Is a story really that powerful?

I got a peek at a quote from Brian McLarens soon-to-be-released book, A New Kind of Christianity, which shed some light on my last post regarding our treatment of the Bible as an object, like a scientist with a scalpel and a microscope.  (No, Brian didn't send me his manuscript to read, I just jacked it off his blogsite).

In this quote I am imagining McLaren, who is not a seminarian but an English professor turned pastor/author/activist is explaining why he is able to see the Bible in this manner, as opppossed to the typical systematic format:

Lessons from a microscope

I was driving my son to school the other day, asking him about what they were studying in Biology.  "The microscope"  he replied, "and it's pretty cool."  Being the pseudo philosopher that I am, we began to discuss the amazing discovery of all things when you can reduce them to their smallest parts.  We also talked about what science must have been like before the microscope and how the it has shaped our way of approaching the study of any object.  All you need is a scalpel, some slides, and a microscope, you can cut up just about any living thing,