When we reward writers who tell us only conventional things in conventional ways we contribute to the decline of a civilization--and a kingdom of faith--which desperately needs good stories. We foolishly settle for stories--on the screen and on the page--which tickle us, instead of demanding those which interrogate us (likewise in our conversations and from our pulpits). We use feeble stories to kill time, when there are so many available that redeem the time.

We must insist, in a cynical age, that there is such a thing as a good story. We should identify and prize the good stories from the past, and we must fulfill our responsibility to tell new ones.

Daniel Taylor, "In Praise of Stories"

My life took a slight but perceptible change in direction in my late teens from reading J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. Trolls, elves, hobbits, wizards, dark forests, forest havens, caves, mountain strongholds, treachery, cowardice, courage, perseverance--what have these to do with being a teenager in California during the Vietnam War?

Nothing and everything. I found embodied in that fantasy what every teenager needs to find--especially one coming of age in the moral ambiguity of the late 1960s: that there is a difference between good and evil, that the distinction is usually clear enough to act on, that fighting for good is worthwhile even if one loses, that average, even unimpressive people, can do so, and, far-fetched as it may seem, that good eventually wins out in the end--though not without lingering wounds. 

Even though there is a strong "what happens next" element in The Lord of the Rings, I was drawn not so much into the plot of the adventure as to the characters having the adventure. Maybe it is better to say that the testing of their character was the adventure for me--as I later realized it was for Tolkien as well. I discovered that I did not so much forget myself while reading the story as I found myself going along on the journey, dealing like the nonheroic, comfort loving hobbits with weariness, fear, uncertainty, and agonizing choices. With them I felt terror when confronted with undisguised evil and enormous gratefulness for unexpected good. 

 Tolkien's story gave me the courage to say to myself what I already felt true from my own experience--that good and evil are real, that it matters a great deal which one wins out in the world, and that the outcome depends on me. The Lord of the Rings is filled with unexceptional people--that is, hobbits, elves, and the like--called on to do exceptional things if good is going to survive in the world. Reading the story (and its predecessor, The Hobbit), reinforced in me a tremendous desire that good should win in the world and evil be defeated, and to do what I could to help--not least because it helped me to see that evil was not only out there, but within me as well. I genuinely believe this story helped shape who I was and am. Its characters became my character.

Daniel Taylor, "In Praise of Stories"

From Daniel Taylor's essay "In Praise of Stories" (emphasis mine): 

We are drawn to stories because our own life is a story and we are looking for help. Stories give us help in many ways. They tell us we are not alone, and that what has happened to us has happened first to others and that they made it through. They also help us see, however, that our own story is not big enough, that the world is larger and more varied than our limited experience. They help us be more fully human by stimulating and appealing to all that we are--mind, body, spirit. They help us by calling us into relationship--with other people, with other places and times, with creation, and with God. They help us by giving us courage to be the kinds of characters we should be in our own stories, and by making us laugh, empathize, and exercise judgment. But most of all, stories help us by telling the truth, without which we cannot live. 

. . .

Stories are not optional for human beings. It is not the case that some people like stories and seek them out, and other people do not. ... We are all, without exception, drawn to stories, and it may have to do with the way the brain works. As our experience presents itself to us, the brain organizes the stream of perceptions in story form--making connections between things, seeking out a plot, searching for meaning and coherence, trying to decipher what actions and responses are required. As a result, we are as instinctively drawn to story as to water and food. The attraction requires no education or training or special inclination. 

We are shaped by stories from the first moments of life, and even before. Stories tell us  who we are, why we are here, and what will become of us. Whenever humans try to make sense of their experience, they create a story, and we use those stories to answer all the big questions of life. The stories come from everywhere--from family, church, school, and the culture at large. They so surround and inhabit us that we often don't recognize that they are stories at all, breathing them in and out as a fish breathes water.

 . . . 

A story must, literally, be for our good, though good must be understood in the widest possible way. Stories don't necessarily make you a nicer or more ethical person--though many can; they draw out of you more of what makes you a feeling, giving, thinking, creating, laughing, curious human being. Not every story must improve us--stories are valuable on other scores--but we should be different and better because of the cumulative effect of the stories in our lives.

 . . . 

The stories we choose for ourselves define who we are. Every story defines a community--at least the community of two, teller and listener, at the most the community of humanity. A community, a family, is a group of people who share common stories. The health of any community depends directly on the health of the stories the community embraces.