God's a Better Storyteller

Many modern translations of the Bible don’t use the word “meekness” at all. They call it “gentleness” or “humility.” The new translations (justly) don’t trust us to know what the Lord meant by meekness, and attempt to clarify it for us by using more common words, which would be more helpful if I thought I had a good grasp on what humility is, or if gentleness carried any connotative force.

“Humility” means “the quality of being humble or having a lowly opinion of oneself; meekness, lowliness, humbleness.” “Gentle” means “not harsh or irritating to the touch; soft, tender; yielding to pressure, pliant, supple.” All this tells me is I don’t really know what “humility” or “gentle” is either.

Here’s my problem: “meekness” rhymes with “weakness,” which may be what led me to connect meekness with the “turn the other cheek” part of Christianity. I’ve associated meekness with sweetness, with a willingness to suffer quietly, to go to gently into that good night. And it’s not that these things are bad, just that they don’t very clearly represent the servants of God that I admire most.

The sons of Helaman, small as saplings, stood like redwoods in the face of those would kill their parents, the faith of their mothers preserving them. They were good, they knew God, but gentle isn’t the first word that comes to mind. Jesus threw over tables in the temple. He proclaimed himself Lord and Savior, He passed judgment, but he was humble, because he was everything good. He knew how to be gentle—but he wasn’t always. These people were meek, which means I don’t know what meek means.

Lara came up to me one Sunday and said, “Risa, I have a meekness thing for you.” We’d been studying meekness together for months, texting each other with anything found, so this was normal.

“Cool,” I said, smiling and trying not to cry. It’d been a bad day.

“When Christ was going to raise Lazarus, he could have gone before Lazarus died. Lazarus was his friend, and Jesus didn’t want his friend to die. Mary and Martha were his friends, and he didn’t want them to have to grieve for their brother. He didn’t want any of them to be in pain. But Jesus did it for the glory of God, because God asked him to, even though it isn’t what he would have wanted on his own. And that’s meekness, I think!”

I was crying by then. I was about to go have a breakup conversation, and I really didn’t want to. And I wasn’t just breaking up with him, which, at that point, I’d done several times and was generally OK with. This time I was saying we couldn’t be friends anymore. I’d never done that before, and I was really not OK with it, but I was doing it because God said. It seemed completely unnecessary that God had Lara come over and rub it in like this. I was already going to do what he asked. I didn’t need the reminder.

But, of course, I did. I needed God to tell me that what I was doing was meekness, because I didn’t know what meekness was. It was kind of him to tell me that this is what meekness felt like sometimes. Sometimes meekness feels like carving bits of yourself out.

Knowing what meekness felt like didn’t make me good at it. Meekness meant letting go of things that I loved, because God asked me to and letting go of things that I loved wasn’t a pastime that I felt naturally drawn to. I’d do it, but I’d do it reluctantly. I’d do it doubled over in pain. 

I think doing it reluctantly still counts as meekness. God loves a cheerful giver, but I think he loves those who give even when they’re bent with the pain of it, when they can barely breathe because of what giving is costing them. I can’t imagine Abraham hiked the mountain, cheerful about what he was being asked to give up, while Isaac trailed behind him, poking things with sticks. I think God honored Abraham’s sacrifice anyway.

Years before, when I was a freshman who thought she was going to study international relations and Mandarin, I thought about my future one day, worried that, at the end of my life, I wouldn’t have a good story to tell. “English major” is not just a good descriptor of what I ended up doing with my life in college, it’s also a pretty good description of who I am as a person, so even though I’d yet to find my way to literature, not having a good story was already a very disturbing idea. It was desperately, desperately important to me that I be able to live an interesting narrative.

And then, interrupting the conversation I’d been having with myself, God said, “I’m a better storyteller than you.”

I thought of the narrative arc of scripture, of Elijah’s fire and rain, of Moses returning to his adopted brother to demand God’s will, the fabulous suspense and surprise and glory of the Atonement. I thought, Fair enough.

This became a mantra of mine. “God’s a better storyteller,” I’d remind myself when I didn’t get into a program I wanted or when I lost a friendship that was important to me. “God’s a better storyteller,” I’d say, when God asked me to do something that ran upstream from my own impulse. “God’s a better storyteller,” I’d say when life hurt.

When I was applying for divinity schools, I thought I would go to Stanford. Stanford was trying to develop their Christianity program, so they were admitting more students of Christianity that year than usual. I’d talked to a few students and a few professors at that school, and they were interesting and encouraging. Stanford had good scholarships. I liked the essays I wrote for my application. It felt like the stars were aligning, and they were all pointing to Northern California.

And then, I called another professor, one that I thought I might want to work with, one that I thought I might like to have on my committee, one that was very involved in deciding who came to Stanford. She did not want to talk to me. She did not like me. I was not qualified. I was wasting her time. I got off the phone and cried.

I’d gotten really attached to this idea of me at Stanford. It was sunny there. It was close-ish to where my family would be. I’d go there and run out to farmers markets between classes, and I’d have discussions about theology on the lawn. I’d attend lectures and go to museums and sometimes blow off homework to go to the beach. I’d find a yoga community that was more hippy than me, but in a really delightful way. Sitting in my office after the disaster of a phone call, I watched all of that slip away.

“God’s a better storyteller,” I reminded myself, willing meekness forward.

“All right, Father,” I prayed, “I guess that was my story. Where’s yours?”

God’s story was in Boston. God’s story was at Harvard, where it was sometimes snowy and -8 degrees and sometimes 98 degrees plus humidity, minus air conditioning. (Why is Boston so against air conditioning?) It was far away from my family. But it was also where there was afternoon tea and jazz clubs and gospel concerts. There were walks through blizzards, and sea kayaking, and expansive Asian markets. There was Sarah and Angelo and Liz and Catie and Jacquelyn and Charles and Shelley. There was Austin, who I met my first day in my new congregation, who asked me to be his literature tourism buddy, who I pinky-promised “no-backsies” with right before we walked into a sealing room to be married.

This is an easy story for me to tell now. God’s story was in Boston. God took, but He gave back. There is no more mourning in me.

Some stories aren’t easy, though. Some stories involve hurt that is a lot more long lasting, some stories have a lot more negative space. I don’t understand exactly why that is, but I believe that God takes our meekness, whether we give it gladly or whether it bends us over with pain. I believe that He will make everything work together for our good. I believe that He will turn all ashes into beauty. And I believe that, despite everything, despite all the pain and the stories that are yet to have happy endings, He’s a better storyteller.