Everyone subscribes to a metanarrative. Most of us either don’t know what ours is, or have simply never thought about it.
A metanarrative is a comprehensive claim that explains why everything is the way that it is. It is a “theory of everything”, not in the sense that everything is immediately explained by the theory, but that, in the end, the metanarrative provides the overarching framework that allows us to explain everything that is. This comprehensive claim is a grand narrative that encompasses not just the universe around us, but everyone in that universe.
The temptation is to assume that a metanarrative is simply a worldview by another name, but the two are not necessarily synonymous. A worldview is the experience of the metanarrative; it is an explanation of how a person might see the world based on their understanding of the metanarrative. A metanarrative, on the other hand, explains how things are regardless of whether or not the participants within the narrative are even aware that they are participants. Certainly, any good metanarrative must take this into account.
An atheistic metanarrative, for example, might not go any further than the teaching of the Big Bang Theory and Evolution, at least insofar as it explains the existence of the world and humanity. The claim is a comprehensive truth claim: if it is true, everyone, and indeed everything, is bound by that metanarrative. The metanarrative should provide, however, an explanation of why the vast majority of people in the world and throughout history have had some sense of a god or gods. The truth of the metanarrative is not dependent on whether the participants recognize it as true, to be sure, but it must nevertheless take into account the question of why so many people don’t see it as true.
The message of Christianity is also fundamentally tied to a metanarrative. It begins with the belief that the Bible makes a comprehensive claim about the existence of everything. As one author wrote, “all human and non-human reality must find its place in this one story or nowhere.”[1] If it were not a comprehensive narrative, then the claims of Jesus lose all of their authority. Jesus would either be a lunatic or a liar, running around claiming to be God when he is just a participant like the rest of us in a much different metanarrative, and in fact, one in which God might not exist at all.
Thus, the Christian “Gospel” message, which claims that reconciliation with God can be found through Jesus alone, is built into this comprehensive claim on everything. If the Biblical story is true, and all that exists finds its beginning and its end in God and within His story, then God stepping into reality to redeem a creation that has gone astray takes on great significance. If, on the other hand, Christianity is simply one expression of religion among many that exists as a placebo to get us through life, as some have called it, then it is a waste of time.
The message of salvation in Jesus Christ cannot be removed from the biblical metanarrative. The “gospel” is fundamentally incompatible with the view that regulates faith to only the private, personal sphere. It’s either a comprehensive claim that we believe, or it’s nothing.
The challenge is that we live in a day and age when the tendency is to want to reject metanarratives altogether because of the comprehensive truth claims that they represent. Ultimately that is foolishness; again, there is an overarching reality that is true, whether or not we want to admit to its truth or not. The truth of the metanarrative, whatever it is, is simply not dependent on our ability to recognize it as true. And to reject a metanarrative because we don’t think we can know it is equally foolish; we must still admit that a metanarrative exists one way or the other, and further admit that it is we who have given up the search.
No person, least of all a Christian, should give up on the quest to understand the comprehensive claim to as great a degree as they can, because our metanarrative will have profound implications on how we live our lives. If the Biblical metanarrative is fundamentally untrue, for example, then Christianity is foolishness. It may make you feel better, but so do most hobbies.
In the end, it is not just the Biblical metanarrative that should be under scrutiny; it is all metanarratives. Does your comprehensive claim, your metanarrative, make sense of why things are the way that they are? If it doesn’t, it might be time to explore a new one!
[1] Goheen, Michael W. (2011-04-01). Light to the Nations, A: The Missional Church and the Biblical Story (Kindle Locations 558-561).