I love stories. And I know that you do too. Whether it鈥檚 a captivating novel, an enthralling movie, or an anecdote from a friend, human beings love stories. We love to tell them and we love to listen to them.

In fact, we can't resist them. In , Jonathan Gottschall says it beautifully: 鈥淗uman minds yield hopelessly to the suction of story. No matter how hard we concentrate, not matter how deep we dig in our heels, we just can鈥檛 resist the gravity of alternate worlds.鈥 Good public speakers know that the best way to engage an audience is through storytelling. Whenever I feel like I鈥檓 losing an audience, I quickly tell a story and they鈥檙e right back with me!

Have you ever thought about how central story is to human existence? And what does this tell us about human nature and the wider world we live in? Let鈥檚 begin with the first question. Think about it: Commercials are stories. Movies are stories. Songs are stories. Kids play make-believe in stories (good guys vs. bad guys). Businessmen sell products with stories. Our lives are stories!

Human beings are 鈥渟torytelling animals,鈥 as Gottschall observes:

鈥Humans are creatures of story, so story touches nearly every aspect of our lives. Archaeologists dig up clues in the stones and bones and piece them together into a sage about the past. Historians, too, are storytellers鈥 Business executives are increasingly that they must be creative storytellers: they have to spin compelling narratives about their products and brands that emotionally consumers. Political commentators see a presidential election not only as a contest between charismatic politicians and their ideas but also as a competition between conflicting stories about the nation鈥檚 past and future. Legal scholars envision as a story contest, too in which opposing counsels construct narratives of guilt and innocence鈥攚rangling over who is the real protagonist.鈥

But stories are not random meaningless accounts of disconnected events. Rather, stories are about conflict and resolution. In fact, stories universally address three general questions:

(1) Origin鈥擶ho is the character and where did he/she come from?

(2) Problem鈥擶hat went wrong?

(3) Resolution鈥擧ow do we fix it?

Even though stories vary on the details, they all have this underlying structure and formula. Again, Gottschall says it well:

鈥As the linguist Noam Chomsky showed, all human languages share some basic structural similarities鈥攁 universal grammar. So too, I argue, with story. No matter how far back into literary history, and no matter how deep we plunge into the jungle and badlands of world folklore, we always find the same astonishing thing: their stories are just like ours. There is a universal grammar in a world fiction, a deep pattern of heroes confronting trouble and struggling to overcome鈥 It suggests that the human mind was shaped for story, so that it could be shaped by story.鈥

Gottschall is right that story is an inescapable aspect of human nature. And he鈥檚 also right that there is an objective feature of storytelling that humans have followed since the dawn of time. It is interesting, though, that he describes the human mind as being 鈥渟haped for story, so that it could be shaped by story.鈥 He seems to be implying some design, some intent as to why humans are so story-focused. And yet as a Darwinist, he is committed to a non-teleological worldview that lacks the resources to provide any basis for objective meaning, purpose, or value.

Bertrand Russell famously describes the implications of the naturalistic worldview:

鈥That Man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of Man鈥檚 achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins.鈥

If the universe as a whole is a meaningless story, as Russell suggests, then why are humans so entrenched with experiencing and telling meaningful stories? Where does this deep-seated commitment to story come from? On the naturalist worldview, it is simply some evolutionary by-product that offers survival value. Animals survive fine without it, so why do humans need it? And further, if we live in a 鈥渦niverse of ruins鈥 then why is there an objective structure for storytelling in the first place? How can a chaotic, purposeless universe offer a universal, meaningful formula for storytelling?

The theistic worldview seems to provide a much more robust answer: the reason we are so committed to stories is because we live in a meaningful world, we are made in the image of a personal God, and we are part of a larger story written by the Author of life. The story of our individual lives matters because we are part of a grander, meaningful story.

This brief article is not meant as a 鈥減roof鈥 for God鈥檚 existence. Rather, I am taking a feature of the world鈥攐ur storytelling nature and the objective structure of stories鈥攁nd asking which worldview best accounts for it. Atheism lacks the resources to provide a suitable explanation. But the theistic worldview, which has an author of life at the heart of it, seems to provide a much more natural and promising explanation.


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Jonathan Gottschall, The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make us Human(New York: Mariner Books, 2012), 3.

Ibid., 15-16.

Ibid., 55-56.

Bertrand Russell, 鈥淎 Free Man鈥檚 Worship鈥 in Why I am Not a Christian and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects, ed. Paul Edwards (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1957), 55.