are left wondering who it is.
Still, something in us resists the thought that we are only extras. We want to believe our lives matter. We want to believe we have a real part to play, even if we are not the hero. So the characters do not solve the mystery. They deepen it.
Then we turn to the plot.
When we ask the deep questions of the soul, the first may be, Why am I here? But when that question feels too large, we often ask a smaller one instead: What should I do? That is the heart of plot. What is going on, and how should we respond?
So we look at life. We see joy and sorrow, triumph and tragedy. One moment brings happiness. The next brings disaster. The same is true not only in individual lives but also in the lives of nations and peoples. History is full of war, disaster, cruelty, hope, invention, and loss. Technology has done much good. It has also been used for evil. And for all its power, it has not changed the deeper pattern of human life. One group rises, then falls. One ruler is replaced by another. The cycle goes on.
So the plot does not tell us as much as we hoped. It shows movement, but not meaning. It shows struggle, but not the full shape of the story.
Then we turn to the setting.
At first, our setting seems plain enough: Earth in the twenty-first century. Yet even here we find clues that raise more questions than answers. The world is beautiful, but it is also wild and dangerous. For all our knowledge and skill, we cannot command the winds or stop the storms.
And then there is the size of it all. The world seems large to us, yet it is only a pale blue dot among asteroids, planets, stars, nebulae, and galaxies. Why is it all so vast? Is the story really that large? Is the author really that great?
So once again we are baffled. The characters do not explain the story. The plot shows us motion, but not meaning. The setting is beautiful, dangerous, and immense, yet still it does not explain itself. Perhaps we cannot fully understand the story from inside the story.
Perhaps we need more than observation. Perhaps we need revelation.
If only the author truly knows the story, then only the author can fully reveal it. We may catch hints of him in the world around us. We may sense that something is missing. But if we are ever to know him clearly, he must make himself known. The author must speak. More than that, if the distance between author and character is as great as it seems, then the author may have to do what we would never expect: enter the story himself.
That leads to a serious question. Among the stories people tell to explain the world, is there one that actually makes that claim? Is there one that says the author has not remained distant, but has entered the story?
Christianity does.
Christianity says that the author and creator of the universe, the giver of life, has entered the human story. It says that Jesus, who claimed to be God himself, entered the world as a baby, lived a pure life, taught freedom and redemption, died at the hands of earthly rulers, rose again, and opened a way for people to know the God of the universe personally.
If that story is true, then much becomes clear.
The characters begin to make sense. The hero is not you or me, nor any other human being. The hero is God himself, the author, who entered the story in Jesus Christ. The villain is not only human weakness or broken systems. The Christian story speaks of a real enemy, the enemy of God, called Satan, who works to keep people from being brought back to God. And what about us? According to Christianity, we are neither the hero nor meaningless extras. We are the ones Jesus came to set free. We are his beloved.
Then the plot begins to make sense. The Christian story opens with “In the beginning.” It begins with goodness, with creation, with the Garden of Eden. Then tragedy enters. Human beings, drawn by evil, defy and betray God. But God does not abandon them. He loves them. He calls them back. He becomes one of them and pays the price for their treason so that reunion becomes possible. According to Christianity, that is where we are now in the story. God is drawing people back to himself, while Satan works to hide the path home. We are living in a life-and-death struggle in the middle of a love story.
Even the conflict begins to make sense. Why would an all-powerful God not simply make us love him? Why not destroy evil at once? Why allow rejection, rebellion, and suffering at all? Christianity answers with one simple and profound word: love. Love cannot be forced. Power can force many things, but it cannot force love. In this view, evil exists not because God delights in it, but because real love requires real choice. The conflict between good and evil is not meaningless chaos. It is tied to the hard and beautiful truth that we are free either to love God or to turn away from him.
And then there is the setting—wildly dangerous, breathtakingly beautiful, and astonishingly vast. According to Christianity, this too reflects the author. The beauty of the world reflects his beauty. Its danger reflects a reality larger than our comfort would prefer. And the vastness of the universe is not waste. It is revelation. If creation is meant not only to hold humanity but also to show the greatness of God, then perhaps it is not too large after all. Perhaps it is just the right size.
If the Christian story is true, then the author has been found. The author is God, the God revealed in Scripture, in creation, and in the great conflict between good and evil. And if that is so, then we are left not only with an explanation, but with a choice. We may love him or ignore him. We may accept the story he tells or go on living as though the story were random and unsatisfying.
That is why the question matters. What is the story you are living?
If the Christian story is true, then your deepest questions are not accidents. They are not meaningless disturbances in an otherwise empty universe. They are part of the way the author draws you to himself.
And that means your life is not random. Your longing is not foolish. Your questions are not a flaw to be silenced. They are a summons.
The author has written himself into the story.