Hector Klumpp here. It’s time to turn to the question of Core Value in the Christian story. I wanted to get this one right since it’s so important in story telling that the core character (which in the case of the Christian story is God) is anchored in a core value that rests in a state of balance, as McKee says. If I got this core value wrong, our story analysis trajectory could veer off into outer space. So I did my research, and after I reached my conclusions, I decided to ask my good friend Michelle, who has become a Christian, to be a sounding board.
Here’s McKee’s encouragement to pay attention to this very important stage of identifying the core value. It may sound a little strange to couch storytelling in terms of “customers”, but keep in mind that he is speaking in Storynomics to business story telling, and that we have much to learn from all types of storytelling that McKee proffers.
Identifying the consumer’s unfulfilled need in Stage One leads to the first step of Stage Two: identifying the core value that best dramatizes the solution to this problem, the cure to this pain.
Storynomics, By Robert McKee and Tom Gerace
PRIME PRINCIPLE: BALANCE
A story takes place at a specific time in a specific physical and social world. As the telling begins, the PROTAGONIST’S life is anchored in a core value that rests in a state of balance.
It seems difficult to overstate the importance of this concept of Core Value…
Core Value is the essential yardstick of your story.
Discover Your Story’s Core, By Anne Hawley, Story Grid
To begin our journey to discover the core value in the Christian story, we need to understand what McKee means by “value”. Thinking about value in story term takes some getting used to. Here we go…
Storified thought interprets every event in terms of its core value. In story creation, however, the word value does not refer to mono-concepts such as success, truth, loyalty, love, or freedom. Those words name only half a value. Dynamic events affect our lives not as singularities but as binaries of positive/negative value charge. They pivot our lives around experiences of success/failure, truth/lie, loyalty/betrayal, love/hate, right/ wrong, rich/poor, life/death, winning/losing, courage/cowardice, power/weakness, freedom/slavery, excitement/boredom, and many more. Values pump the lifeblood of story.
Storynomics, By Robert McKee and Tom Gerace
Okay, let’s pause to take this in. To think in story terms, value is not a mono-concept, not singular, but rather binary.
If you’re not thinking in story terms, we would think of the concept of core value like most people think about “values”…
[I}n everyday conversation, when someone says an individual or institution has “values,” he means positive qualities such as truthfulness, love, generosity, hard work, loyalty, and the like. But for the story-maker, the values he invests in his telling come not as singularities but binaries of positive/negative charge: truth/lie, love/hate, generosity/selfishness, hard work/laziness, loyalty/betrayal, life/death, courage/cowardice, hope/despair, meaningfulness/meaninglessness, maturity/immaturity, justice/injustice, and on the list goes, naming all those qualities of human experience that can shift charge dynamically from positive to negative and back again.
A telling may incorporate any number, variety, and combination of values, but it anchors its content in one irreplaceable binary – the story’s core value. This value determines a story’s fundamental meaning and emotion.
Storynomics, By Robert McKee and Tom Gerace
A story’s fundamental meaning and emotion? In binary form?
Are you ready to ask the big question in our quest to evaluate the Christian story? Here goes–
What is the binary core value in the story in the Bible?
To Begin to answer this question, we’ll start with another question: What are some good options?
When I asked Michelle this question, after giving her a quick tutorial on story values being binary. She immediately came up with Grace/Wrath … and then paused, wondering if instead it all basically boiled down to Justice/Injustice.
While these are reasonable options, and she made a pretty good case for them, I just kept shaking my head. “What’s wrong with them?” she wondered.
“Well, we have to think more broadly,” I explained. “While ‘Grace/Wrath’ and ‘Justice/Injustice’ are certainly strong elements in the Christian story, they don’t settle with me as being core values.” And I encouraged her to think of the balance in the Garden of Eden, and the nature of the inciting incident in the Christian story. (I know we haven’t gotten to Stage Three yet, but …hint and spoiler alert: think apple.)
So we kept exploring.
That’s when she lite up and jumped in with what she thought may be the only real option in this discussion, what she heard in many sermons she’d listened to, and many proclamations by the Christians she knows.
“Clearly,” she said confidently, “the core binary value in the Christian story is Good/Evil. Just think of the inciting incident in the garden all the way to the cross. It’s God’s good triumphing over Satan’s evil.”
Of course, I had thought of this too, and it also had not settled with me. I’ve evaluated thousands of stories over my career (don’t forget, I’m a story professor), and have developed a nose for this.
So I said, “But Michelle, what if it’s not?”
“But Hector,” she exclaimed excitedly, “I’m sure I’m right. I just remembered this video I watched from the Bible Project. Let me show you.”
“Please do,” I said. And we sat down to watch this…
After it was over, she seemed even more confident about her opinion that Good/Evil was the core value in the Christian story. “Doesn’t that settle it? These guys know their stuff, Hector.”
“Well,” said I. “Maybe they got it wrong.”
She smiled her sweet smile, very curious about what insight I might have up my sleeve, and asked, “Well, Professor Klumpp, how do you explain the inciting incident in the garden, then?”
“Well,” I replied, unshaken, “you’re exactly spot on to go to the inciting incident and jump to the inevitable, yet surprising climax in the Christian story just like they did in that video. But is the Christian story really about Good vs. Evil? Is it focused on the fight between God and Satan?”
“No, of course not,” she chuckled. “You yourself said there are multiple protagonists in the Christian story, and that it’s a story about God AND Man.”
“Right,” I said, feeling revved like teachers sometimes do. “A story about God and Man.” Then, I waited. (Timing is everything in the classroom.)
Her face remained playful, but I sensed her confidence in her Good/Evil binary core value assertion was beginning to waver. “What then?” she challenged .
Time to spring my insight, so I asked, “So, in the inciting incident, what exactly was the disruption of the balance about in the Garden of Eden? Was that all about Satan and his role in the story?”
“No,” she stammered, seeming to lose confidence by the second. “The disruption…was about Man’s relationship with God…”
Now I smiled, “Right. Listen to what you just said. Relationship.”
“Right. Relationship. But I still don’t see,” she admitted humbly.
“What if,” I asked slowly, “the core value of the Christian story is about relationship? What if the binary core value of the Christian story is Loyal love/Betrayal?”
“Of course,” she whispered.
Then she started laughing, “Of course it’s relational,” she cried. Then she burst forth with this, “Hector, I just realized, could this be just like the Trinity?”
“Just like the Trinity,” I smiled yet more broadly. (I love teaching, did I tell you that?)
Still chuckling she said, “Made in His image, made for relationship with him.”
“So say you Christians,” I said, good naturedly.
So, back to you, reader, we will get to her insightful comment connecting the binary core value with the Trinity a little later in this post.
Also, just so you know, there’s plenty to be said about Michelle’s guesses about the binary core value in the Christian story. But I had to chose, and I think I made the right choice.
Loyal Love/ Betrayal as the Core Value in the Christian story
First, for an overview of the form of story, let’s ask this question: How does the Binary Core Value run through the entire story from beginning, when the protagonist is resting in a state of balance in the core value, to the end, at the climax, when the core value is changed absolutely?
I thought it would be helpful, once again, to give you a bird’s eye view from Mckee…
The form of story, at its simplest, goes like this: As the telling opens, the central character’s life, as expressed in its core value (happiness/sadness, for example), is in relative balance. But then something happens that upsets this balance and decisively changes the core value’s charge one way or the other. He could, for example, fall in love (positive) or out of love (negative). The character then acts to restore life’s balance, and from that moment on a sequence of events, linked by cause and effect, moves through time, progressively and dynamically swinging the core value back and forth from positive to negative, negative to positive. At climax, the story’s final event changes the core value’s charge absolutely and the character’s life returns to balance.
Storynomics, By Robert McKee and Tom Gerace
I’ll begin with the bad news first–Here’s a taste of the betrayal side of the equation…
We celebrate loyalty even though we may sometimes despair of experiencing it. Perhaps its rarity just makes us value it all the more. By contrast, all too common is betrayal. There are little betrayals (the friend who repeats a minor secret told in confidence) and big betrayals (treason) and all manner of betrayals in between (from the husband who clears out the joint bank accounts before running off with his mistress, to the business deal done by buddies on a handshake, later undone for want of an enforceable contract). Betrayal is so common, in part, because of how easy it is for betrayal to undo loyalty. It would have taken but one person to sell out Bonnie Prince Charlie for him to have been captured. Perhaps loyalty appears scarce not because there is none to be found but because all it takes is one traitor to render the loyalty of forty-nine reliable men useless.
Eric Felton, Loyalty: The Vexing Virtue
To begin exploring the positive side of the binary core value–Here’s some thoughts on the loyalty side of the equation…
The bible is so laden with this idea of the loyal love of God, and the Christian writing about it abounds. I’ve chosen a very small sampling to include here.
I noted previously in Stage Two: Part 1, the story in the bible is a story of God and humanity.
But the Christian God is the core character.
Yet, each and every human being is also in the story in relation to him. And each human has their own unique stories.
And
that interwoven reality so fits with the core value – which is relational.
A character that displays devout loyalty to his or her own family, friends, mentors, or peers has a character trait that audience members respect and cherish — loyalty.
7 Ways Screenwriters Can Create Better Character Empathy, By Ken Miyamoto, ScreenCraft, August 11, 2018
Once again, as discussed in Stage 2: Part 1, the Christian God is empathetic, audiences respect and cherish loyalty.
One thing is clear: God’s love is intense…
Set me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm, for love is strong as death, jealousy is fierce as the grave. Its flashes are flashes of fire, the very flame of the Lord.
Many waters cannot quench love, neither can floods drown it. If a man offered for love all the wealth of his house, he would be utterly despised.
Song of Solomon 8:6-7
God’s love is intimately connected with the core character…
Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.
1 John 4:7-11
And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. We love because he first loved us.
1 John 4:14-19
One can’t separate the protagonist in the Christian story from his love.
Consider the following from a famous American scholar I came across named J.I. Packer…
‘God is love’ is the complete truth about God so far as the Christian is concerned. To say ‘God is light’ is to imply that God’s holiness finds expression in everything that He says and does. Similarly, the statement ‘God is love’ means that His love finds expression in everything that He says and does.
J.I. Packer, Knowing God
For this next quote, vocabulary alert: Agape is a Greek word for love with the following AI definition–a type of love that is often described as unconditional, self-sacrificing, and benevolent. It is considered the highest form of love and is frequently associated with the love of God for humanity and the love of humans for God in Christian theology.…
“Hope [in God] does not disappoint us, because God’s agape has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us” (Rom. 5:5). This is arguably the most important epistemological statement in the New Testament and in Christian literature generally, but its importance is widely neglected among philosophers and theologians. Paul would endorse a similar view about the evidential foundation of faith, or trust, in God. As a result, hope and faith in God are not groundless in Paul’s perspective; they have a salient evidential foundation in agape from God that floods a human person inwardly. Accordingly, the agape in question is genuine evidence of God, and from God. This crucial lesson is widely ignored among philosophers, theologians, and others; so, correction is overdue.
Paul Moser, The Severity of God
Here’s something from a Christian writer that might bring further understanding. The Christian God is love, but he is more too…
To say, “God is love” is not the same as saying, “Love is God.” Those are very different statements. God and love are not identical, though this seems to be what some people think. They think that saying, “God is love” is all there is to say about God, that love and God are one and the same, and there is nothing further to talk about.
Greg Koukl, The Story of Reality
It is correct to say God is love, if you are very careful with your meaning. Love is a true attribute of God, but he is more than just love. Other qualities are essential to God, too. One of them is justice. Wrongs must be punished; debts must be paid.
Back to the bible: Here’s some examples of his intense and loyal love…
The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.
Lamentations 3:22-23
For your Maker is your husband, the Lord of hosts is his name;
and the Holy One of Israel is your Redeemer, the God of the whole earth he is called.For the Lord has called you like a wife deserted and grieved in spirit, like a wife of youth when she is cast off, says your God.
For a brief moment I deserted you, but with great compassion I will gather you. In overflowing anger for a moment I hid my face from you, but with everlasting love I will have compassion on you,” says the Lord, your Redeemer.
Isaiah 54:5-8
This will help you understand why I chose Loyal Love/Betrayal, rather than Love/Hate. Primarily the binary core value had to be relational. But I also considered this material that gives you a sense for the complexity and depth of God’s love. It is love, but it’s also lovingkindness (emphasizing the relational aspect)…
One of the most important words in the Bible, and certainly in the Book of Psalms, is the word khesed, most often translated as “lovingkindness.” Not only is the word descriptive of a divine attribute, but it is also the key word for covenant relationships, whether between God and people, or between people themselves.
……
God’s “loyal love” brings redemption and guidance to his people. Exodus 15:13 records the words of Moses extolling the LORD for leading and redeeming his people at the Exodus by his steadfast love. Accordingly, in times of war or famine (Ps. 33), the people of God pray for the outworking of God’s loyal love (v. 22).
God’s “loyal love” preserves the life of his people, even in discipline. So the psalmist can pray at such times for the LORD to save his life because of his steadfast love (Ps. 6:4).
God’s “loyal love” brings forgiveness of sins. David’s appeal for forgiveness is based on this: “Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love” (Ps. 51:1).
God’s “loyal love” brings restoration to the physical and spiritual life of his people. Psalm 109:21-26 demonstrates this, laying out the need before praying for God to deliver by his steadfast love.
Allen P. Ross, Khesed, God’s “Loyal Love, Lovingkindness”, Christian Leadership Center
Here’s more on the same topic. Notice how God’s loyal love is anchored in his character…
The Hebrew word חֶסֶד variously translated “kindness” (JB), “lovingkindness” (KJV, NASB), “love” (NIV), or “steadfast love” (NRSV), has the basic meaning of “unfailing love” or “loyalty.”
……
Yahweh’s “loyal-love” is an undeserved, selective affection by which He binds Himself to His people for their sake. He graciously and sovereignly grants gifts and blessings beyond anything they might hope for. And He grants these blessings contrary to what people deserve. His abounding חֶסֶד will never diminish or be exhausted since it is founded on His character and covenant commitment. And so the psalmist wrote, “Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good; for His חֶסֶדis everlasting” (Ps. 136:1).
Carl Laney, God’s Self-Revelation in Exodus 34:6-8, Bibliotheca Sacra, January 2001
As a writer, I love words and studying them. And so do the Christians…
There is a feminine noun khasidah, “stork,” so named because of its kind and affectionate care for its young (see Ps. 104:17). We have an interesting illustration for our word in the usage of this word. In Job 39:13-15 the LORD compares the ostrich to the stork (or to “love” as some versions translate the word). The ostrich is the opposite of the stork, or love (khasidah), for it abandons its young to the sand for the foot to crush or the predator to devour. It does not have “loyal love” for its own. So by contrast the “stork” and “loyal love” are essentially synonymous.
Allen P. Ross, Khesed, God’s “Loyal Love, Lovingkindness.” Christian Leadership Center
In the Christian story, God made people in his likeness. So this idea of loyal love is a shared aspiration he has for humans…
Love is also the fundamental value. It is the answer to Kant’s second question, “What should I do?” On the two commandments to love God and neighbor “depend all the law and the prophets” (Mt 22:40).
Peter Kreeft, The God Who Loves You
The Christian God is mysterious, and this writer connects up love and mystery…
So, in the Christian context, we do not mean by a “mystery” merely that which is baffling and mysterious, an enigma or insoluble problem. A mystery is, on the contrary, something that is revealed for our understanding, but which we never understand exhaustively because it leads into the depth or the darkness of God. The eyes are closed-but they are also opened.
Thus, in speaking about God as mystery, we are brought to our second “pole.” God is hidden from us, but he is also revealed to us: revealed as person and as love.
Kallistos Ware, The Orthodox Way
Here’s a quote to chew on if you’re still of a mind to reduce the Christian story to binary value of good/evil…
According to Paul, Jesus Christ as Lord and as Giver of God’s Spirit came from God to identify with us humans in our weakness and despair, in order to offer us life with God (1 Thess. 5:9—10), while he represented God in righteous and merciful agape (Rom. 5:6—8). As God’s befriending mediator for humans, Jesus aims to represent, and to offer a personal bridge between, God and humans. Specifically, he seeks to reconcile humans to God with the gift of companionship anchored in merciful agape as the power of God’s Spirit. This Good News, according to Paul, is inherently theological and Christological and hence cannot be reduced to a story of morality or ethics.
Paul Moser, The Severity of God
The Binary Core Value and the Trinity
Remember at the beginning of the post, I promised I’d bring you back to Michelle’s comment connecting up the Christian God’s core value with the trinity? It’s a very interesting observation.
Speaking of the mysteries of God that Kallistos Ware points to, this idea that God is Trinity is one of those mysteries. But I feel it’s valuable to look into, because of the emphasis in Christian story on relationship.
The very nature of who the Christian God is is ‘Trinity.’ And that fits with the core value Loyal Love, which is demonstrated by the relationships in the trinity.
Here’s a Christian scholar to help us understand the uniqueness of the trinity to Christianity…
In the doctrine of the Trinity, we encounter one of the truly distinctive doctrines of Christianity. Among the religions of the world, the Christian faith is unique in making the claim that God is one and yet there are three who are God.
Millard J. Erickson, Christian Theology
Here’s more thought on the Trinity–three persons, all in relationship with each other. I know it’s hard to think this way, if your like me and have never given much thought to the concept, but it’s part of the Christian story which I am trying to be faithful to represent…
Our God is not an egotistical, self-absorbed deity alone looking at and worshiping himself in a mirror from eternity past. Instead, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit exist in loving communal life with one another, speaking to one another, working together, giving and receiving, and delighting in each other for all eternity.
The Trinity and the Doctrine of Love, Alexander Strauch, Emmaus Journal (Winter 2003)
Mind blowing? Yeah, to me too.
Now if you hadn’t noticed, we already asked the question earlier in our discussion of the protagonist in the Christian story, if it was possible to have multiple protagonists. That is, can the trinity be a protagonist? McKee says yes…
THE PROTAGONIST
Generally, the protagonist is a single character. A story, however, could be driven by a duo, such as THELMA & LOUISE; a trio, THE WITCHES OF EASTWICK; more, THE SEVEN SAMURAI or THE DIRTY DOZEN. In THE BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN an entire class of people, the proletariat, create a massive Plural-Protagonist.
For two or more characters to form a Plural-Protagonist, two conditions must be met: First, all individuals in the group share the same desire. Second, in the struggle to achieve this desire, they mutually suffer and benefit. If one has a success, all benefit. If one has a setback, all suffer. Within a Plural-Protagonist, motivation, action, and consequence are communal.
Robert McKee, Story
Previously I discussed both God and humans being protagonists. So here, with our core character being three persons (I’m still not used to thinking this way), it still applies that the Christian story is a multiple protagonist story, even within the core character. Mind blowing idea, right?
Maybe this Strauch fella will help you see this more clearly (I’m still scratching my head)…
When we read that “God is love,” we are compelled to think of the triune nature of God. William Clarke writes in his book, The Christian Doctrine of God, “Love is a matter of relations and does not exist outside of them, for it implies two, lover and the beloved.” The God of the Bible is one God, yet tri-personal—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. There is one God in three persons; there is one-in-three, and there is three-in-one. Thus there has always (eternally) existed an amazing, dynamic inter-relationship between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit characterized by love. Each member in the holy fellowship of the Godhead loves and is beloved.
The Trinity and the Doctrine of Love, Alexander Strauch, Emmaus Journal (Winter 2003)
Isn’t this fun? In the following amazing words from Wellum, he describes well how the Christian story cannot be separated from the trinity. It’s central to the story until the very end….
Any reading of Scripture across the canon leads to one undeniable conclusion: this is a God-centered universe. From the opening verses of Scripture, God alone is presented as the primary actor, the sovereign Creator, the Sustainer, Life-giver, and Redeemer. He is the central figure of the story who alone is independent, self-sufficient, transcendent yet personal, magnificent in all of his perfections, utterly glorious, and worthy of all of our love, devotion, and praise.
….
However, what is crucial to note is that at the heart of Scripture’s presentation of our great and glorious God is the doctrine of the Trinity. …. [U]nderstanding God as triune is central to everything Scripture says about him, and it is what distinguishes him from all other conceptions of “god.” In fact, the entire storyline of Scripture in terms of the plan of salvation would not even make sense without God being triune.
God in Three Persons, Blessed Trinity, Stephen J. Wellum, Southern Baptist Journal of Theology (Spring 2006)
So, do you realize what we’re dealing with here? The core character in the story is an eternal, tri-personal being. Stay with me. That means, in the Christian story,
relationship
has always existed…
The Trinity means that relationship is the fundamental category of reality. Relationship goes all the way up into ultimate reality, into God. God is a society, an I-Thou relationship; God is love. Because we are made in the image of the Trinity, love and family and community and friendship are not peripheral but central, not accidental but essential to us, at the very core of human existence.
Peter Kreeft, Fundamentals of the Faith: Essays in Christian Apologetics
…and Kreeft helps us see how central human relationships are at the very core.
This Kreeft guy ties it all together here–loyal love, made in God’s image, the trinity, and the very meaning of our lives…
The doctrine of the Trinity makes the most concrete and practical difference to our lives that can possibly be imagined. Because God is a Trinity, God is love. Because love is the supreme value, it is the meaning of our lives, for we are created in God’s image. The fact that God is a Trinity is the reason why love is the meaning of life and the reason why nothing makes us as happy as love: because that is inscribed in our design. We are happy only when we stop trying to be what we were not designed to be.
Peter Kreeft, Catholic Christianity
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