Modernity called into question the very legitimacy of scripture. Many Christians, seeking to preserve the religion amidst the modern society, acquiesced to culture and declared many truths of scripture to be invalid. The biggest one being the most important element of the Christian faith, namely the resurrection of Jesus. Admittedly this is a drive-by description of what happened in modernity. There are countless books written by people who have given the research its proper due. My purpose here is just to set the stage for where we are today. It's no secret many who claim to be Christians do not believe in the physical resurrection of Jesus. It is also no secret that many people regardless of being Christian do not believe it. This is a result of modernity.
Yet even amidst the lack of faith in modernity truth was still something sought and to be had. Most people sided with scientific evidence and reasoning as where truth was to be found. For example, evolution, as a product of modernity, stole the show and won the day as "truth" (also admittedly a drive-by description I understand it is more complicated than that). The point is however that a sense of a truth, maybe even an absolute truth, was still viable. Today, that simply isn't true.
In the postmodern culture, truth is whatever feels good to you. And even then, it isn't really truth. Subjective truth is more or less what works for any given individual. Even science is having trouble keeping up with the demands, and doubts, of a postmodern culture. EVERYONE is a skeptic. And to be honest, who could blame them? It seems that all over our culture politicians run amok, big business trashes the little guy, and we have two radical sides of a climate change debate that both seem to miss the mark and what people on the ground are actually saying. To be a skeptic is to look out for yourself and those closest to you. I am a skeptic myself, I am a product of postmodernity.
But back to the top, many people out there in this age see the end of religion in site. It is not needed in this age of answers and science. Yet what these people fail to realize is that the population isn't buying into the absoluteness and totality of those answers offered by the scholarly and scientific. This is not even to call into question science's legitimacy, that would be insanely irresponsible. What it does highlight however are the feelings of everyday people who deal with everyday issues. Are the select few so much better off in wisdom than the mass public? No doubt some would answered that the enlightened few are, I would disagree. So what we have today is a rejection of any and all types of metanarratives. There is no overarching truth.
My dad was umpiring a junior high baseball game the other day and overheard the kids in the dugout from one of the teams talking. Jesus and church was the topic. One kid said, "I've never been to church" in response to a kid who says he goes frequently. The latter kid is a rarity today, the former kid is the reality. The loss of a metanarrative seemingly hurts the church and Christianity. Yet I see it as a welcomed challenge. The days of Christianity being a part of the culture and just what people (see REAL Americans) "do" are going...going...gone.
The reason it is a welcome challenge is because it is time to get back to the basics. For so long in this country the cry has been "No creed but the Bible!" And those crowds have been the loudest and most mobile in our age for the church. Although for any Christian that seems like a well and good thing, it is irresponsible and misunderstands the important place a creed has in teaching and rearing in the faith. To play Bible trivia baseball with people and have them memorize seemingly random verse after random verse is not helpful from what I can gather. Don't misunderstand me, memorizing scriptural passages should be a lifelong goal for any Christian, but when dealing with a postmodern culture without the metanarrative the goal for the short term and long term here should be the reconstruction of the metanarrative in their lives and discipling/catechizing for a life time.
Catechizing and confirmation are not (should not be) a few week thing and then BAM, bring in the relatives and have a party. Those days are going by the wayside. To teach people the faith is to catechize them and to set them up for life. And in a culture which is becoming more oral, and is certainly biblically illiterate if not illiterate in a lot of other ways, Luther's Small Catechism is the thing to get the ball rolling.
When talking about creation the conversation should not be a tireless (or tiring?) effort to "prove" the literal 6 day account in Genesis. As much as I hold that dear and to be very true, that does not reconstruct the metanarrative. The metanarrative begins with the Ten Commandments, specifically #1: "You shall have no other gods before me." This recognizes, even thousands of years ago, that people have other priorities besides the One True God and that they even make gods out of things in their lives. Sports, fashion, drugs, women, money, wealth, power, etc., etc. They all are gods actively competing for the attention of human beings in our society.
To reconstruct the metanarrative is to start there. Then after dealing with the First Commandment, and subsequent nine, to move into the Creed (apostles or nicene) and discuss the implications of the First Article of the Creed. Talking about creation in the lens of the First Article, which I blogged about below this post, sets the stage for the restructuring of the metanarrative that has been lost in this day and age. People see creation through the spectrum of a loving Father God who made all things, declares it good, and still takes care of them. The First Article, relating things physically in a real way to peoples real lives, is the way forward in setting up the narrative. The First Commandment and First Article compliment each other so well to point to the beauty of creation, as well as its brokenness. Anyone can see and feel beauty, and at the same time anyone can see and feel brokenness.
This metanarrative gives the story, the diagnosis, and the remedy. In the post immediately preceding this one I wrote about the Second Article of the Creed. That gives the remedy. It then is vaulted into the Third Article, the Lord's Prayer, the Sacraments, and how a Christian lives in that reality. Trivializing and arguing endlessly does not help to reconstruct the narrative, in fact, it probably helps to further deconstruct it. In a broken world that has been deconstructed enough Christians should not generally be in the deconstruction business, but the reconstruction business. Jesus reconstructs creation through his gracious act on the cross and rises again as the beginning of that new reality. It's that new reality that gives hope in a world full of shams and shame. Our argument is not going to be won in an ivory tower babbling things that real human beings can't comprehend or care not to comprehend.
Our participation in the reign of God is not static, but on the move. And I think the next move ought to be reconstructing the metanarrative.
