Vision
Dominant Narratives

“A ‘dominant narrative’ is a set of stories that dominate a culture and to a large extent define reality for its members.” So Ernest Dempsey defines an important social and cultural idea, one not well understood or even recognized by many in the Christian community (Philosophy Now, July 14, 2015). The dominant narrative of our society is secular, material, and individualist, and this is true for perhaps the large majority of those who profess faith in Jesus Christ. As a community, Christians do not possess a counter-narrative “that claims that reality is different, or even quite the opposite, to what the dominant narrative claims it to be.” As is clear from our captivity to the getting-and-spending-all-about-me lifestyle of our secular and narcissistic age, ideas like “the Kingdom of God” or the “unseen things” of Christ and the Spirit are just that, ideas, and not working realities, not stories within which we live and unfold the plot lines of our lives. Mr. Dempsey explains, “It is never easy to step outside your own world’s narrative and see it from the outside.” But Christians must not use this as an excuse for failing, by every means and medium, to get our story together, own it, live it, tell it, and refuse to back down from it, come what may.

Evolution and religion
Speaking of dominant narratives, you have to give evolutionists credit for insisting they can explain everything from within their worldview. Take, for example, Lizzie Wade’s report, “Birth of the Moralizing Gods,” in the 28 August 2015 issue of Science. Ms. Wade reports on the efforts of evolutionary scientists Ara Norenzayan and Edward Slingerland to account for the origin and success of the major religions of the world, those which have a “moralizing God.” As societies became larger and more complex, they could not depend on family ties or tribal commitments to keep the peace. So they invented the idea of a God who watches everyone and knows everything, and who rewards good and punishes evil. And everybody believed them, and still does. Now wasn't that simple? Almost as simple, one reads between the lines, as those silly people who believe such a silly notion. It’s amazing how much you can learn from the evolutionary perspective if you just stop to think about things. Now Drs. Norenzayan and Slingerland are in the process of “testing” their hypothesis. Gosh. What do you suppose they’ll find?

Understanding
Clare Melamed believes that aid agencies could do a better job if they stopped assuming people’s needs and took the time to understand, through data collection, what poor people really want (“What do they want?” Aeon, 10 September 2015). While this would seem to make sense, it’s not what aid agencies do, for a variety of reasons. As a result, rather than help the poor, many of the best-funded agencies may actually be hindering their aspirations. Ms. Melamed argues that agencies should spend more time collecting hard data in the form of numbers, gleaned from interviews. This would help them to plan better and be more effective in addressing the needs most on the minds of the people they’re trying to serve. She writes, “Words have power. But so do numbers, and they are in short supply. We need lots more of them. To tweak Karl Marx’s line, the point might be to change the world, but we should really try to understand it first.” Good counsel not only for aid agencies, but for Kingdom-seekers and Gospel-sowers.

The Worldview of Neuroscience
Alva Noë rejects the claims of neuroscience, that all of knowing – hence, all of life – reduces to what happens in our brains (“How Art Reveals the Limits of Neuroscience,” The Chronicle of Higher Education, September 8, 2015). He insists that, rather than being merely passive in the presence of art, waiting for the brain to perform its peculiar operations, people are active and working to acquire understanding, that is, to force their brains into new modes of operation, rather than to be dictated to by their brains and their hard-wired ways. People learn. Minds change. Art, he insists, “illuminates us to ourselves.” Neuroscience can’t see this because it’s stuck in its presuppositions about the world and how it works – the dominant narrative of evolutionary secularism. But art challenges our settled assumptions and preferred ways of thinking, thus allowing us to take more realistic stock of ourselves and our world and to grow beyond the constraints of our worldview into new horizons of learning and life. He believes even neuroscience could benefit from more unbiased exposure to the arts: “Perhaps it is art that will allow us to forge a more plausible conception of ourselves, one suitable, finally, for grounding a better neuroscience.” There is much to ponder here in considering the role of art in communicating the Christian worldview, and on the increasingly tenuous hold of scientism, in all forms, over our understanding of life and the world.

Disciplines
Writing
“Literature can lead to activism and can feed into policy making.” So argues Robert MacFarlane in an article in the 2 September 2015 edition of NewStatesman (“Why We Need Nature Writing”). Mr. MacFarlane provides an overview of the recent (past decade) proliferation of writing about nature, and the ways this has become tied to ethics, activism, and public policy. While some discount the importance of writing about nature, he insists that the continuous sowing of this kind if writing into the public square affects the imaginations of people and, vey often, their desires and priorities. “Literature has the ability to change us for good, in both senses of the phrase.” He continues, “Powerful writing can revise our ethical relations with the natural world, shaping our place consciousness and place conscience.” Absolutely correct. This is true about nature writing in all its forms, including poetry and fiction. It can also be true about Kingdom writing, which strives to help readers achieve the Kingdom turn, on the other side of which, everything us being made new.

Envoi
The Greatest Temptation

It's always present, like a melody
that swarms your brain at but the slightest cue,
a memory of something you should do
or did, or some place you would rather be
than where you are just now. You're never free
of it; you never will be. Let some new
adversity arise to threaten you
and your wellbeing; the possibility 
present of something benefitting me;
or just the hasty thought that you should do
some clever thing, or some command eschew - 
and there it is, our greatest enemy:
  It isn't pride or vanity or lust,
  but just the inclination not to trust.

T. M. Moore