John Walt

“The most powerful person in the world is the storyteller. The storyteller sets the vision, values, and agenda of an entire generation that is to come.” – Steve Jobs

Every society is built on stories that tell people who they are, where they come from, and what to expect from life. Most of the stories our modern culture is built on are lies. Some are fictional works of art, and others are true stories that have been retold through our modern worldview and lost their deeper meaning. Kids and young adults now grow up on a diet of almost all fictional stories that celebrate the superhero, the genius, the explorer, and the warrior. Most of our modern cultural stories center around a main character, a hero who must overcome all odds to defeat some evil and protect something good.

Stories today are primarily told for commercial value; they are captured in movies, shows, and books and then sold to as many people as possible. Because stories have been productized, they are heavily designed to be as engaging as possible. Stories shape individuals and cultures. They are a critical part of how we learn because they give meaning to information, and their lessons stick with us far longer than facts and ideas. Emotionally engaging stories can almost bypass our conscious brain's defenses and embed their message deep into our minds. Stories are the most effective tool for learning, persuasion, and inspiring collective action.

Many of our modern stories are a celebration of human potential, leading us in subtle ways to believe that the purpose of life is achievement. Other stories celebrate fantasy worlds and offer us an escape from the boredom of our real lives. Most of the stories we are fed every day are purely for entertainment, and often void of deeper meaning. But there is always a message, sometimes it subtly tells us to desire physical beauty, find fulfillment in romantic love, that money buys freedom, or that we should live a more adventurous life. Every story has a message, whether we realize it or not. We are complex emotional human beings, and we are highly influenceable.

When we hear or watch an engaging story, our brains light up as if we’re right there in the action alongside the characters. Exciting twists trigger dopamine surges that sharpen our focus and help us lock those moments into memory, while touching scenes release oxytocin, boosting our empathy and sense of connection. Because stories engage both our imagination and emotions, they stay with us far longer than simple facts. This immersive neural engagement allows stories to shape our attitudes, guide our decision-making, and even construct our identities by embedding experiences and lessons deep within our cognitive and social frameworks. Over time, the stories we love can shape what we believe, guide our choices, and even help form who we become.

Unfortunately, now more movies, shows, and media are designed to show us what we want to see rather than what we need to hear. Instead of being a tool that calls us into our potential, they have become a mirror reflecting back to us what we want to more of. The purpose of most storytelling today is to make us feel good, entertain us, or influence our buying decisions. This is not to say that there aren’t good values being displayed in many stories; there certainly are. But most of the good of these stories is wrapped inside of a way of viewing life and the world that is fundamentally flawed. Namely, they celebrate individual accomplishment, overlook the real process of transformation, and praise power, sex, fame, and wealth.

The Monomyth

The most popular stories of all time center around a universal narrative template called “the hero’s journey,” or “the monomyth.” In the hero’s journey, the main character leaves the ordinary world, whether that is their town or their planet, undergoes transformative trials, achieves a decisive victory, and returns home changed, bearing some gift for the benefit of their community. We love this because, in many ways, it mirrors the transformation journey we are all born to go on in life. We all must leave the comfort of our childhood, face the challenges of life, fight a great battle, and return as a gift to our community. The hero's journey closely models the rites of passage and initiation process that many cultures have practiced and celebrated throughout history.

The Hero’s Journey resonates with us because it allows us as the audience to see ourselves in the story of the hero. When Braveheart stands up to injustice, we see ourselves in him. When Frodo struggles to carry the ring and finds himself seduced by its power, we resonate with his struggle.

As The Hero’s Journey has been increasingly commercialized, many stories have lost their connection to the arc of our real lives. The mentor seems to play a less significant role now in our popular stories. The transformation of the hero seems to happen almost instantly, and it’s less about mastery and character growth and more about accomplishing something by getting a power, a weapon, or specialized knowledge. This change reflects how our culture sees mentors and transformation; we have made them transactional. Mentors help us get the knowledge and tools we need, and transformation is about becoming able to achieve success. Story has always been a powerful tool for passing along wisdom and truth, but now it is primarily a product to sell or a tool for manipulation. We have lost the plot.

Reality is very different from the stories that our culture is now built on. Individual people don’t save the city, the country, or the world. Some deep part of all of us wants to find purpose and meaning, so we are captivated by the idea that a person's life and actions could be so impactful. In reality, almost all great things happen as a result of the combined effort of many people. We hear about the lone genius who built a billion-dollar business, the incredible athlete who won the championship, and the public servant who changed the laws. Seeing stories through the lens of a single hero shapes our perspective about our own path in life, and it shapes how we view ourselves.

We are all the centers of our own universes, and instead of being led out of our self-obsession, we are now basically told that it’s ok, maybe even good. Our stories tell us to “pursue your dreams, find your soul mate, and be true to yourself.” The messages we hear every day about who we are and what the purpose of our life is are horribly wrong. The problem is that our incorrect view of the world and ourselves costs us our freedom, our true identity, and our purpose in life. Everywhere I look, I can see men and women who bought into the lies of their generation and, years later, find themselves desperately let down. Their soul mate, who completed them, is now having an affair; they failed to achieve their dreams, and being true to themselves seems impossible with babies to care for.

Some people actually break down when their myths let them down. But most people actually just settle, they settle for a life with less meaning, they forget about their dreams, or just choose to dream about stuff they can buy or places they can go. They subtly shift their view of themselves from wanting to become a great person living a meaningful life to just becoming successful, comfortable, and happy.

The journey we were made for

We were made for a very different reality. We were made to play our part in a very big story. We were made to participate in a cycle of life, community, and relationships that began very long ago and that will continue far past our short lives. If we consciously play our part in this cycle then we will find the deep sense of meaning, love, and identity that we all crave so much. Regardless of where you come from or what you have experienced in life, we all share the same deeply held desires.

We love stories where the hero must go through a transformation because we all must go through our own. The transformation isn’t so we can win a battle or rule a kingdom. It’s so that we can free ourselves from the bondage of self-obsession and become people who play our part in the larger story we were born for. We were made to be transformed into the parent, spouse, leader, and disciple that we were created to be, and that our families and communities desperately need.

The journey we were made for is not taught in schools, it's not featured in movies or waiting for you in the infinite scroll of your social media apps. In fact, the path we were each born to walk is very counterintuitive. Jesus laid it out for us in the gospel over 2,000 years ago, and showed us the path through His life, but somehow we still struggle to find it.

In our culture today, we have forgotten that knowing about the path and believing in it is different than actually walking it. The first step of our journey is the opposite of what all the stories that shape our culture have been telling us our entire lives. The journey begins when we accept that we are not the hero. I believe that is why Jesus’s inaugural call was for us to repent and believe. In other words, turn around, change your thinking, and be transformed. We have to get off the throne of our lives, surrender our cape, and stop living as if we are the hero in the story.

- John Walt.

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