Pt. 3 Metamodernism: Inviting Others into God's Story

Part 3 of an essay on metamodernism, Christianity, and the church

When nailing gelatin to a wall, it's easy to drive your point, but the metamodern gelatin will then slide right off. The ever-changing nature of metamodern grand narratives assures there is room for everyone in the story if you don't mind hopeing in something that will never come.

Invite others into the story of God

The gospel of Jesus Christ is God's grand narrative of God's loving and relentless pursuit and sinful and rebellious humanity. While the gospel story does contain elements of punishment for sinful humanity and an invitation to live according to Jesus' pattern of life, such elements are only a part of the gospel story. However, the gospel is often presented as only a solution for bad behavior, and Metamodernism may dismiss such an approach. When surrendering to Jesus, every Christian received and responded to God’s invitation into God’s grand narrative. Metamoderns need to be invited to "taste and see" (Psalm 34:8) that God's grand narrative is good. Yes, sin must be addressed, confessed, and repented, but once one has tasted and seen that God is indeed good. The good news of Jesus is that God is building a family and that family has a story (a grand narrative), and that story is good and has a certain future. In other words, God is building a family with real hope.

Live in the grand narrative of your church community in your community

God's grand narrative is the story of a family where everyone is equal and everyone is adopted. The grand narratives of metamodernism are, in the words of one church leader, "like nailing Jello (gelatin) to a wall” (Hoaglund, 2021). When nailing gelatin to a wall, it's easy to drive your point, but the metamodern gelatin will then slide right off. The ever-changing nature of metamodern grand narratives assures there is room for everyone in the story if you don't mind hopeing in something that will never come. However, Christians belong to a different grand narrative, a narrative with real hope. The Christian narrative is a narrative of family. Families live collectively looking out for one another, helping one another, forgiving, correcting, building up, encouraging, and celebrating one another. Considering the metamodern cultural shift, Western Christianity may need to become less individualistic and begin living the grand global family story of God’s grand narrative.

Seek to help society flourish

Seeking to help society flourish is the Jeremiah 29:7 call to pray and act for society to prosper. Seeking to help society flourish is different from seeking God's kingdom on earth, and any attempt to pursue God's kingdom politically is, according to Mohler (2019), is an attempt to domesticate the kingdom of God. Mohler also warns that seeking God's kingdom on earth is not something humans can achieve through social action. Helping society flourish is important for two reasons. First, it is in line with God's word. Second, seeking to help our community flourish attempts to address a key outcome of metamodernism. Modernism purported the goal of progress; postmodernism purported the goal of deconstruction.Metamodernism pursues the goal of constructive action (Corsa, 1018) or constructive society behaviors. Seeking to help society flourish enables Christians to love their neighbors and demonstrate God's love in metamodern language.