The Series
1: Derrida and Textual Interpretation
2: Lyotard, Metanarratives, and The Christian Story
3: Foucault, Power and Knowledge, “The Golden Compass,” and Church Inc.

“I define postmodern as incredulity toward metanarratives.” -Jean-Francois Lyotard

This is the famous saying by Jean-Francois Lyotard that has caused much heartburn among professing Christians for its seeming rejection of “big stories.” While postmodernism is a (healthy) skepticism and incredulity toward these grand, sweeping big stories, Christians need not fear. As the logic goes, since postmodern thought is an incredulity toward reality-explaining stories and the Christian faith is informed by the Scripture stories, we must reject, wholesale, any postmodern sensibilities as it pits a “storied” belief system against an a-narrative worldview. Thus, Christians could never partner with postmoderns due to this skepticism and postmoderns could never sign-up for Christianity.

But as James K. A. Smith describes in “Who’s Afraid of Postmodernism?“, “orthodox Christian faith actually requires that we, too, stop believing in metanarratives.” It is to this notion of grand stories that I turn my attention in this continued series on the intersection of postmodern thought and Christian spirituality.

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The author’s main, initial goal is to debunk the misunderstanding of Lyotards “incredulity toward metanarratives.” He does not mean that postmodern thought rejects big stories, but that it rejects the manner in which those stories legitimize themselves. In other words, it isn’t the stories themselves that are the problem, but they way they are told (and to a degree why they are told). “For Lyotard, metanarratives are a distinctly modern phenomenon: they are stories that not only tell a grand story, but claim to be able to legitimate or prove the story’s claim by an appeal to universal reason.” It is the appeal to rationalistic, scientific knowledge that supposedly legitimates them as universal narratives.

So then for Lyotard, the tension between modernity and postmodernity revolves around the issue of legitimation: Modernity appeals to science and a universal, autonomous rationalism to legitimate it’s claims on reality and truth, which is set over against narratives that seek not to prove claims, but proclaim them within a story.

Part of the postmodern critique of these universal stories is the unveiling of irony, in that, while science dismisses myths and fables, they themselves are rooted in a narrative. The narrative of science is rooted in a story that appeals to a universal, rational, scientific criteria that supposedly stands outside any particular “language game,” thus guaranteeing universal truth. Yet for the postmodernist, there is this deep down understanding that every scientist is a believer, that every Modernist sits within a particular story of reality.

As Smith suggests, “What characterizes the postmodern condition, then, is not a rejection of grand stories in terms of scope or in the sense of epic claims, but rather an unveiling that all knowledge is rooted in some narrative or myth. The result, however, is what Lyotard describes as a ‘problem of legitimation‘ since what we thought were universal criteria have been unveiled as just one game among many.” In other words, all claims to universal truth (including and especially evangelical claims to absolute truth) are reduced to one “language game” among many, and these games are conditioned by paradigms of cultural and historical commitments, and it’s own set of rules. This state of affairs creates almost no consensus, because there are a multitude of competing myths and language games.

In light of this competition the author poses this question: “Should we be trying to establish a common myth for an entire nation?”

And that’s the key question: in the midst of a plurality of stories is it the job of the Body of Christ to demand belief in our story, or are we called to bear witness to it’s poetry and prose? Since we in fact exist in a multicultural, pluralist society, do we have the right to impose our story on others, or are we called to draw others into our own? Isn’t that what God is doing anyway, beckoning and wooing and drawing people into His Story?

Now in asking this I am not suggesting we do not embrace our story or share it. Obviously, we are called by Jesus to share the Story of Restoration and Redemption. That isn’t the issue. What is the issue is how are we telling the Story, what are we saying as we tell it, and (maybe more importantly) how does the world perceive our Story and telling? Because as Lyotard explains, part of the postmodern condition is an inherent skepticism of stories and their underlying agendas, power plays and commitments.

This exact notion of competing stories was at the forefront of the “Da Vinci Code” book and subsequent movie over the past several years. Dan Brown, a great storyteller, decided to tell an alternative story to the one told by historic Christian orthodoxy of the person of Jesus. Now to be sure, it was pure fiction, but in the eyes of the world it seemed to be a breath of fresh air!

While the entirety of the Christian community developed a severe case of apoplexy, the question I and many other’s asked was this: why are people drawn more to this alternative story of Jesus told by a non-Christian author than the one that the Church tells? Why are people not compelled by the story we are telling about Jesus, let alone the world? Thanks to Lyotard, the Church can understand the world’s reaction to the substance and style of our storytelling.

The Dan Brown Da Vinci flap was not Dan’s fault nor was it an indictment against the forces of secular humanism. Rather the book and movie exposed deep problems with the Bride of Jesus: she is not telling a compelling story nor is the way She legitimizes Herself helpful. Because, as Michael Foucault says (which will be further fleshed-out in the next installment) the use of knowledge and facts are used by the Powerful to gain and maintain power. If this is the perception of postmoderns toward metanarratives and the Church’s storytelling, why do we think the world will listen to and believe our use of knowledge to legitimize ourselves? As previously mentioned, one of the flaws Lyotard brilliantly exposed was the false use of reason to claim a universality, when in reality those “universal” claims are merely one other language game among many. If this is true, why do we think more additions of “Evidence Demands a Verdict” will have any sway over a skeptical postmodern culture?

In the end, Lyotard teaches the Church that how we tell our story and what we say in its telling is utterly important; the way we “legitimize” Christian spirituality among a plurality of spiritual stories is crucial. May the Church return to a bold proclamation of the Creation-Fall-Redemption-Restoration Story, rooted in the sweeping redemptive narrative of the Scriptures themselves. May the Church’s weekly act of Narrative Reenactment (read: Sunday worship) hospitably invite a transcendently sapped world to join us in mysteriously experiencing God’s Story. May the church proclaim that Story not simply with words, but incarnationally, living out the Way of Jesus to show a hurting, broken, desperate world that our Story is real and legitimate. And may we shed any and all agendas and powerful persuasions in an effort to simply “be Jesus” to a world skeptical of our prejudices and commitments.