Bradley Hanson

My 2014 book SPIRITUALITY AND YOUR LIFE STORY grew out of deep conversations with people who shared their life story with me by responding to the Life Story Interview questions of Northwestern University psychologist Dan McAdams. His ground breaking idea of personal identity is that we make sense of our life by crafting our own life story. We start in our teens and we modify our life story as we respond to events. Since we do this in a childhood family context and wider social context that promote certain story lines, our life story develops in dialogue with certain culturally approved story lines. After leading you to reflect on your own childhood experience, SPIRITUALITY AND YOUR LIFE STORY draws you into conversation with these cultural stories: success, romantic love, friendship, revenge-forgiveness-reconciliation, migration, loss, and the contrasting master stories of scientific naturalism (atheistic) and the biblical story. The goal throughout is to deepen one's own self-understanding and faith.