Have you ever had trouble making sense of a particular period in your life? You might try to put the pieces together, but still fall short of a coherent picture as to why exactly your 20’s were so aimless or why your first career was such a flop or why you stayed in a relationship for so long.
In our search for meaning, we are naturally inclined to add a moral to a story in order to give it a sense of purpose. Our fruitless first career was not in vain because it taught a valuable lesson which led to a more successful second career. We learned things about ourselves in our 20’s that led us to right the ship in our 30’s. Failure and suffering are made more palatable if they teach us lessons that lead to success.
Finding a moral to every story pushes us to identify places of divine favor and divine displeasure in our own lives. When people like Oprah tell us, “Your real job in life is to figure out why you are here,” our existence is no longer a gift but a means to an end. After all, what good are our lives if there isn’t a clear, decipherable point? Within this framework, it isn’t long until we turn into scientists, dissecting ourselves for places where God is moving or seems absent.
And yet, the most lasting stories refuse to resolve so easily. They do not preach, but, rather, persuade. Rather than making sense of everything, they show that tying a bow on a story can make it difficult to unwrap and explore the contents. The meaning is not found in a lesson to be learned at the end, but within the story itself.
It brings to mind Peter Baker’s delightful essay on the classic children’s book, Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. For Baker, Alexander’s ability to endure through the ages comes from the self-restraint to leave the story alone. The author, Judith Viorst, seems to believe in the guided principle that, when a story begins, it’s best for the author to keep their own mouth shut. Yes, a story’s shape is determined by the storyteller, but it is far better to state the facts and let the reader put the pieces together.
Take the story itself. Alexander starts his day waking up with gum in his hair and then trips on his skateboard climbing out of bed. From that moment on, his day is full of various mishaps and misfortunes. He doesn’t get to sit by the window while carpooling to school; his mom forgets to pack a dessert in his lunch; he loses a marble down the drain during his evening bath. From start to finish, the day seems just as bad as Alexander says it is.
And yet, the sun sets without an upshot. No epiphany brings his life into focus and shows him what he has been missing. No repentance turns him from his own self-pity. There is no moral takeaway, no silver lining to persuade him to be grateful, no one there to remind Alexander that his day could have actually been much worse. In fact, the only solace his mother has to offer (which happens to be the very last line of the book) is that “some days are like that.” The day ends as unredeemed as it began.
Of course, there’s plenty of room for readers to draw their own lessons. Maybe Alexander should learn to not fall asleep with gum in his hair or to put away his skateboard. But Baker commends Viorst’s restraint, saying she “offers no easy lessons about working through tough days, or tough feelings. Instead she puts the tough stuff on the page and lets us do what we will with it.” His own son, who is obsessed with the book, is drawn to “the coexistence of Alexander’s boundless foul mood with the refusal of any clearly formulated conclusion about how to respond to foul moods or anything else.” In other words, the message does not speak to how things should be, but, rather, how they are. And his kid can’t get enough of it.
Many contemporary children’s books are fixated on an end-goal (whether it’s encouraging your child to use the potty or challenge the patriarchy), but the classics refrain from telling a person what to think. The Giving Tree simply gives everything it has to the boy. The Mother Bunny relentlessly chases after her little bunny. Max’s supper is still waiting for him and it is still hot. While many children’s books today project an optimistic bright-side to every hardship, the ones that have stood the test of time let the story speak for itself.
Likewise, the story of the Gospel allows the Word to speak for himself. It is not a lesson on how to live, but an account of the one who lived and died for us. While there are plenty of takeaways to extract from its message, there is no moral to the story. The death and resurrection of our Lord is not an event that points to a greater message; it is the message.
Part of the reason why the Gospel is the greatest story ever told is because it refuses to be pinned down into one catch-all slogan other than “For God So Loved the World.” Its preternatural ability to speak fresh insight is because it does not bother to explain everything away. There is always something new to discover for those who walk by faith and not by sight.
What would it be like for our lives to be stories with indiscernible significance? What if the point of it all is simply that we are loved, regardless of the ups and downs of everyday life?
The hope for Alexander is the same hope for you and for me, that grace is a tapestry which will not be fully revealed until the entire story is complete. When one has faith in a God who is benevolent and gracious, who has been definitively revealed in the death and resurrection of Jesus, he is not taxed with having to wonder who God is in the day to day or to find cosmic meaning in each situation. Instead, he is simply free to live.
Whenever we wake up with the proverbial gum in our hair, we need not interpret it as a reflection of God’s judgment or a lesson to learn. Life being what it is, we may have terrible, horrible, no good very bad days, weeks or even years. And yet, we can trust that God is somehow weaving the golden thread of grace through and through. Perhaps that is the point, after all.
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3 responses to “What’s the Point? Not Every Story Has a Moral”
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Great piece. My (secondhand) understanding is that there’s a burgeoning sector of children’s literature that has gotten extremely didactic and whose point is mostly to beat you over the head with the “moral of the story”. I think show, don’t tell, is a much better policy from a moral formation standpoint and a literary standpoint.
[…] is a good one from Sam Bush. “Many contemporary children’s books are fixated on an end-goal (whether […]
“Instead, he is simply free to live.”
Thank you Sam…that simple sentence spoke into my life today.