The Christian Story

THE CHRISTIAN STORY: A Seeker’s View, by Paul Faller. Cluster Publications, Pietermaritzburg. 2007. 166pp.

Reviewed by Michail Rassool

Paul Faller, national coordinator of religious education at the Catholic Institute of Education, has created a seamless narrative which succeeds in revealing the deep connections between the Christian faith and life’s complex questions.

Religious education has become more challenging, because educators are often called upon to make Church doctrine and other aspects of Catholic teaching relevant to the experience especially of young people, and the pressures they face and the ideas and values they acquire from various types of media.

Moreover, knowledge resources science, technology and humanities have largely developed away from the sphere of religion and religious teaching, giving rise to a duality: a tension between the religious and secular, between science and religion.

As a result, choosing the natural over the supernatural, because its conclusions are more verifiable, has increasingly become the norm.

In all of this perhaps there is a window of hope for faith and belief, as seen, for example, in the search by many world-weary and disillusioned people for deeper meaning in realms beyond the finite reality, a more spiritual reality in other words, they’re searching for God.

It is perhaps with all of this in mind that Paul Faller has written The Christian Story. Targeted at religious educators and their learners, the book is a compendium of virtually all aspects of the Christian faith and teaching, from a Catholic perspective. It should appeal not only to Church-based educators and catechists, but anyone interested in knowing more about Christianity.

A departure from more conventional catechetical texts, which deal somewhat matter-of-factly with different topics relating to the faith, Faller carefully unpacks such topics as The Reign of God, God’s Design, The Body of Christ, Prayer, Scripture and Revelation, The Sacraments, Christian Life, Faith and Following Jesus.

He reveals the deeper meanings within them in clear, concise language, enabling readers to apply these teachings directly to their own lives.

Topics are presented in a narrative sequence, in which God’s desire for humankind, that we come to know ourselves and our maker in the fullness of life, unfolds in a process of revelation, in which Jesus’ role as God’s ideal human self-manifestation, the first-fruits of a New Creation, is made clear.

In all of this, Christians are also told how they can effect this journey home to God through Jesus, in which the role of the Church, prayer, the sacraments, liturgy, and so on, is explained.

The effect of the narrative is like that of a tapestry, in which all the threads have a definite connecting point, in which a complete picture or seamless narrative of the Christian story is formed.

The Christian Story might well address many modern-day catechists dilemmas or answer the lingering questions of ongoing seekers after the truth, by providing the means to express such deeper connections more clearly. The book may well be the definitive guide they need.