"You can't stop stories being told," Dr. Parnassus tells his relentless foe with religious assurance in The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus. The world of belief-systems and worldviews is indeed a complicated playground of stories, storytellers, and allegiances—and this is one film which certainly attests to that complicated dance. What makes the interplay of story most complicated is perhaps what is often our inability to perceive these interacting powers in the first place. That which permeates our surroundings, subconsciously molds our understanding, and continuously informs our vision of reality, is not always easy to articulate. The dominate culture shapes our world in ways we seldom even realize, and often cannot realize, until something outside of our culture comes along and introduces us, and the scales fall from our eyes.
Further complicating the great arena of narratives is the fact that we often do not even recognize certain systems for the metanarratives that they are, or else we grossly underestimate the story's power. Whatever versions of the story we utilize to understand human history—atheism, capitalism, pluralism, consumerism—their roots run very deep in the human soul. This is why Bishop Kenneth Carder can refer to the global market economy as a "dominant god," or consumerism, economism, and nationalism as religions.(1) These deeply rooted ideologies are challenged only when a different ideology comes knocking, when a different faith-system comes along and upsets the system that powerfully orders our worlds.
This is perhaps one reason that Christian scripture calls again and again to remember the story, to tell of the acts of God in history, and to bear in mind the one who is near. For into this world of belief-systems and worldviews, God tells the story of creation and the pursuit of its redemption, and then Christ comes and proclaims a kingdom entirely other. The narrative we discover introduces us not only to a new world but a world that jarringly shows us our own.
The signs and scenes of leading to the crucifixion alone challenge many of our cultural norms, turning upside down ideas of authority, power, and glory, presenting us a kingdom that reverses everything we know. What kind of a king crouches down to his subjects to wash their feet? What kind of a leader tells those under him that the way to the top requires a dedication to the bottom? What kind of meal promises to lift us to another kingdom where we are ushered into the presence of the host and then asked to taste him? Yet this is the story he told and Christians tell. "And he took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, 'This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me'" (Luke 22:19). Not long after their meal, his physical body was broken, too.
The story of the Christian is one that remembers the last moments of a rabbi and his disciples—a meal shared, a lamb revealed, feet washed by one who claimed to be both king and servant. It is a story that invites its hearers into a kingdom entirely different than the many stories before them, connecting them with a God who somehow reigns within a realm that is both here and now, and also approaching. In the Lord's Supper, Christians are literally "taking in" this kingdom, which unites followers with Christ in such a way that helps us to live as he lived: "in" but not "of" the world of stories.
When the apostle Paul called early followers of Christ not to be conformed to this world but to be transformed by the renewing of their minds so that they might discern what is the will of God—"what is good and acceptable and perfect," he was reminding them that there are overlapping and contradicting stories all around them, but that it is the story of God that must be their orienting narrative (Romans 12:2). In other words, Christians are not left the option of living unaware of all the subconscious ways in which we are formed by the world of stories. Living into the kingdom of God means recognizing the power of God's story beside every competing narrative—not necessarily shutting each one out, but interpreting every other story through the Story. Living further into the story of God’s reign, the Christian's very life, like that of Christ's, shows the world the subversive power of a narrative that moves far beyond the systems of "postmodernism," "consumerism," and "nationalism."
Whether Christian, atheist, or Hindu, no one can avoid being in the world. We cannot escape the world's formative stories, nor should we want to escape the particular place where we have been planted.(3) Yet, nor do we want it to become so much our home that we cannot see all the dust on the windows or feel the draft of a roofless shelter. For the Christian, the more we find ourselves living into a different kingdom, a world breathed by the Father, proclaimed by Christ, and revealed by the Spirit, the unchallenged, unseen storylines of the world come sharply into focus. And the more we taste and see of the kingdom of God, the more we taste and see of the kingdom of earth as well. Like Paul, at times something like scales fall from our eyes and the Spirit compels us to get up and re-experience our baptisms, going further into the kingdom, where our voices regain strength in telling the unstoppable story.(4)
Jill Carattini is managing editor of A Slice of Infinity at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.
(1) Kenneth Carder, "Market and Mission: Competing Visions for Transforming Ministry," Lecture, Duke Divinity School, Oct. 16, 2001, 1.
(2) Lesslie Newbigin, The Open Secret: An Introduction to the Theology of Mission (Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 1995), 95.
(3) Jesus himself prayed, "My prayer is not that you take them out of the world, but I ask that you protect them from the evil one" (John 17:15).
(4) "And immediately something like scales fell from his eyes, and his sight was restored. Then he got up and was baptized, and after taking some food, he regained his strength" (Acts 9:18-19).
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