World-building and Story-telling 3

On Thursday I ate lunch next to two middle aged men talking about model railroading. I went through a brief stint of that as a hobby 7 years ago or so. Anyway, after thinking about it for a while, it seems that the interest is not so much trains and tracks, as it is world-building. Just as good baseball movies are loved because they are about people, not baseball, and good Sci-Fi stories are loved because they are about people, not technology. The two things that come pretty much ready made in model railroading are the tracks and the train, the bulk of fun and work is in building a world, a town, a landscape, a mountain side, a river, for the trains to live in.

Today I listened to a lecture by James Jordan called Knowing the Patriarchs (you can download it 2nd from the top here) He talks about how we were made out of earth, made out of world, and how we are (being made last) the fulfillment and pinnacle of God's world building. Interesting, so it seems the end and goal of worldbuilding (creation) is the beginning of storytelling (his-story)

He also points out that, because we are made out of world we go into darkness and sleep when the world does. Also, as God first made the world formless and void (and naked) and then caused it to grow, mature, etc. So man was made to to mature and grow. He points out the 3 main stories the Bible tells are:

• Maturation and Development of the human race
• Holy war against evil
• Salvation from Sin

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This post is sort of a continuation of these two posts: 1, 2