The Contest of Two Narratives

A battle is waged every day between the two narratives of our lives. The dominant narrative states that what we experience in day to day life is normal and expected. The dominant narrative tells us that our own pursuits are primary. The dominant narrative claims that nothing more exists outside of what is important to us.

But another narrative is available. The other narrative is birthed outside of us and makes claims that we could not enforce. In the words of Walter Brueggemann, “…proclamation is the staging and performance of a contest between two narrative accounts of the world and an effort to show that the YHWH account of reality is more adequate and finally more reliable than the dominant narrative account that is cast among us as though it were true and beyond critique” (The Practice of Prophetic Imagination, p. 3). The dominant narrative feels right because it is the first narrative that we know. However, that circumstance does not make it true.

Jesus’ life and teachings define a new narrative of truth. When his words seem to contradict the norm, they do. When his life appeared to be lived in opposition to the typical, it was. When he seems to be calling us away from the dominant narrative of our lives, he is. Jesus is giving us a new narrative, a new story, to live.