Not Knowing the Future Is What Makes the Story Good

No wonder I’m such a control freak. The stakes were just way too high.

Even so, I think a lot of us go through life with this semi-obsession about what the future holds. We write books and make movies about things like time travel. Psychics and astrologers make money hand over fist by attempting to satisfy customers’ need to peer into the future. Even the Christian scene has tapped into this mentality, as Christians pay tons of cash to go to conferences and get a “word” from certain gifted people. In Christian circles, we call these people “prophets”–although from a Biblical perspective, many of these so-called prophets are acting more like soothsayers and practicing divination rather than functioning in a true prophetic gift. At any rate, it’s apparent that offering glimpses into the future is big business–and I think it’s for many of the same reasons I described above. We want to know how things will turn out before we make our choices. We want the guesswork taken out of it.

There are a lot of folks these days talking about life in terms of story, and living a better story. I think Donald Miller’s latest book A Million Miles in a Thousand Years has a lot to do with that, but I think I was already heading this direction in my mind before I read the book. Our lives need a story line–some sort of plot. We love movies and books and TV shows because we love a good story, and I personally think without story, we’d die as a people. I think it’s how we’re made.

Even so, there are elements of story that we enjoy when watching/reading one, but we don’t necessarily enjoy living out. We don’t like hardship and adversity, and we often question why God “allows” it in our lives. And yet, without an adversary, a story is completely boring. No one bothers to read a story that doesn’t contain conflict.

We also don’t like living the part about not knowing the future. We wish we could flip ahead in our own story line, so we’d know what was coming. (Never mind that knowing the future would change the story line in ways we couldn’t anticipate–which is basically what gives substance to all the movies about timelines, because the characters have to spend the whole movie trying to fix what they broke.) There is a lot of uncertainty in our world right now, and a lot of people I know (myself included) have encountered some major plot twists recently, where things did not go as planned. This makes us long deeply to know what is coming next, so that we don’t have to go through that pain again.

But what happens when there’s a popular book or movie out, a great story, and someone tells us the ending before we see it? It spoils it for us, and we want to strangle the person who blurted it out. That’s why we call them “spoilers.” My point? Not knowing the future is what makes the story good. We might feel like we’re flying blind at times when we’re living it out, but if we knew the future, our lives would be as dull and lifeless as if there were no plot at all. (In fact, we’d kill the plot because our choices would erase all the tension in the storyline!) Certainly anticipating cause and effect is desirable; that’s a trait we call wisdom. But no one can anticipate everything, and sometimes we have to wing it. That’s just part of the story. And being willing to step out there without knowing what’s coming next is part of what makes our story interesting.

Even if it doesn’t turn out as we hoped.

Now, every metaphor breaks down at some point, and the part about seeing life as story that I don’t particularly like is that from our perspective, stories are already written. If God’s a Master Storyteller, and we’re all characters in this grand tale of His, then it’s hard not to feel a little manipulated. In our minds, the story’s already written, and we’re just living it out, trying to play our roles correctly without the benefit of a script. Taken in this light, it’s hard not to see ourselves as rats in maze, or something similar. But I think the reason we feel that way is because of our limited perspective, and the fact that because we do live on a timeline, we see everything in that regard.

But I think God is bigger than that. While He can certainly anticipate our every move and decision, He is also timeless. I see this story we’re living as a dynamic one, not a static one. Somehow, in ways we don’t understand, within this story, God is able to allow us freedom to make legitimate choices, even as He remains in control of the story. Don’t ask me how. 🙂

In other words, while God isn’t manipulating us, and while God doesn’t stop conflict in our storyline–and while God doesn’t always give us clues into the future–He remains engaged in our story, just as we are living as part of His story. He’s in the story line with us.

And that’s the real advantage we have in the story, not knowledge of the future. Knowledge is power, but that kind of power isn’t always the thing that’s needed. To me, the great assurance I have when I can’t see the future is that God is active in my story, even as I am in His. When the future is uncertain, that’s where faith comes in. I can choose to relinquish my need for control (read: my need for power), and place my trust in One who has proven time and again that He has my best interests at heart. He rarely shows us the future (and even then we only get glimpses), but He is there to guide our path, if we will look to Him.

The Master Storyteller isn’t just up in heaven entertaining Himself with our little stories. Rather, He has somehow inserted Himself into the storyline and is an active Character in the plot, living the adventure along with us. To me, that’s the most amazing part about this story we’re living.