I need to begin with a couple of jokes that you may have heard before. But they are offered not so much for the joke value as for what they illustrate about the power of interpretive grids, which is the point of this post.
There was a guy who was convinced that he was actually a dead man, and so he went to a shrink. The psychiatrist had seen this kind of thing before, and so he decided not to take the direct approach. He therefore spent multiple sessions convincing his patient that dead men don’t bleed. They read medical articles together, paid a visit to the morgue, and pretty much covered the subject. After many weeks, the patient was as convinced as a man can be that dead men don’t bleed. So when the time was right, the shrink reached over with a pin, and quickly pricked the patient on the thumb. A bead of blood quickly formed, and the patient’s face turned ashen white. “Dead men bleed after all!” he cried.
There was this other guy, impossible to please. He was critical of everything his friends did. Criticized their trucks, their houses, their shotguns (they were duck hunters), and their hunting techniques. One day, to the joy of his friends, one of them bought a dog who knew how to walk on water. “This’ll get him,” was the general consensus. The next Saturday, they all went duck hunting together, and spent their usual time in the duck blind listening to their critical friend talk down about the coffee, the sandwiches they had, the weather, not to mention everything else. But finally some ducks flew over, and one of the men got a good shot, and a duck fell into the water. With that, the magic dog ran out across the surface of the water, deftly picked up the duck, and ran back to the blind. To the astonishment of everyone there, the critical man said nothing. Absolutely nothing. After half an hour, some more ducks flew over and the same thing happened. Still the man said nothing. Finally, one of the others, unable to contain himself, asked, “So, did you notice anything about the dog?” “Well,” the man replied, “I didn’t want to say anything because I don’t like being critical. But it looks to me like your stupid dog can’t swim.”
This kind of thing is the result of an interpretive grid, a paradigm. That grid is used to sort the information, and arrange the facts. It is not the case that facts simply arrange or interpret themselves. All purported facts, documents, truths, etc. are arranged into a narrative by everyone who seeks to understand them. That narrative will do justice to the facts or it will not, but the narrative is not insignificant. Moreover, the narrative is always there. That narrative is what makes up the interpretive grid.
When I was a boy, I used to enjoy a writing exercise in elementary school, which was to take the list of new vocabulary words, and use them all in a story or paragraph. If a teacher saw the same story come in from two different kids, this would be grounds for suspecting that one had copied from the other — and not grounds for thinking that this was “the only story” in which these words could appear. It is not that hard for the same words to appear in different stories.
All this is said because this particular issue is a point of stumbling for many who are trying to sort out claims and counterclaims, accusations and defenses. The undisputed facts of the case are like the vocabulary words, and different people with different agendas will write a different story around those “words.” And the story they tell might even be consistent (for a time) with a limited list of the facts.
Take the undisputed facts as something like this: “Jim broke his neighbor’s window,” “half an hour later Jim was arrested by the police,” and “Jim’s wife bailed him out later in the evening.”
This could result in something like this: “Jim had been quarreling with his neighbor for some time over the neighbor’s refusal to pay for a window in Jim’s house that the neighbor’s kid had broken the week before. Finally, in exasperation Jim broke his neighbor’s window in retaliation, and called it good. But instead of taking it as a reasonable settlement, Jim’s neighbor called the cops, and half an hour later Jim was arrested by the police. Jim spent a fruitless time trying to explain himself, and so he was hauled in. His wife was off at a baby shower at the time, and so she received an unpleasant phone call there. And so Jim’s wife bailed him out later in the evening.”
Or this: “Jim was walking home late one evening and noticed flames coming out of his neighbor’s attic. He pounded on the front door, and got no response. He saw their cars were all there, and so he decided to break a window. So Jim broke his neighbor’s window, and woke the family up. They called the fire department, and they arrived quickly, with the police just after them. The police were interested because an arsonist had been operating in the area. In all the confusion, someone thought that Jim fit a description of the arsonist they had, and half an hour later Jim was arrested by the police. Jim’s wife was not at home, so he spent a little while trying to find her, which he eventually did. And so Jim’s wife bailed him out later in the evening.”
Now let us say that Jim had some enemies who wanted to get him. In order to do so, they should have to do more than simply tell the first story, and offer proof of the particular facts in bold that fit within that story. Telling a story, in which certain facts all fit, is not the same thing as telling a story that fits all the facts. And proof of the facts in bold only is proof of both stories if it a proof of one. If my story is that Queen Elizabeth II is a space alien and it is an undisputed fact that she denies it (which is just what a space alien in that position would do), I cannot prove that she is a space alien by proving her denial.
This principle is why Joshua and his men stumbled when they accepted the word of the men of Gibeon. The facts were worn-out clothes, cracked wineskins, and crusty old bread. The facts (which were indisputable) were placed (quite reasonably) in a particular story by the Gibeonites, and that did not confirm the story. The facts were consistent with this story, but consistency with a story is not the same thing as confirmation of a story.
This is why the investigative judges in Deuteronomy 19 were required to weigh the evidence carefully. Weighing the evidence carefully means a number of things, which we have addressed in this space. But among those things that must be weighed are the competing stories. Not only must the facts of the case be established (by credible and accountable witnesses, with opportunities for cross-examination), but so must the competing stories be told by competent narrators, with opportunity for cross-examination. “The deceased was despondent and committed suicide.” “No, the deceased told me just yesterday how much he loved life.” The fact that the deceased is deceased does not confirm one story or the other, even though it is consistent with both stories.
Clever lies (or, to use Orwell’s phrase, lunatic misunderstandings) are those which weave as many of the factual “vocabulary words” as possible into the narrative. It may even get to a point where you wonder if a competing narrative is even possible. But this is precisely why the narratives must be examined side by side, with both narrators fully accountable. This is also why, everything else being equal, the narrative of the accused is accepted at face value. This is the biblical basis for that great American principle of the tie going to the runner.