What Story Do We Live In?

I recently went back and read N. T. Wright’s The New Testament and the People of God. Wright maintains that the Christian “story” responds to four questions.

(1) Who are we? We are humans, made in the image of the creator; we have responsibilities that come with this status. We are not fundamentally determined by race, gender, social class, geographical location; nor are we simply pawns in a determinist game.

(2) Where are we? We are in good and beautiful, though transient, world, the creation of the god in whose image we are made. We are not in an alien world, as the Gnostic imagines; nor in a cosmos to which we owe allegiance as to a god, as the pantheist would suggest.
 
(3) What is wrong? Humanity has rebelled against the creator. This rebellion reflects a cosmic dislocation between the creator and the creation, and the word is consequently out of tune with its created intention. A Christian worldview rejects dualisms which associate evil with createdness or physicality; equally, it rejects monisms that analyse evil simply in terms of some humans not being fully in tune with their environment. Its analysis of evil is more subtle and far-reaching. It likewise rejects as the whole truth all partial analyses, such as those of Marx or Freud, which elevate half-truths to the status of the whole truth.

(4) What is the solution? The creator has acted, is acting, and will act within his creation to deal with the weight of evil set up by human rebellion, and to bring this world to the end for which it was made, namely that it should resonate fully with his own presence and glory. This action, of course, is focused upon Jesus and the spirit of the creator. We reject, that is, solutions to the human plight which only address one part of the problem. (132-133)

Later Wright shows how the answers to these questions evolved throughout biblical history.

But here is a question I have for you: What story are we living in today? Based on what you see in North American culture, what implicit answers do we presume for these questions? (If you are from outside North America, do you see another story?) You don’t need to give a full-blown answer for each question, but do you have thoughts about any of them?

Comments

[Sue]

Yes, but in this day and age when all of Humankind is now face to face in what is essentially a very small boat, and ALL of their narratives and stories too, perhaps the old stories are no longer useful?

Every body face to face means/signifies that ALL of these stories are NOW our common inheritance, and which are now also freely available to anyone with an internet connection.

You talk about and criticize dualism, but the original unconscious dualism begins with the idea or presumption of a "creator" god, outside and apart, and entirely separate from "his" creation.

Thus there is God and the presumed always separate world, and each seemingly separate human being. Two-ness or duality all the way down the line, and now being dramatized all over the planet. Have you read the news?

Plus if you examine all the horrors being dramatised on to the world stage, you will find that many of these conflicts are being generated by people/groups that "live" in different stories or narratives.

All of which in one way or another demonize the presumed other---or everyone who does not belong to our "live" in their inherited story.

That is to say people are killing each other every day BECAUSE they "live" in different competing stories.

Some horrible stories even command that all outsiders be killed or murdered---as per the psychosis of "jihad" preached by the benighted idiot who inspired and justified the terrorist bombing in Indonesia earlier this week.

Meanwhile prior to ALL of the stories every human being is a living-breathing-FEELING presence in the world, and who at Heart are not in any sense separate from each other.

[Michael W. Kruse]

(The four questions are N.T. Wrights)

I understand your answer to #3 to be that the failure to see that god and nature are one, and the competing stories that rise out that duality.

Your #4 seems to be that we be come conscious of our oneness.

This is certainly in tune with various New Age and neo-pagan stories but I don't think it is the story that is driving American culture or most other dominant societies in the world.