{"id":14401,"date":"2017-10-12T19:50:33","date_gmt":"2017-10-13T02:50:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dminlgp\/?p=14401"},"modified":"2017-10-12T19:50:33","modified_gmt":"2017-10-13T02:50:33","slug":"tell-me-a-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/tell-me-a-story\/","title":{"rendered":"Tell Me a Story"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yuval Noah Harari\u2019s Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind<\/em> is what I like to call a Very Important Book\u2122 (VIB). To understand what gives Sapiens <\/em>its VIB status, one must look carefully at \"\"<\/a>the presentation of material. First, pick up the book \u2013 feel the weight of it, so different from other books of the same size. Run your hands across the embossed dust cover and note the picture on the back flyleaf, below which is the explanation that this VIB has been translated into 26 languages and is a best seller in many countries. Next, open the book and feel the weight and texture of the paper used for this book. It is similar to art books or text books. This VIB is written in common vernacular, but presented with color titles and pictures that advise the senses that this is not your ordinary book. Finally, there is the price of the book. The suggested price is $35. Not so much that the average person would be dissuaded from picking it up after hearing about it on Good Morning America, but enough to let us know that this book is just<\/em> a little more special than all the others that come across our Amazon feeds.<\/p>\n

You might think, upon reading this VIB, that the confidence with which the information is presented means that it simply must<\/em> be true. Why else would this book be elevated to such obvious VIB status? The author very clearly knows exactly he is talking about, given his confidence and the fact that this book has been translated into so many languages and so many people have purchased this book. But slowly, you may begin to experience some doubt. First, there are so many things presented as what a good television lawyer might raise the objection \u201cassumes facts not in evidence.\u201d What I mean is that there are so many statements of fact given without footnote or endnote citations that one might begin to wonder just exactly how much of this stuff is true. I mean, sure this author has a PhD. in history from Oxford, but does that really qualify him to make statements like, \u201cJust 6 million years ago, a single female ape had two daughters. One became the ancestor of all chimpanzees, the other is our own grandmother?\u201d[1]<\/a><\/p>\n

So, this VIB must be important for some other reason than \u201ctruth.\u201d I\u2019m not trying to be glib, but after reading the book, I can see there is so little cited proof of anything relating to truth, that there must be another reason that publishers and publicists have worked so hard to make sure we know this is a Very Important Book. What could that be? I started over. As I looked at the way the information is presented it started to occur to me that this author isn\u2019t necessarily selling truth, but he is hawking a new Creation saga. It seems to me that Harari is not much different than the Jews in Babylonian exile who told the tale of Creation in response to the Babylonian creation saga. Instead of \u201cIn the Beginning, God\u2026\u201d Harari starts his tale, \u201cAbout 13.5 billion years ago, matter\u2026\u201d Just as we cannot prove what God \"\"<\/a>did in the beginning, Harari doesn\u2019t cite his \u201ctruths\u201d because there is no way he can prove them. He has pieced together history and bits of science and is now sitting around the public \u201ccampfire\u201d telling a new version, a humanistic Creation saga. This book is astounding and enticing because it begins with the premise \u201cWhat if.\u201d Somewhere along the line, it captured enough important imaginations that it was given VIB status. Even Bill Gates, in his review of this book, says that despite disagreeing with much of what Harari says, \u201cStill, I would recommend this book to anyone interested in a fun, engaging look at early human history.\u201d[2]<\/a> That makes it pretty clear, doesn\u2019t it? Harari has managed to engage in powerful storytelling, capturing the imaginations of millions of people all around the world with an alternate story to the Judeo-Christian Creation saga.<\/p>\n

So, while literalists are building museums in attempts to \u201cprove\u201d the Bible as history book, it\"\"<\/a>would seem that those of us who embrace the Creation saga as a beautiful telling of God bringing order from chaos have lost our audience because we have given up telling the story with certainty. We have stopped trying to capture the imaginations of those who want to know why and how we exist. In my opinion, it\u2019s time for us to go back to telling the stories of God\u2019s people in ways that make people think, \u201cWhat if…\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind<\/em>, (New York: Harper Collins, 2015), 5.<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> https:\/\/www.gatesnotes.com\/Books\/Sapiens-A-Brief-History-of-Humankind<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yuval Noah Harari\u2019s Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind is what I like to call a Very Important Book\u2122 (VIB). To understand what gives Sapiens its VIB status, one must look carefully at the presentation of material. First, pick up the book \u2013 feel the weight of it, so different from other books of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":91,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1044,760,1045,763],"class_list":["post-14401","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-creation","tag-harari","tag-saga","tag-sapiens","cohort-lgp7"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14401","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/91"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14401"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14401\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14405,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14401\/revisions\/14405"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}