Good Story Telling

Explaining Reality in a Culture of Confusion

As I write, final tabulations are still settling out following an election that pundits will be analyzing for years to come. Reactions from the “losing” side have ranged from stunned shock to somber resignation to apoplexy to complete emotional meltdown. Reactions from the “winning” side have run the gamut from quiet gratitude to dancing in the streets. Speculations as to how things will play out next are all over the board. Perhaps our only point of agreement is that we’re all glad it’s over, at least until the next cycle heats up. What can worldview and apologetics proficiency bring to this moment? Quite a lot, actually.

The Story of Reality

In her upcoming book, When Culture Hates You: Persevering for the Common Good as Christians in a Hostile Public Square, Natasha Crain writes:

People today lament the political polarization we see as if it’s just a function of no one wanting to get along. But our present-day polarization isn’t a reflection of gratuitous disagreement over trivial matters. It’s a reflection of the seismic split that has happened in people’s underlying views on the nature of reality.

Exactly. The biblical worldview tells us that the story of reality¹ has a beginning, a middle, and an end—and that we are all living in the middle of the story. Anyone knows that if you arrive on the scene in the middle of a story, you’re bound to be confused. You need to know the beginning and something about the end if you’re going to make sense of the middle. That’s where worldview comes in. Worldview is all about setting the present, or some immediately present experience, in its wider context; it’s about providing explanations that make sense of what otherwise would be confusing or inexplicable.

Regardless of how one interprets Genesis, the Bible is clear that there was in fact a beginning. Informed apologists can explain how the most up-to-date science affirms this tenet of the faith (see “In the Beginning”). Moreover, the biblical story says everything that exists was conceived with purposeful intent. For example, we all know sex has a function and results in certain outcomes, but as Juli Slattery explains, there is much more to sexuality than personal pleasure and procreation (see “Recovering Sex by Design”). Along that line, we can also explain why attempts to meet relational needs outside of their intended context inevitably go awry; it is precisely because there is an inherent design to our sexuality (see “Romancing Amiss” , and “Finding Laura”).

Points of Light

Returning to post-election discussions, some, particularly among the nominally (and non-) Christian, are expressing anodyne platitudes about love and tolerance and unity. They may have different understandings about what those words mean, but most people agree that they represent values worth upholding. Equipped apologists can go beyond affirming platitudes by explaining how these ideals, as well as America’s founding concepts of self-evident truths, inalienable rights, and human equality, trace their lineage to the Judeo-Christian Scriptures; they find no grounding in any other “enlightenment.”

“The first to present his case seems right,” writes Solomon, “until another comes along and cross-examines him” (Proverbs 18:17). As Christians, we not only have the wherewithal to disagree without being disagreeable, but as equipped apologists we can love our neighbors by always being prepared to ask good questions and explain present tensions within the larger story whose end is not only good but promises new beginnings.

Note
1. The phrase is taken from The Story of Reality: How the World Began, How It Ends, and Everything Important that Happens in Between by Greg Koukl (2017).