Have you noticed how everyone is going back to their roots these days? In the cinema we have watched as Superman Returns after searching out his birthplace and as Batman Begins. We’ve seen Hannibal Lector start out and James Bond on his first mission. And on TV people are tracing their ancestors to answer ‘Who do you think you are?’

So, why the sudden interest in our pasts? Perhaps we hope that by looking back we can make sense of our present; that we’ll find some hidden meaning.

Of course, this is fine if you are fictional. Some scriptwriter can conjure up an exciting story with hints of greatness. But what if we look back and find nothing: no moments that ironically point to the future, no secrets of coming significance. Worst of all, what if our past is just dull?

Perhaps digging in our past is the wrong approach. Perhaps instead we need to look outside ourselves. Perhaps what we need is a bigger story we can become part of.

In my opinion, ‘Spellbound’ is the most exciting film about spelling ever. But, then, I’m not a big fan of ‘Countdown’, so take that as you will. If you haven’t seen it, it’s a documentary about the U.S. National Spelling Bee. It follows some of the contestants and their parents up to the high-tension denouement. (Note the use of a big word in the spirit of event.)

Anyway, there is one part that I find fascinating. One of the girls, who comes from a poor background, says this: I’ve overcome great odds to come this far, so I know I’m going to succeed, because that is what happens in the movies. Look away now if you don’t want to know the result, but she isn’t the eventual winner. The film-makers interview her again after she is eliminated. Her response is this: I’ve overcome great odds to come this far, so I still know I’m going to succeed, because that is what happens in the movies. Even after facing reality, the movies — the stories that she lives by — continue be her reference point.

I don’t think she is unique. Stories make up a big part of our view of the world. Maybe we are all have movies or books or songs that, without knowing it, guide our choices and our hopes. So, then the question I have to ask myself is: what are the stories that motivate me?

We have to tell the story in our communities and allow it to challenge our traditions, to ‘stretch our reason back into shape, and to reform our world views that are always in danger of becoming like the world’s world views.’ In respect of this last point Wright is clear that we need to allow Scripture to norm our world view:

When we tell the whole story of the Bible, and tell it … by articulating it in a thousand different ways, improvising our own faithful version, we are inevitably challenging more than just one aspect of the world’s way of looking at things … We are articulating a viewpoint according to which there is one God, the creator of all that is, who not only made the world but is living and active within it… who is also transcendent over it and deeply grieved by its fall away from goodness into sin … The story … will function as an invitation to participate in the story oneself, to make it one’s own, and to do so by turning away from the idols which prevent the story becoming one’s own … Evangelism and the summons to justice and mercy in society are thus one and the same, and both are effected by the telling of the story, the authoritative story …

This takes us back to our starting point — the biblical story. However we shouldn’t view this as a staid and static base; we listen to the text, ‘tell the story in our communities and allow it to challenge our traditions’. We have to continual keep in mind that our communities will never completely and faithfully embody the text. We have to make a conscious effort to allow our story to ‘stretch our reason back into shape, and to reform our world views’; otherwise we may find that our worldview starts to blend with the ones around us. If the salt loses its saltiness…

We then allow our re-stretched reason/imagination/worldview to spill out into our cultural life. We must chose to tell and live according to the real story and invite others to participate in that story with us. And it is by living the real story that our cultural activities are transformed to fit with God’s plan for creation.

The second quote is taken completely out of context, but I love it and it sums up for me the motivation behind all of this. It comes from the song ‘So Long Sweet Misery’ by Brett Dennen:

…
if I could I would wash all these wounds away
I would surround your room with sentiments of grace
I would paint your portrait over everything mundane
…

That surely is our goal — to paint the portrait of Jesus over everything, mundane or otherwise, to declare in our actions the beauty, justice and truth of the way God intends the world to be.

* Moses escapes Pharaoh’s slaughter of baby boys
Jesus escapes Herod’s slaughter of baby boys

* Moses comes out of Egypt (with Israel)
Jesus comes out of Egypt

[aside 1: see reformed catholic for interesting overtones of Israel-is-Egypt]

[aside 2: but it's interesting that both are in Egypt due to the dreams of a guy called Joseph, but maybe that is pushing things too far...]

* Moses takes Israel through the waters of the Red Sea
Jesus is baptised

* Moses and Israel head from the water into the desert and face challenges of trusting God
Jesus heads from baptism into the desert and is tempted, but trusts God

[aside 3: Jesus' temptations cover bread and worship of someone/thing other than God. Israel complain about provision of food and tragically worship the golden calf]

* Moses is advised to select leaders to help him
Jesus calls the disciples

* Moses brings the law down from the mountain
Jesus preaches the sermon on the mount

As part of the talk, I attempted to use some TV programs as examples of modern and post-modern worldviews. (Slightly mis-judged the popularity of some shows, but there we go.) So the examples don’t go to waste, let’s recycle them here.

In fact, I’ll start with one that has been rolling around my mind for a very very very long time. I didn’t use it over the weekend, but maybe I should have. It seems to me the the X-files is the perfect enactment of the modern/post-modern clash. (I guess someone somewhere has done this before.)

On the one side we had the Thoroughly Modern Scully. Everything is science-based and we need only examine properly to overcome our ignorance. On the other side, the archetypally post-modern Mulder — accepting of all myths and local stories, without any attempt to fit them into some overarching worldview; suspicious of the authorities and the narratives they weave, assuming that these narratives are there to hide and control; not driven primarily by a search for truth, but a relational-based search for his sister.

Coming more up-to-date, it seems like CSI is the perfect modern story — a team of heroes battle ignorance, using science and technology to fight injustice and apprehend the guilty.

On the other hand, there is a common underlying theme to Lost & Heroes that facinates me. Both have a number of relatively ordinary people thrust into bewildering circumstances. In both there is an interweaving of each person’s personal story — in both, paths are frequently crossing, apparently by accident(?). There is the feeling that this interweaving may have design to it, but we cannot be sure what or who controls this. Certainly those involved have no grasp of a larger story that they are part of, though they may suspect that there is one.

Perhaps Heroes and Lost reflect the feeling of our somewhere-on-the-edge-of-post-modern times. Having rejected the big stories, we now have the feeling that there is one, but we have no way to appropriate it

This feeling of some apparently unknowable overarching narrative makes me think of Paul in Athens. Remember that he looked around, saw the altar to an Unknown God and proceeded to associate this with the God incarnated in Jesus. Maybe it is time for us to say that we know the Unknown Author who is writing the big story? He is the one incarnated as the character of Jesus and he is not the tyrant you thought he was.

At what point does a narrative become big enough to be distrusted? All stories try to explain something about the world. At what point does the explaining cover enough to be totalising?

Is it really big stories that produce violence and oppression? Or is it anytime two stories come into contact? Looking at the ethnic violence that we have seen all around the world in recent years, it seems stories don’t have to be that big, they just have to meet and, I guess, overlap in some way. The plots have to collide and find that they don’t match up.

Going further, is it possible that the postmodern fall of the big stories has in fact contributed to the violence by allowing the small stories to run wild and meet in conflict? Rather than freeing the world from violence and oppression, maybe it has contributed by cutting the (yes, oppressive) constraints.

If so, what is the solution? If big stories are oppressive and all stories result in violence when they collide, what hope do we have?

Perhaps our only hope is for a story that absorbs the violence. A story that meets others and doesn’t fight back, but turns the other cheek in some way…

Let’s try for Curtis Chang’s approach of entering the story and seeing where the plot tension lies (see Engaging Unbelief).

We’ve suggested that post-modernism is at heart distrust of meta-narratives. But, perhaps a first tension is that it’s not at all clear that we can live without some big story. But more than that, going back to the place we started, we have, at the very least, to accept that post-modernism itself acts as a meta-narrative.

Perhaps the real longing in post-modernism is to find a meta-narrative we can trust. Perhaps, the underlying theme of the ‘distrust all meta-narratives’ advice is really ‘here, at last, is a trustworthy story’. In effect, it says ‘by allowing all the little stories to co-exist under my wings, everyone will be accepted and not oppressed’. So, the question becomes — is post-modernism a trustworthy story?

Obviously, the proponents will say ‘yes’. But, isn’t that what proponents always do? You have to ask those who don’t fit — and despite the claims, there are those who don’t fit. Because, you are only safe if your story is sufficiently small. If you attempt for an overarching narrative, then you are suspect and the famed tolerance begins to wain. It seems like the postmodern narrative doesn’t live up to its promise. At the very least, it has to beat down all other stories until they submit to its overarching aim. It can’t function in the co-exist mode that it requires.

So, how is the tension resolved? We need to find a meta-narrative that is trustworthy, the does not operate via injustice. This is where Middleton and Walsh are aiming in ‘Truth is Stranger than it used to be’. They put forward the idea that the Christian story includes in it the mechanisms to curb injustice and value those who are different, marginalised and oppressed. That despite being meta it can be trusted. (The ideas are recapped in Walsh and Keesmat’s ‘Colossians Remixed’.)

I’ll try to summarise their ideas in the near future, but in the mean time Scot McKnight discusses that part of the Colossians book in a recent Jesus Creed post.

It’s not always clear to me what people mean by this term — it seems to expand and contract depending on the individual’s views. I’m going to take it roughly to mean things that could be expressed in a Powerpoint bullet.

The existence, importance, etc. of propositional truth seems to be lurking a lot in post-modern/emergent discussions. I think you have to start by saying that of course propositional truth has value. Even the oft-quoted Uncertainty Principle and Godel’s incompleteness theorems are expressed propositionally and in a very precise way. So, we have to take propositions seriously.

On the other had, I wonder if, in many cases, propositions just doesn’t get us as far as we think they do. Let’s take an example: the statement ‘God exists’. Seems like a simple proposition, either true or not. But immediately we are lead to the question ‘What do you mean by God?’ OK, that’s not the end of the world — we could start to flesh things out with other propositions, like ‘God is love’. But, then I have to ask how good a grasp I, as a less-than-perfect human, have on love. And so on. And so on. Before you know it, I think I’m going to end up at ‘In the beginning …’ and find myself having to tell the whole story.

I think we have to be careful thinking that we can abstract propositions out of the Bible, without retaining the whole of the story. Otherwise, you have the danger of ending up with something that doesn’t match the source any longer, if not in our minds, then in the minds of those listening. And we have to realise that you can’t pick up a phrase or two on their own without the entire text coming with them. Like a bowl of spaghetti — you might try to pick out one piece, but you soon find that you have no choice but to go for the entire tangled mass.

I guess it was easier when we lived in a society that had an essentially common background. When you said ‘God exists’, etc. you could be reasonably sure that the people listen had something approximately similar in mind. But when the culture starts to fracture, it becomes less easy. Suddenly, you can’t rely on the assumed common ground and the propositions have to give way to other expressions, like re-telling stories.

You also have to be sure you listen carefully to make sure you have the common ground right. But that is a post for another day…

(Umm, warning, there may be spoilers ahead. But then it’s not a thriller

…and it struck me that this is really an interesting example of how eschatology should influence life. In the book some friends live to see the end of the world. They then have the opportunity to go back and live in the light of what they have seen. For them it was a world that ends in a whimper — with all slowing going to sleep. So, their ‘living in the light of’ was to live against this.

It seems to me that, for Christians, there should be a similar ‘living in the light of’ the future. We should allow the prophetic imagination to shape ours. Then we live in this context and allow it to shape how we act. Of course, for us the future vision is different – we live with the hope that God will put the world to rights and re-creatre all things. Consequently, we live for rather than against our vision. But the parallels are interesting.

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…