On joining the dots…
Posted by Paul | Filed under uncategorised
An interesting quote from Tom Wright’s recent article on atonement
It is all too possible to take elements from the biblical witness and present them within a controlling narrative gleaned from somewhere else, like a child doing a follow-the-dots puzzle without paying attention to the numbers and producing a dog instead of a rabbit.
This has been buzzing around my head since I read it.
It seems to me that this is an important thing to keep in mind. We might have all our doctrines right, but if we haven’t connected them up in the right order (or, worse, failed to connect them) then we may still miss the point in places.
Story is a key way that the dots are connected. The post-enlightenment world acts as if it is all just dots. So, we feel like it is OK just to have a number of well defined bullet points. But we need to connect things up. (And, of course, there is always a story — it just may be hidden and may not be the one we think we are working with.)
I guess this is the problem with not getting our story straight. If we just have a set of ‘dots’ then there is the possibility of connecting them up in a way that fits with the prevailing culture, but isn’t really true to the biblical story. (I’ve read something else like this recently and frustratingly can’t remember where.) Of course, this allows us to live happily without disturbing the status quo…
Tags: culture, story, worldview
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