whose story are you living?

The world, as much as it may like to think otherwise, is a world at war. One particularly compelling way to parse the world is through the lens of narratology, in which the distinct yet inextricable particularities of Narratives, Polities, Practices, and Virtues are the essential elements in each conception of reality.¹ There is a tension here in that narratology is an academic construction to make sense of something that is real and yet in this particular instance, it is making sense of the Christian Scriptures which are at the bottom of things, the fundamental elements of what is real. That is the methodological tension. Beyond that, there is the tension that is found in the battle between the Story of Faith, the narrative that is interwoven with the liberal-democratic nation-state, and the Story of God, the narrative that is the Christian Scriptures, interwoven with the people of God, the elect, lived out in the Church².

The narrative of the story of Faith comes, historically, from the development of the liberal-democratic nation-state, especially since the 17^th century. The fundamentals of this narrative are that the individual is an autonomous being who has developed distinctly from the forces which surround her/him so that this one can make choices to improve her or his life that will move the individual from unfulfillment to fulfillment, from boredom to excitement, from unhappiness to happiness. These choices that the individual makes will allow that individual to be who that s/he wants to be and therefore find a life worth living. Ultimately, the entire narrative of the liberal-democratic nation-state is collapsed into the individual and that one's choice of how to live his or her life. These choices are means to “the good,” an abstract concept denoting general positivity. From the perspective of “faith,” the individual makes choices which move him/herself from a consciousness of one's own sin (which is really about guilt and shame) to a consciousness of grace that comes from Jesus to and for the individual within the span of that individual's lifetime. Jesus becomes the means to the individual's fulfillment and enlightenment, leading this one to the “good” that is found ultimately in him or herself. Jesus, the perfect consciousness, shows each one the good that was there all along. This denial of Jesus' bodily reality ultimately allows for violence as that supposedly does not effect the consciousness.

However, the great subtlety of this narrative, this Story of Faith, is that while it is supposedly collapsed into the individual, what is really going on is that the polity of the liberal-democratic nation-state takes a hegemonic role in the whole story as the supposedly “neutral” zone in which choices can take place. Hence, the birth of the marketplace. The state is the neutral zone in which the “real work” takes place, which is the choosing of different products to bring fulfillment. However, when someone comes in and challenges the validity of this system by introducing something outside the polity—because despite the genius of the liberal-democratic nation-state, there is something outside of this polity—the state needs to be able to hold power over those individuals. Hence, the state has the ability to used sanctioned violence so that killing is acceptable when it is done in a state-backed uniform or for the sake of upholding the state. It is violence on the fringes of the state so that violence will not happen within the state.

There cannot be violence within the bounds of the state lest there not be free choice but some sort of unhealthy coercion. The power to choose is the central focus of this narrative. You must be able to choose your own best so long as it does not infringe on anyone else's “right” to choose. Hence, voting, free speech, open marketplaces, an emphasis on self-knowledge, and the list goes on. Again, violence is a practice that is reserved for the state but small amounts of violence and violent ways of dealing with each other—blowing each other off, passing by “the poor” as if they did not exist, segregating ourselves into social classes as if to legitimize the existence of the marketplace—each of these are practices which are violent to one another in that they do not recognize that God has created each one and all ones together and treat one another as a gift because of that fact. Instead, the liberal self moves around this supposedly neutral world choosing, buying, consuming, taking in, getting “free stuff,” “thinking,” “changing,” “growing,” etc., etc., etc. And all of this within the confines of one's own personal bubble that is defined by one's preferences and inclinations. All of liberalism is a sucking into the self. And the nation-state supports that wholeheartedly. It is the structure that allows it to exist and these practices perpetuate and legitimate its existence.

In the sucking into the self, the liberal self seeks to find a sense of transcendental peace, of unity with the aggregate, of acceptance in all because “life belongs to life” and ultimately we are found in the “ground of being,” Jesus, who will bring us to wholeness by bringing us to the recognition that we are not ultimately different or wrong. We will be freed from guilt, from legalism, from pain. We will be reunited with Christ, from whom we have been separated. In is in this reuniting that we will find peace, happiness, unity, and acceptance. From our acceptance of others (in hope of our acceptance of ourselves), the individuals of the liberal-democratic nation-state are docile and nice to one another lest they upset the balance of acceptance. Happiness and excitement gloss over the real depression and boredom that surfaces as soon as the members of the liberal-democratic nation-state have enough time to stop and think.

The Story of God is radically different. Finding its expression in the narrative Christian Scriptures, the Story of God is not a story of the individual and that individual's faith which moves them toward God. It is the story of God's faithfulness to and salvation of humans so that God might ultimately be glorified. God is the actant behind the activity in the story of God so that even as individuals live and respond either obediently or disobediently to God's call and action in their lives, all action is upheld and sustained by God, who renders all things intelligible—any faith that is is because God has made it that it might be so. Any good that is is because God has upheld that good and brought it to be. Even time and place have been created by and for and in God, as seen in Genesis 1 as God creates outside of space and time, seen in the exegesis of tobu wabohu. God is the actant behind the story creating the story that happens. Even in the stories of people, God is present in very important ways. In the story of Ruth, an alien, widowed woman and her widowed mother-in-law live faithfully to Torah, responding to God in obedience to his Word. Although God does not show up in explicit ways, booming from a mountaintop, God is present throughout in the realities of Torah. The story is soaked in God, even if no one ever talks about being wet.

Again, this narrative does not happen in a vacuum. God shows up in God's polity, the church, the people of God, the elect. In Ruth, it is in the concrete, bodily, hand-to-mouth and feet-to-feet realities of life. Ruth, Boaz and Naomi and others interact in a way that is faithful to each other as the people of God in the world. As demonstrated in Harinck, Jesus is not an etheral consciousness but an apocalypse, a revelation to the physical world. Jesus really lived, died and was risen and in that bodily reality, the bodily reality of the church is established. The people of God come together and live in a way that forms to Jesus' death and resurrection, a cruciform like that is fleshed out regularly in the Lord's Supper. In that act, the people of God are constituted and made into something that stands apart from the liberal-democratic nation-state. We are made into those that God is saving, grafted into the branch of God's election and salvation that has come through God's faithfulness to us. As made evident in Ruth, Exodus, Acts, Revelation and elsewhere, the elect are often oppressed. This is, in some ways, a necessary practice of being the elect. Jesus was oppressed. Jesus called us to be oppressed, to be persecuted. Oppression is evidence of election because when something is wholly other than the polity in which it finds itself—and the people of God are always in struggle against the polities of this world—there is bound to be oppression.

The practices of the people of God, interestingly enough, look a lot like oppression. Submission, restitution, penance, the ingesting of the body and blood of Christ, faithful and obedient discipleship: these are the practices of a cruciform people, a people who follow the gospel which is the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. We die to ourselves and before one another that we may be raised to life. We are slain that we may be raised to life. We are “always carrying in the body the death of Jesus so that the life of Jesus may be made visible in our bodies” (2 Cor. 4:10). This is the people of God, constituted in the body and blood of Jesus and in the practices of our relationships with one another, not that there is an inherent value in the relationship but that Jesus has brought us together and we cannot escape relating to one another. One quite distinct practice in the story of God from the story of Faith is that in that of Faith, there is no place for memory unless that memory is subsumed within the individual. The individual takes into himself all that is necessary and all else can be discarded. In the Story of God, in the church, the individual is caught up into the polity of the church by the memory of the Eucharist, of communally reading the Scriptures, of passing the peace of Christ and recognizing that in this passing of peace, there is a participation with the catholic body of Christ, despite the differences and distinctions that the liberal-democratic nation-state may make. Ruth does the preposterous thing of following a frail old widow back to a failing homeland, probably to die. And in her faithfulness, in her practice of following the people of God and making them her own people, of making Yahweh her God, she is caught up and enfolded into this story, ultimately worked into the line of Jesus which God is bringing about. In the story of Faith, there is no need for this memory if it moves past the individual usage of a particular individual. But if one lives in God's story in which time and place are real, yet tensive symbols, catching the individual up into something in which s/he is lost and still contributes to, then this one contributes and participates in something that is greater that that one's self and yet is also who that one truly is, namely the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

In the virtues of the story of God, one finds, basically, faith, hope, love, forgiveness, peace. These values are the goals after which one strives and come in bits and pieces with the recognition that the coming Kingdom of God, when all things will be made whole in and through and for God, is still yet to come. That tension, of the kingdom being here and not here drives the church on to work for these values, to strive to see them in its own life—often a failing endeavor. But God is making it whole. God is taking the good from the activity of God's people and drawing the world to Godself. Transformation is real and is happening; it happens personally and socially, and it is an outpouring of God's self. These virtues come about from the practices mentioned before and from the resources of the church: the Scriptures and the Eucharist, with which Jesus makes us into a glorious being.

Difference

Whether the church follows the story of God or the story of Faith makes all the difference in the world, literally. I will quote Christian Smith from his book Soul Searching about his concept of Moralistic Therapeutic Deism:

“The creed of his religion, as codified from what emerged from our interviews, sounds something like this:

1. A God exists who created and orders the world and watches over human life on earth.

2. God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other...

3. The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself.

4. God does not need to be particularly involved in one's life except when God is needed to resolve a problem.

5. Good people go to heaven when they die....

Moralistic Therapeutic Deism exists, with God's aid, to help people succeed in life, to make them feel good, and to help them get along with others—who are otherwise different—in school, at work, on the team, and in other routine areas of life” (p. 162-3, 169)

This is where the hegemony of the story of Faith has led North American Christians. Being Christian no longer has anything to do with God. It is entirely subsumed in the individual, and even those who buy into this would not agree that that is acceptable. When the story of God is taken seriously, the church is not a community of common interest. It is constituted by the gospel which blows apart the notions of individual rights. The responsibility of everyone is that the gospel would go on unhindered (Acts 28) from the assembly and within the assembly of the Lord. Also, the Church matters in the Story of God. If the Story of Faith is real, the church is an irrelevant institution. We can change consciousness in a thousand different ways and far more effectively than the church. Jesus and indeed the “community” become choices for us, examples of ways to live our life, but nothing that compels or binds us, nothing that requires faithfulness. All semblance of Christocentrism is shattered. Jesus is merely what I could be. No longer do I lay down my life so that Jesus can work in us. I lay down my life so that I can be as enlightened as Jesus. Finally, in the story of Faith, we cannot love. People become choices, market options. We cannot truly lay down our lives for each other, as in 1 John 3:16. Instead, we lay down our lives for one another because that is ultimately the best option for me. This is not love. This is a self-collapsing hell of a life where each one collapses all that is into him or her self, violently discounting the poor, the disinherited, the forgotten because they cannot help me to succeed, by whatever my rubric of success is. I may even become a social justice type and then use the poor for my success while discounting the rich. There is no good end in this—only death. But if the people who God is calling will embrace the death of God's Son Jesus, they will be raised to life, enabled to love and made righteous in the apocalypse of Jesus Christ who lived, died, and was raised again. There is a good end in this world but it is not found in this world—it is found in the Creator God who is drawing all things into Godself for God's good end. Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Amen.

1These cannot be spoken of separately, but only in some particularity

2The Church is the people of God, though this should not exclude the Jews who have not lost their election in the institution of the Church.