Is anyone amazed anymore?
No. Not really. We’re not amazed by anything. In fact, we’re not only not amazed, we’re apathetic about what ought to amaze us. We are the culture of the unamazed and the apathetic.
And not ironically, so many people’s lives are empty, meaningless, and frustrated. It’s because the only thing they have to live for is themselves. And at the end of the day, living for oneself is not the fabulous life because no one is really that fabulous. It’s not a worthy cause. There is no bigger picture, no greater cause, and nothing amazes because life is no bigger than the mirror.
Of course, most people figure out that they’re not that fantastic somewhere along the line so they start searching for meaning elsewhere. They buy stuff and go places and read magazine articles and join groups hoping that something will offer some relief, respite, and significance to life. They are looking for answers.
Academic philosophers talk about these answers in terms of stories. Every culture and religion has its own story, and most of the time culture and religion are closely connected. In our modern day, multi-culture, pluralistic world each person is coached to meld a story that works for them from whatever parts and pieces they like from all the options. Anyone can have any story they like as long as no one suggests that their story is the right story. Especially anathema is talk of there being only one story. The “one story that fits all” is scorned as the “metanarrative.”
David Wells defines the metanarrative as “an overarching structure that enables people to see the connections of its parts and where it’s all heading.” In other words, a metanarrative is a master story, a grand narrative, or a worldview. (Above All Earthly Pow’rs: Christ in a Postmodern World, p.74) It is a story about stories, encompassing and explaining all other ‘little stories.’ It is a worldview that provides a framework upon which an individual’s own experiences and thoughts may be ordered.
And the postmodern culture is at best skeptical about the possibility of one, true story for everyone and at worse our culture is antagonistic and hostile to the idea of the metanarrative.
Of course most people sitting at home in their Lazy Boy are not talking about a “metanarrative” or crafting a clear definition of their worldview. But this itself is a view of the world. And in fact, these people are just as busy trying to construct their own significance and meaning. Their story may be no bigger than the course of their commute, but it is their story. It is the way they look at and approach life, work, relationships, and the world. They include whatever they want and whatever they like into their story. Their story is also likely to be in constant flux since new options turn up around every corner . The only constant is that there are no causes, no crusades, no bigger pictures to fit into. There is nothing to live for except self, and there certainly is nothing to die for (since dying for yourself isn’t very beneficial). Wells describes it like this:
Postmoderns are no longer actors in a vast and unfolding drama. They are actors in their own petit dramas. We are but the pieces of confetti that flutter down, each on its own erratic course, none joined to the others but each making its own solitary way through the air. (p.250)
In other words, life apart from a big story is disconnected, weightless, and pointless.
Wells points out that the assumptions are the same for both the intellectual and the lay-thinker. Both live like there is not one, comprehensive worldview, there is no ultimate, final truth, and there is no meaningful purpose (p. 90). Both act like nothing is more important than themselves. Both are characters in a story that is no amazing story.
Christians, however, know there is a bigger picture. We believe that there is actually one, eternal, universal story — the metanarrative — that explains everything in the world and that explains where everything is going. It sheds light on every event in history, every physical phenomenon in our bodies, it accounts for good and evil, it reveals why some are in power and why others are oppressed by that power.
Our story explains it all and where it is all going and the purpose behind it all. We know that this is a really great story, in fact, it’s The Amazing Story.
2 Comments
Whenever man has made himself the center of all, death and apathy have always followed; truth is buried and God is hated. This one thing I have learned in my studies of History. If God is not the center of all things and is glorified as all in all, then life will suck and hope will be null and void. All of heresy of all time have been about making man as God. We are idol factories without God’s sovereign election and His great love with which He made us alive together with Christ. Thanks be to God for delivering me from this body and world of death.
This is something that I struggle with, and praise God, something that I have some success with - that terrible apathy that you mentioned at the beginning that comes from a loss of childlike amazement at the world and the works of God. I wonder if the trappings of postmodernism and the distractions of our brave new world are entirely to blame, since this sentiment is so prevalent in literature long before any of this came about. Certainly, they do nothing to help, though. Life goes on long after the thrill of living is gone, as they say. Praise God that there is simple relief; praise God that He continues to do mighty works in our lives; praise God for His creation, though it only has enough beauty to remind us of the perfection that it once had, it is enough; praise God whose Spirit fills us with so much wonder, amazement, and excitement.