How to Read the Bible Part 3: Understanding the Big Story
Over the last few weeks, I’ve endeavored to address some of the common questions I get as a pastor from people who want to better understand how to read the Bible well. This week I want to touch on the subject of the Bible’s metanarrative.
Metanarrative is a fancy word that essentially means the “story beyond the stories.” It is the grand overarching story that is being told through a series of smaller stories. The Bible tells such a metanarrative or “big story" and reading the Bible well begins with understanding the Bible’s big story. As I noted last week, the big story of the Bible is the focus of God’s redemptive mission for creation—his work to reconcile all things to himself in Jesus the Christ.
While the Bible is filled with a vast amount of stories, those stories function as the spiritual family history, so-to-speak, telling us where we came from as members of God’s family, and just as importantly, where Jesus intends for us to go. While the Bible is uniquely inspired and authoritative, when we enter into relationship with God and his people, we take on its stories as a part of our own spiritual ancestry, in much the same way my adoptive daughter took on my family history as her own when we adopted her. We become a part of the unfolding story as God continues to work in creation and bring his purposes to fruition.
There several ways in which theologians and teachers have broken down the major “acts” of the Bible (like the acts in a play). Some examples are:
The Story Arc (Credit, Mark Hopkins, Fuller Theological Seminary):
Genesis 1-2 (Creation: Shalom Undisrupted)
The Gospels (Jesus: Shalom Incarnate)
Revelation 21-22 (New Creation: Shalom Undisrupted)
The Five-Act Play (Credit, N.T. Wright)
Creation
The Fall
Israel
Jesus
The Church
But my personal favorite is the Seven-Act Play (Credit, Mark Hopkins, Fuller Theological Seminary). Notice how the climactic point of Scripture is Jesus and each movement has a pairing preceding and following Jesus:
Creation: Shalom Undisrupted
Fall: Shalom Disrupted
Israel: God with Us
JESUS: Shalom Incarnate
Church: God with Us
Consummation: Shalom Initiated
New Creation: Shalom Undisrupted
When we understand how the stories of the Bible fit into one big redemptive story and when we see our place in the continued unfolding of that story, we also begin to see how some seemingly-irrelevant or odd components of the Bible fit into our spiritual history. The endless genealogies are no longer random people—they are our spiritual AncestryDNA, telling us the family lineage through which our faith has been handed down unbroken for thousands of years. Ecclesiastes, Lamentations, and Job remind us that living as God’s people is often filled with suffering and toil, but God still reigns. Song of Solomon reminds us how important healthy marriages are to the continued flourishing of God’s people and as a means to image to the world the faithfulness of God to his Church.
Understanding the Bible in this light also helps affirming our place in God’s family and forming us together as his people. Borrowing from Scott Moreau’s Contextualizing the Faith, here are five benefits to approaching Scripture with this “big story mindset” in mind:
1. Engaging God’s big story establishes and maintains our identity as children in God’s family.
As noted previously, engaging Scripture with its metanarrative in mind psychologically binds us to the family. We begin to understand that our faith isn’t a private affair and there’s no such thing as “Lone Ranger Christians” (or at least, there shouldn’t be). Entrance into covenant with Jesus is also entrance into covenant with his people, the Church. The two are inseparable. That is not the same thing as saying in order to be saved one must belong to a particular church. Rather, we inherit a spiritual family whether we like it or not, but largely we’re much better off with them than we are apart from them.
2. Engaging God’s big story restores order to the past in our lives and gives new order to the future in our lives.
When we rehearse the story of redemption we’re reminded that pain is never wasted. We’re reminded that the suffering we have endured in the past was not in isolation—our spiritual kin have endured suffering—even our Savior endured suffering. It speaks volumes that the Bible affirms that when confronted with the nature of human suffering, Jesus did not offer an explanation but instead stepped into and experienced for himself human suffering. God is not the God of cheap proof texts and shallow responses—he’s the God who sits next to us in our pain and weeps alongside us.
The big story of Scripture also gives new order to our life’s purpose. We are called to participate in God’s redemptive mission in the earth—to show the love of Jesus in service, to care for creation, to advocate for the poor and the marginalized. It gives us a reason to wake up in the morning.
3. Engaging God’s big story empowers us to transition from walking in-step with the world toward walking in-step with God’s family.
The unfolding story we find in Scripture is not static. It is moving forward. The redemptive plan of God continues to move through time and space toward the return of Christ when he will raise the dead and renew creation. If the world is moving in one direction, and the mission of God in another, the big redemption story calls us to reverse course and follow Christ.
4. Engaging God’s big story reminds us of the cultural values, traditions, and patterns we hold dear as God’s family.
The metanarrative of the Bible describes how God’s people have and are to live in covenant relationship with him. While our diverse cultures vary across time and geography, there is a worldview thread which runs throughout the Church, permeating and transforming cultures into the image of Christ. Engaging the Scriptural story as our story should actually cause us to think of ourselves less as citizens of whatever country we live in and instead as citizens of Heaven, called as ambassadors to represent our king in a foreign land. For me, my values, my traditions, my patterns, have all looked less and less “American” as I’ve grown into Christ, and they’ve begun to look more and more Christian. I’m a citizen of a foreign kingdom, establishing outposts in a land over which one day Christ will come and establish his total rule. I begin to realize that I have a stronger bond with my neighbor who shares my faith and not my politics, than I do with my neighbor who shares my politics but not my faith. I begin to realize that my family is the Christian Syrian refugee trying to find safety or Christian Mexican immigrant detained in a holding cell. My family is the persecuted pastors in Iran. It is the Christians gathering in torched churches in Egypt. That’s my family.
5. Engaging God’s big story reconnects us to God’s bigger work in the world.
When I see the big story of Scripture I’m reminded that the world does not revolve around me—I’m not the center of it, the world is not especially blessed by my presence or indebted to me for my existence. My Western individualism and American narcissism is put in check when I recognize I’m one of many “living stones” being built up into a spiritual house (2 Pet. 2:5). I’m a footnote in the unfolding story of God’s work in and through the Church. There’s a certain comfort in, as Greg Surratt often says, being able to “resign from being general manager of the universe.” Despite current circumstances, Jesus’ Church will endure. Despite persecution or hardship, Jesus’ Church will endure. Despite the allure of power and greed and privilege, Jesus’ Church will endure. This doesn’t negate the need for my personal participation, but it also is a helpful reminder that what I’m participating in will continue moving forward long after I’ve been laid to rest.
