The Jeff Cavins Show (Your Catholic Bible Study Podcast) - Becoming Dust Jackets for Truth: The Art of Storytelling!

Episode Date: October 19, 2018

Mastering the art of storytelling is an extremely effective way to spread truth. Spoiler alert! Jeff talks about the popular dystopian book, Fahrenheit 451. In it, scholars who memorize books in the hopes that they will be written down again call themselves “dust jackets for books”. We too, are “dust jackets for books”, especially when it comes to the Bible. We are responsible for remembering important parts of the Bible so that we can share them with others, especially our kids and grandkids. Go to media.ascensionpress.com/category/the-jeff-cavins-show/ for the shownotes!

You're listening to The Jeff Kaven Show, episode 86, becoming dust jackets for the truth. Hey, I'm Jeff Kavins. How do you simplify your life? How do you study the Bible? All the way from motorcycle trips to raising kids, we're going to talk about the faith and life in general. It's the Jeff Kaven show. Hey, welcome to the show this week. What a busy week, not only in, what's going on in the news and in my own life traveling. Just some wonderful things have been happening and I've been getting a lot of feedback from you and I'll share a little bit of that. But I went this last week for the first time to the Bible Museum in Washington. And man, that was a treat.

I've heard about it. And in fact, I had a couple of friends who were working on the development of it. The Greens, they're the ones that own Hobby Lobby are the ones that really funded this. and it was so good to go to an actual museum of the Bible just a couple of blocks off of the, you know, the Washington Monument and the White House, and there we have this. I think it's 430,000 square feet of space, and it was just really great. The Catholic representative, Lisa Rowan,

what a great lady, made a great friendship there, and she's doing a wonderful job of representing Catholics, and creating new opportunities for Catholics to be a part of the Bible Museum. They have a ride there. I've got to tell you about this. If you go, you've got to go on this. It's a ride. It's kind of like the Omnamax, you know, theaters where you have this feeling like if you're flying over the country.

Well, they've got that where you lean against two like pipes and grab a hold of them. And then the whole room sort of tilts down. and then you fly around Washington, D.C. and visit the major places where Scripture is on buildings. And that's fun to see that, but it is a 3D experience. And you think, I told my wife when I came back, I thought I was a bird. I was like the closest I've ever come to be in an eagle in my life. And if you go, you've got to be a part of that. There's also a Vatican room talking about the Bible in the Catholic Church in Vatican.

You have some experiential walkthroughs in the New Testament and the Old Testament and two cafes there. Just a great experience. So if you go to the Bible Museum, just tell them, Jeff sent you. And I hope to go back there. Well, the reason that I was actually there was I was in an interview with EWTN News. And I think that that is actually going to be airing tonight, which is Friday. and you can see the date of this show. If it is beyond that, well, you missed it.

But it was for an interview. A couple emails, Deborah writes, I love listening to your show, and I absolutely love my new Bible, the Great Adventure Catholic Bible. Isn't it something, Deborah? I am getting so much feedback from you guys about this new Bible, and it's sold out immediately.

And we've already got a whole other batch coming in now so you can pre-order, and they'll be here shortly, very shortly. And we're blown away by the response around the world to get this Bible. It is, the Great Adventure Bible is the only Bible that I know of that actually teaches you how to read it in chronological order as a narrative, and it's very colorful because the Great Adventure is color-coded. And the Bible stands on its own. You don't need the Great Adventure Bible study necessarily, although that is great and it's separate. But you can use it for any study, for devotions, whatever you might like. So Deborah goes on and says, I'm a cradle Catholic who has never read the Bible, and it has caused me considerable anguish

over the years. I've always color-coded things to help remember and associate topics, so when I saw this Bible, I thought, thank you Jesus for answering my prayer. And I agree with you, Deborah, I say thank you Jesus as well. Hey, I want to talk today about storytelling, because I think storytelling is very, very powerful. And it is the art of communicating truth. Storytelling is a way of passing on the good things, the good things that we have. I started thinking about this because I've spent quite a bit of time with my parents recently. And naturally, that brings me back to my grandma and my grandpa. In fact, I have a picture of myself that I'm looking at right now. I'm deep in the woods of Minnesota, just sitting here by the lake. And where I'm at, I've got a

picture of my grandma and my grandpa Cavens with my sister and myself. You know what? I'll take a picture of it so you know what I'm talking about. I'll put it in the show notes. And I remember asking my grandpa when I was growing up. I was asking him, tell me about my dad. You know, tell me about my dad. What was he like? What did he do? What stands out? Can you tell us? Did he get in trouble, you know, we're looking for all this information. And we as kids were glued to listening to him talk about our parents, you know, my dad, and when my dad got married, my mom. And I think there's something about storytelling that is very powerful, particularly with children. And I think it's true for every age, but particularly children. In fact, you can take a rowdy group of kids in a

room and you're saying kids kids you can't get their attention then suddenly you kind of yell out once upon a time and everything gets quiet and you have their attention because there is something about telling stories that kids really really like so I remember a number of years ago I think about 20 22 years ago something like that 25 years ago probably I went to a trip in Israel and I was gifted an extension down into the Sinai Desert. And while we were down in the Sinai Desert, our first night down there, we stayed with the Bedouins in Bedouin tents

out in the middle of the desert. And we stayed there for a couple of days. But the first night, we were getting ready to go to dinner, and then we were going to go to bed because we had to get up at 2 in the morning to climb Mount Sinai. We sat around a fire. It must have been maybe 20 of us. and there was one man that was cooking, and then there was another man sitting next to him,

and when we were done eating, we were told that the one man, the Bedouin, was going to tell us some stories. And he's told the stories in Arabic, and they were translated for us by our guide. But I remember him saying something about the guy, and what he said was, that guy that is telling the stories is the most valuable man in the village. and we asked why and he said because he's the one that knows all the stories he's the one that is memorized i think he said something like 1700 stories and he passes on the tradition to the next generation and tells them about god and i thought man that is really powerful you know to to be with this guy who's considered the most valuable because he's the storyteller but that is true with us today too

The people who can tell the stories, storytellers rule the world in many ways. They're marketers, they are people that convey ideas. They're the people that keep the memories of the people and the valuable things to pass it on to the next generation. When I was younger, which I guess would be most of my life, wouldn't it? But when I was a younger man, I used to read a lot of Ray Bradbury, and he had a book called Fahrenheit 451. Did you remember that one?

Did you get a chance to read it? In fact, I think that there's some movies about it. Fahrenheit 451, first of all, the title comes from the temperature that paper combusts. Now, in Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury's classic, it's a frightening vision of the future. And while it's a frightening vision of the future, I think in some ways it's telling the current situation and that many people aren't telling stories anymore. People are not passing on the faith and what's important. So it's a cautionary tale.

Firemen in his book don't put out fires. They start them in order to do what? To burn books. Bradbury's vividly painted society holds up the appearance of happiness as the highest goal, a place where trivial information is good and knowledge and ideas are bad, you know, not politically correct. Fire Captain Beatty, he explains it this way, quote,

give the people contest they win by remembering the words to more popular songs. Don't give them slippery stuff like philosophy or sociology to tie things up with. That way ends in melancholy, he says. Now, Guy Montag is a book burning third. fireman undergoing a crisis of faith, so to speak. His wife spends all day with her television, that's called family, imploring Montague to work harder so that they can afford a fourth TV wall. A whole wall is a TV. Their dull, empty life sharply contrasts with that of his next-door neighbor, Clarice, a young girl thrilled by the ideas in the books that she has. And more,

interested in what she can see in the world around her than in the mindless chatter of the tube. Now, when Clarice disappears mysteriously, Montague is moved to make some changes and starts hiding books in his home, which is illegal. Now, eventually, his wife turns him in. Can you imagine that? And he must answer the call to burn his secret cash of books. after fleeing to avoid arrest montague winds up joining an outlaw band of scholars out in the woods who keep the contents of books in their heads waiting for the time that society will once again need the wisdom of literature now montag was arguing with mildred his wife after killing a woman and burning a thousand of her books and it bothered him there must be something in those books that would cause a woman to die in a fire with her books,

something that would drive her to become a martyr for the knowledge that was in those books. Then he realized that there was a man behind the books, someone who spent years, perhaps a lifetime, writing down thoughts, and he burned them in a moment. Poof. Every man made in the image of one, another. Everyone is equal, was the philosophy of the day. I love this one quote. This is the one I want to

share with you before I talk a little bit about storytelling here. In Fahrenheit 451, this is one of the things that they say, it said, give the people contest they win by remembering the words to more popular songs or the names of state capitals or how much corn Iowa grew last year, cram them full of non-combustible data you know um chalk them so it says chalk them so damn full of facts they feel stuffed but absolutely brilliant with information then they'll feel their thinking they'll get a sense of motion without moving and they'll be happy because facts of that sort don't change don't give them any slippery stuff like philosophy or sociology to tie things up with that way lies melancholy. I just love that paragraph. Basically what he's saying is don't give

them the truth. Don't give them things that are deep to think about, theology and philosophy and so forth. Give them trivia. And I love this line. He says, they'll get a sense of motion without moving. Isn't that our society today? Well, I think that one of the responses really comes from a quote from Fahrenheit 4.51 in the movie and in the book, Bradbury says, we are dust jackets for books. And that's what these scholars were when they went out in the woods to run away from this society that destroys truth. We are dust jackets for books. We have memorized one guy Shakespeare. Another guy has memorized science books. Another guy, Pilgrim's Progress. And all of them out there have books in their heads, but they can't print them because that's illegal. And they're

waiting for a time when they can, maybe that's us in some ways that we're told, no, don't talk about that. That's not politically correct. But we have these stories in our hearts, the stories of scripture, the stories of conversions and lives, the stories of our families. We are dust jackets for the Bible. We are dust jackets for the Bible. And we have a responsibility to share with others the truth. And so I'm going to I'm going to recommend a couple of things. Of course, great adventure is sort of the ultimate telling of a story. It's the story of salvation history. But one of the things I want to share with you this week is this art of telling stories, particularly to kids and to our teenagers and to one another. I'm going to

take a break right now. When we come back, I'll finish with that and talk a little bit about learning different stories of the Bible and how valuable this is in passing on the faith to our grandkids and to our kids. You're listening to the Jeff Cabin Show. Wouldn't it be nice to have a Bible that actually explains how to navigate it and make sense of it? A Bible that includes a detailed plan for how to read it with a page layout that's designed for study and personal devotion. Now for the first time ever, there is a Catholic Bible that does just that. A Bible that incorporates the same color-coded learning system that has proven so effective in the Great Adventure Studies. I have had the privilege of working with some of the most

talented biblical scholars of our day, Mary Healy, Andrew Swofford, and Peter Williamson, to create the Great Adventure Catholic Bible. This Bible makes the complex simple as it guides you through the narrative woven throughout salvation history. The translation is the Revised Standard Version second Catholic edition, an elegant, accurate, and modern Catholic translation. The Great Adventure Catholic Bible is perfect for your personal devotion and Bible study, or as a gift for friends and family. If you want to understand sacred scripture and be transformed by the Word of God, then this is the Bible for you.

Pick up your copy at ascensionpress.com. Welcome back. we're talking today about the art of communicating truth. We're talking about passing on the good things. We are dust jackets for books, and that book is the Bible, and those stories are in us, and we must tell those stories. We must tell salvation history to our children and to our grandchildren. And by the way, I'm not advocating that you have to exactly quote every verse to tell the story of Joseph, for example, but to know the story in such a way that you can tell while you have your grandchild there in the car and you're on your way up to Home Depot and you

said, I want to tell you the story, you know, or you're out by the lake and you're fishing with them, you want to tell the story of the fall of Adam and Eve. There are two kinds of stories that I would highly recommend that you read and memorize, not word for word necessarily, but thought for thought. Memorize the story of creation or the birth of Jesus. I'll go through a list of some of the stories that I recommend that you do memorize and then you can tell them to your kids and grandkids with maybe two or three key things to remember about that story. Learn the stories in the Bible. Practice telling them in your own words, then share them with the children and grandchildren. Here's a few stories in the Bible that are really key.

Of course, the story of creation, the fall of Adam and Eve, the call of Abraham, the second sacrifice of Isaac pointing to Jesus, the Lamb of God. The story of Joseph is one of the great stories of remaining pure and devoted to God, even though everybody is trying to pull you in another direction. There's so many lessons to learn in the story of Joseph. And if you read that in Genesis, and then you make it your own and come up with three points that you want your grandkids to know, your kids to know, or just to tell a colleague at work, something you've learned from the story, that is a valuable, valuable, portable story and truth that you can share. The Exodus, of course, 40 years in the desert.

Joshua and the fall of Jericho, big one, the story of Gideon. How Israel got a king, remember, Saul, David, and Solomon, the fall of Saul, maybe that's just for teens, the fall of David, just for teens, maybe, the exile, the return, the birth of Jesus, any of the parables, you could tell. any of those with the key point, and if you practice these and you start to, you know, stockpile them in your mind, you never know when you're going to get a chance to tell a story to your grandkids or to your kids or to a colleague, the call of Cornelius through Peter. And in my case, I like telling people the whole book of revelation in miniature. Maybe we'll do that sometime for a show,

I'll say, I'm going to tell you a book of revelation today and how to understand it. So that's one kind of story that you can make your own and then share with others. Those are stories of the Bible. You can become a dust jacket, a dust jacket for the books of the Bible and the stories of the Bible. The second kind of a story is the stories of your life. You know, our daughters, they love hearing the stories of Emily and I meeting and falling in love. And what I liked about are, you know, and what we experienced with no money when we were first married. They love hearing those stories.

So in my life, it's how I met Emily. It's how I fell in love with Jesus at 18 years of age and fell in love with the Bible. It's maybe to our grandkids, they like to hear, how do we raise their mother? Tell us about my mom, you know, they might ask. Maybe some big lessons that you have learned in business, some lessons you've learned in life. Maybe you went through some sickness, and God was with you in a powerful way. That's a story that you can tell. tell. And so I'm just encouraging you today to become dust jackets for not only the Bible,

but dust jackets for the important stories in your life that you can pass on to family and friends. And so your assignment this week, if there is one, I guess it's to sit down and ask, well, what are some of the stories in the Bible that I need to become a dust jacket for? Jesus was a masterful storyteller, masterful, and it was in those stories that truth was hidden and revealed. And that's just something that I try to do on a regular basis, but I think it's a good thing to share with you today on the Jeff Kaven show is to become dust jackets for God, dust jackets to share truth, to keep these stories alive, just like the Bedouin in the desert, and just like the characters from Fahrenheit 451

that we heard about in Ray Bradbury's book. You might want to get that movie and watch that. It is actually fascinating. It's got a lot of truths I'm talking about here. One of the guys out in the woods was the Bible. In fact, maybe it was even broken down in Old Testament, New Testament, but they embodied the Bible.

Nobody else did it. It was gone. It was all burned up. The Bible was burned, but it was contained. in the head and heart of a man. And that's how it kept going. It's really like the beginning of our church, isn't it? The teachings of Jesus were passed on

from generation, a generation through the bishops and the priests and teachers. So, God bless you this week, and if you need to get a hold of me and you have an idea for a show or I'd love to hear how the shows are affecting you, here's my email, The Jeff Kaven Show at Ascension Press,

and we'll send you the show notes for every show. If you request it, we'll put you on the list and we will get those out to you every single week. Know that I'm praying for you and love you and really do love this time we have together with one another. Let me pray for you. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, Lord, I thank you for my friends today. I pray, Lord, that they will become dust covers for you and the truth that you have given them. And the story that we have experienced that convey truth, give us boldness and courage to share with others the truth that we have discovered. Help us to become the valuable people in the community because we contain the Word of God in our hearts. I thank you for this in the mighty name

of Jesus. Amen. God bless you, my friend. Have a great week.