Slackers and Hijackers

Just yesterday, I was channel surfing and landed briefly on IFC (The Independent Film Channel), during The Henry Rollins Show. For those of you who don’t know, Rollins used to be the lead singer of Black Flag, the predecessor of just about every hard rock band presently in existence. He was a screamer before screaming was cool. Now in his forties, Rollins is the self-proclaimed guardian of our national sanity. In his mind, this means spending all of his time railing against the Bush administration, Fox News, and anything else that smells vaguely like a Republican. Apparently, most episodes feature The Disquisition, a stream-of-consciousness-style rant from uber-liberal actress, Jeanine Garofalo. In this particular installment, Garofalo spent her five minutes of expletive-drenched airtime equating those who don’t oppose the war in Iraq with Eva Braun, the mistress of Adolph Hitler, and Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme, Charles Manson’s main squeeze. Excuse me? Did someone just equate me with Eva Braun? Now, don’t get me wrong; I’m all for freedom of speech, but Garofalo’s rant was tasteless, reckless, offensive, and intellectually dishonest. As I see it, this is just one more indication that our culture is embracing postmodernism. As post-modern “intellectuals” continue to discard all our trusted metanarratives, we are left with an every-man-for-himself attitude that is both unhealthy and unnatural.

“Wait a minute,” you say, “What is a metanarrative?” You may not know the term, but chances are much of your life and most of your decisions are determined by one or more of them. A metanarrative is the big story that shapes your worldview. For the ancient Hebrews, it was the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Bible), during the medieval days it was the Holy Roman Church, the Enlightenment embraced a God of order that informed scientific inquiry as their big story, for the pioneers it was Manifest Destiny, and our modern age has been completely dominated by the metanarrative of Darwinism.

Postmodernism suggests that all of these fail to adequately explain the universe so we must discard them. Left with no big story, the postmodern thinker must fend for himself, writing his own independent mini-narrative as he goes along, with no objective standard by which to measure. Is it any wonder that such a directionless worldview would create such a bitter, angry commentator as Ms. Garofalo? But here’s the rub; I don’t believe it’s her lack of metanarrative that’s the culprit; she subscribes to a worldview, but it is one characterized by what it is not. It is an anti-metanarrative. Its coherence derives from its opposition to tradition and, frankly, common sense. It is a “not you worldview.” Because it opposes our previous metanarratives, it looks like postmodernism, but it’s really just a cop-out for intellectual lightweights.

I believe this need to oppose our past springs primarily from our culture’s distaste for the Christian metanarrative of our forefathers, mischaracterized by rigid formulae and iron-fisted authoritarianism. My question? Who hijacked our metanarrative? Who took Jesus’ story of self-sacrifice and servant leadership and turned it into the list of dos and don’ts that so frustrates today’s culture? Nowhere in scripture is our journey toward salvation, mission, or discipleship characterized as a vending machine – put in a quarter and out comes your selection, salvation or forgiveness or peace or whatever candy bar you choose. Neither is it characterized as a switch you flip -- saved, not saved, saved, not saved, saved…

Life is much messier than that and that is why God had to come down here and get messy with us. Rollins and Garofalo would probably appreciate that if they weren’t so busy disagreeing with us. Perhaps that is why Paul instructs us to do everything “without arguing or grumbling.” Instead we should wrestle with the simple metanarrative at the center of Christianity: God created the world and it was good, but we messed it up, so He had to come down and give us a way to make it right. Now, even though we don’t deserve it, we can have a right relationship with God through His son, not by keeping a bunch of rules but by loving one another.

Wow. What a positive message. That’s a metanarrative I can live with. Unfortunately, angry “not you worldview” subscribers control the conversation and we are stuck defending hijackers.