Living in a False Narrative

Many find it cute when young children in December begin to set their hopes all upon the cultural narrative of Santa Claus.  They make a list for him.  Perhaps they include that list in a letter they send off to the North Pole.  The night before they leave out the cookies and the milk.

However, if someone were still doing all of this in their 20s or 30s, someone might rightly laugh.   Their laugh might turn into befuddled wonder if that person revealed to them that ultimately did not believe the Santa narrative to be true.  What if they said, “I know it is not true, but yet I choose to live in the narrative.”  Oh I suppose people could allow them to put out a few cookies for nostalgia’s sake, but if they really ordered their life around something they knew to be nothing more than folklore, people would think it quite odd.

There are many in the Church in our day who deny the reality of many scriptural accounts  (Creation, Jonah, the Flood) and yet still claim to live within the narrative of Scripture.  They have no trouble ordering their life according to what they call the “epics” of the faith.   They say, “Who cares if they they are reality?”

I suppose once again we could understand a young child not being able to draw a strong distinction between lore and lucidity.  And we might even be fine with an adult who likes to be nostalgic about a time when that line was quiet blurry.  But it still seems odd to me that people would order their lives according to a narrative while not believing it to be real.  I would think the world would not find truly compelling one who admits that the formative narratives of their life are just made up stories repeated and studied for instruction.

One might respond that many people let obviously fictitious narratives inform their life.  The Little Engine that Could has from infancy formed many people to shoot for the stars so to speak.  But isn’t it also true that no one would suggest that they truly order their life based solely on such a fable.  As they age, they may find the fable in concert with reality and therefore allow it to continue to inspire them but no one writes down The Little Engine that Could as their religion on the census form.

Only those things believed to be reality can ultimately be substantively formative.  We may be wrong in our assessment of what it real or not, but true formation that not be sustained where one readily dismisses the reality of the narratives in which they live.  That is fine for the theatre, but not for the real stage of life.

Others might argue that they simply take the stories as their literary genre suggests they should be taken.  But no doubt any scholar without a pony in the race would claim that the gospel accounts are as much literary epics as Genesis 1 and 2.   There is surely a literary distinction between things like parables and reported accounts of events.  These differences inform our understanding of the historicity of these events mentioned in them.   But the truth is the events often doubted in the Old Testament are told in similar literary fashion to the events of Jesus’ life in the New Testament.  Both report things that are not common to human experience and yet the accounts assume their veracity.  That is how the creation story and the flood are presented.  That is how the bodily resurrection of Christ is presented.  Even to be literarily honest, one must either attest the truth of both or deny the actuality of both.  And yet most want to dismiss the things that modern science regularly condemns as disproven while holding onto things like the bodily resurrection of Jesus or the real presence of Christ in the supper.  But know this, there is no more scientifically ridiculous idea than the bodily resurrection of a dead man.

I believe the scripture ultimately not because of any “proof” of them that exists in the world.  I believe what is presented because the Spirit has worked faith in me through the proclamation of Jesus’s death and resurrection for my salvation.  Oh yes I rejoice in and am not surprised when “proof” of scriptural things is found.  But that is not why I believe in the Bible.  I believe because of the Spirit’s work in my life.

Having come to believe that Jesus truly died and rose and that in reality my sins are paid for in that act, I also then yield to the other things God has revealed in his Word.  I do not do this in a purposely ignorant way ignoring the so called “proof” against the historicity of the biblical events.  To be honest, if I were convinced that the key stories of the scriptures were untenable, I would likely leave the whole faith behind.  But until that day comes (God forbid), I will yield to the revelation of the God and believe in the reality of what has been presented to me there.

I cannot live in a narrative I know to be false.  I can not order my life in that way.  Either it is true and I will live in it or it is false and I will leave it behind.