Meta-narrative: How do we know what matters?

Part of a small series about how the Gospel changes everything (2 Timothy 3:17 & 2 Peter 1:3). 1. Ethics. 2. Purpose 3. Patterns  4. Pictures  5. Boundaries 6. Occasional Details 7. Meta Narrative

God promises David a Kingdom that will last forever (2 Sam 7:13), and then in Daniel we get the promise of a Kingdom starting small and growing to fill the world (Daniel 2:31-35). Jesus' parables about the Kingdom flesh out more of how the Kingdom works, how it grows and what it's like. Like everything else in the Bible it's only a partial picture, we need to fill it out with logic and imagination. What's important here though, and this is one of NT Wright's themes but he's only echoing earlier Reformed thinking, is our glimpse of the meta-narrative. The story we are being saved into. Salvation is for being rescued from the shadowlands into eternity with God and all the adventures that follow. This is more than recognising a biblical or earthly pattern, this is moving from the perspective of character to narrator. There is an uncompromising cultural authority about this viewpoint and the exclusive Christian glimpse of it. This may not be the starting point for apologetics or preaching but it should lurk behind every statement behind every motivation, as God's people we have been given access to a greater story.

[Digory in the Garden of Youth, Magicians Nephew]

Occasional details: What matters?

Part of a small series about how the Gospel changes everything (2 Timothy 3:17 & 2 Peter 1:3). 1. Ethics. 2. Purpose 3. Patterns  4. Pictures 5. Boundaries 6. Occasional Details

The Bible is also a very practical document, Jerusalem is an ancient city located on the Judean plateau inland from the Sea. Or in another example Proverbs advises against overstaying your welcome when visiting a friend. Not only do these details matter by themselves, why did God pick them and not others but they also show us that God is concerned with the individual details of our lives. The schematics of a new skyscraper, have a divine origin. This isn’t to justify obsessive compulsive behaviour, because the Bible skips details at some weird moments. Our job is to delight in the details while simultaneously figuring out which ones to concentrate on and which ones to ignore.

[Western Wall, Jerusalem] 

Boundaries: Where's the edge?

Part of a small series about how the Gospel changes everything (2 Timothy 3:17 & 2 Peter 1:3). 1. Ethics. 2. Purpose 3. Patterns 4. Pictures 5. Boundaries

We've already established it's impossible, without creating a universe-sized-Bible, for God to give the astronaut instructions on how to fly her space ship. But while the morality of space exploration, the ordered science of rockets, the purpose of space travel and the feelings evoked are all found in Scripture so are the boundaries of space travel. Not ethical ones, but actual boundaries from membranes, to political lines, the edge of the Solar system all the way to the edge of the universe. Where one thing actually ends and another begins. God creates and maintains boundaries but also crosses them. Both to mitigate their blurring or to intentionally delete them. This is probably the most abstract of all the ideas in the series but one that's personally important.

[Dutch-Belgian border at Baarle-Nassau]

Pictures: Which life?

Part of a small series about how the Gospel changes everything (2 Timothy 3:17 & 2 Peter 1:3). 1. Ethics. 2. Purpose 3. Patterns 4. Pictures

But neither is the Bible completely rational, it's also an existential document. It forms an impressions, creates pictures. Tolkein and Lewis saw the writer as being a co-creator, perhaps this is the image of God on us, an imagination? The Bible provokes an emotional, imaginative response and provides and emotional imaginative benchmark.  Can I, should I and how should I feel this, describe this? Not ethically, although that's a separate consideration but impressionistically.  God doesn't save the mind and then the will and then lastly the desire and emotions. The gospel isn't just for philosophers, it needs to be proclaimed, understood and applied artistically.

Patterns: What is life?

Part of a small series about how the Gospel changes everything (2 Timothy 3:17 & 2 Peter 1:3). 1. Ethics. 2. Purpose 3. Patterns

Solomon was doing philosophy before Plato, Aristotle and Socrates were setting up Western Civilisation in Greece. God invented rationality, it's a post-Enlightenment aberration to make religion solely irrational. Not only is the Bible characterised by patterns, genealogical lists, organisation of thematic material and numerical symbols etc but it assumes the world is a place that can be explained and understood. All theology (both the conscious academic ivory tower type and the unconscious bible thumping hillbilly string of proof texts) is a form of pattern making. Adam names the animals and John counts the saints around the throne. Our task is to make sense our local patterns and fit them into God's larger patterns.

[Dead Sea Scroll fragments]

Purpose: Why should I live?

Part of a small series about how the Gospel changes everything (2 Timothy 3:17 & 2 Peter 1:3). 1. Ethics. 2. Purpose

Purpose is provided Scripturally in four directions, past, present and future. God made the world a particular way, he was involved from the beginning. In the present God's providence, His ongoing control of events demonstrates an ongoing concern about the significance of what's happening at the present time. He also promises a future, giving us some clues about what to expect. Scripturally this framework is mapped out and the implication is that everything falls within it. It seems almost too obvious to say this but God made everything, keeps it all going and has a direction for everything. This is why the Lord's prayer sweeps from the epoch level, "your kingdom come" to the basic "give us this day our daily bread." The application here is firstly assume a purpose exists and then secondly figure out how it fits into the larger framework. The Bible doesn't provide them because that'd be like having a map of everything drawn to scale, you gonna have to skip some details!

[Brean Down aerial bombing site directional arrow.]

Ethics: How should we then live?

Part of a small series about how the Gospel changes everything (2 Timothy 3:17 & 2 Peter 1:3). 1. Ethics.

If we understand who God is and how he saves us, and then share in this divine life, then we'll also want to share in God's character which is holy and good. This is ethics at the personal level, scaled up to the level of civilisations it is about asking what encourages human flourishing, which is life, liberty and truth. Life has a moral dimension, both personally and culturally, as a society. Scripture provides both the starting point, why we should be moral, and a system of ethical principles, how to be moral. 

How the Gospel changes everything

The gospel is more than a ticket for the ferryman across the styx. It's really more like popping the red pill in The Matrix, and realising what's really going on.  Virginia Owens in And the Trees Clap their Hands: Faith Perception and the New Physics says when we know God we become like spies, secret agents in a world where every clue matters.

The Bible is not just a religious document, it's ideological one, and in it God expresses an opinion about everything. 2 Peter 1:3 "His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life." and 2 Timothy 3:17 "... so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work." You don't being stop being  godly or cease being responsible for doing good works while drinking coffee, interrogating a suspect or making love.

Now it's true that the Scripture doesn't include detailed instructions on about how to travel between the planets or how to bake nice fluffy scones. You could say that Jesus didn't say anything about cars, but does that preclude God having an opinion about if we should make them, what we should do in them and what their place is in our lives? God has an opinion about everything and the Bible speaks to everything in these seven ways.

1. Ethics
2. Purpose
3. Patterns
4. Pictures
5. Boundaries
6. Occasional details
7. The meta-narrative