My favorite movie may be “The Legend of Bagger Vance”. The original novel by Steven Pressfield (1995) is even better.

The book’s opening chapter introduces a wonderful golf storyteller, Dr. Hardison L. Greeves, MD, now in his mid-70’s (like me), telling a fascinating story from 1931 when he was ten years old. He spent two life-changing days with Bobby Jones, Walter Hagen, local Savannah hero Rannulph Junah, and a caddie named Bagger Vance who turns out to be a picture of God in the flesh. The invisible God became a visible caddie, or so it seemed to young Hardy. Keep in mind. This is fiction. But some truth is hidden in the fiction.

The book grabs your attention from the first page. A promising young doctor named Michael has made two dramatic choices. First, he has dropped out of medical school, a decision which Dr. Greeves said he could understand since “around the third year, when exhaustion and nausea have taken up permanent residence in your bones, the healing profession seems less like a calling and more like an exercise in expedience and venality.”

Some doctor reading this just said “Amen”.

The next paragraph lays the foundation for the story of Bagger Vance.

We hear Dr. Greeves, known simply as Hardy in the book and movie, say to Michael,“But it’s a different decision you’ve made that troubles me more deeply. I mean your choice to give up golf. When I heard, Michael, I knew something was wrong. That’s why I’ve asked you here tonight. Will you stay and listen to an old man?”

Michael had been a champion golfer. Hardy was hoping that his childhood story might woo the young man back, not only to the mysteries of golf- but to God Himself. Michael had lost his way, and quitting golf was just a sign of his lostness. Each man has an “authentic swing”, Bagger Vance had taught Hardy, and Michael had lost that swing.

He reminded Michael that, in golf, it all starts with the grip. “The way a man sets his hands on a club will inform you infallibly as to how deeply he’s thought about the game, how profoundly he’s entered into its mysteries. The grip, a remarkable fellow named Bagger Vance once told me, is man’s connection to the world outside himself. The hands, he said, are where the subjective meets the objective. Where we ‘in here’ meet the world ‘out there.’ True intelligence, Vance declared, does not reside in the brain, but in the hands.”

That sentence got my attention since I have had a bad grip since childhood. Indeed, my hands are not very intelligent. I am still somewhat agitated that my father never sent me to a real golf professional to get real golf lessons on how to properly grip the club. Instead, I was left with my baseball grip, left over from my Little League days, which doomed me to a mediocre golf career. Baseball teaches you to grip it in the palms. Golf is about the fingers- when done right.

In Michael’s case, he had quit golf due to the many frustrations of the game, and now the old doctor hoped to relieve Michael’s diseased mind and heart with his story!

“Yes, I know your illness, son. I’m going to try to cure it this evening with a story. Will you stay and listen? It may take all night.”

A story! Don’t preach. Tell a story. Sermons are highly overrated. Stories never seem to disappoint. They have the power to cure the soul.

Indeed, at least for me, sermons that have no stories (preachers would call them illustrations) are usually forgettable. You go home and try to remember what the preacher said and come up empty. But one good story at the end of an otherwise boring sermon can make the whole hour worthwhile— sometimes even a memory for a lifetime.

In 2014, I decided to write a book to define marriage. It was supposed to be a scholarly work on the meaning and definition of marriage. After more than a year of reading and study, I realized that I was incapable of writing such a book. Everything I wrote sounded to my ear like a lecture.

But when I changed the style to the telling of a story, it all made sense. “Judge Z: Irretrievably Broken” became a novel (full of lots of stories) which helped me and a few others understand what marriage is supposed to be. The story succeeded where my lecture failed.

And then a few years later, I wanted to write a book about “Wisdom”, mostly lessons from the Book of Proverbs. I quickly realized that my sermons on the subject felt again like unwanted lectures with no one listening, and so, another novel, “Player’s Progress: A Golfer’s Journey to Wisdom”, became a story worth telling. It was pure fiction, but the story was filled with insight from Proverbs and beyond.

This idea of storytelling was God’s advice to Moses, “Tell your children and grandchildren… the stories… so that you will all know that I am God.” (Exodus 10:2 MSG). Make sure your own family know the story of your life and times.

Sometimes, the story is just for yourself. “When you find yourselves flagging in your faith, go over that story again, item by item... That will shoot adrenaline into your souls!” (Hebrews 12:3 MSG). It is good to simply ‘remember’. Today’s fears can be alleviated by remembering the faithfulness of God in the past.

And then the prophet Micah told us to “keep all God’s salvation stories fresh and present.” (Micah 6:3 MSG). The best stories are the ones from this week!

Jesus Himself knew that this was the best way. He spent much of this time sitting around with his friends, telling stories. “All Jesus did that day was tell stories, a long storytelling afternoon.” (Mt. 13:34 MSG).

This website (www.timphilpot.com) attempts to tell stories from over fifty years of courthouses, golf courses, and a few exotic places around the world. The best tales are those that are “fresh and present”, stories of what happened recently, maybe even today!! They will “shoot adrenaline into your soul”.

So, if you are looking for a good story, try “The Legend of Bagger Vance.”

One last word of caution, be careful as you read it because the author may not be as orthodox as you might wish. There is definitely a hint of Eastern religion and philosophy throughout the book that may make you uneasy. Indeed, the inside cover quotes the Bhagavad-Gita, which is a Hindu scripture.

But for me, Bagger Vance is Jesus in the flesh. The greatest Caddie imaginable. Read the story with your eyes on Jesus, and you may just find a new Way of living.