The Meta-Narrative Season

Season One – the Meta-Narrative

The Meta-Narrative

It was a formative season.

I entered carrying spiritual injury I did not yet have language for. Learning to see the larger story became part of the healing.

In the early stages of seminary, through deeper engagement with Scripture as a coherent narrative—and shaped by Neo-Anabaptist traditions—I encountered not just a different story, but a way of evaluating the stories I had inherited.

I learned to locate individual texts within their wider context.

And that context matters.

That doctrines, experiences, and convictions belong within a broader arc—and that they must be questioned when they distort that arc.

Learning to process faith this way—alongside the traumas embedded within it—did not cost me my faith.

It saved it.

These images were created while I was learning the story—trying to see it whole, and to understand where I stood within it.

We started under watchful eye of **Greg Boyd.**
alongside **Paul Eddy** and **Kevin Callahan**, instructors in SEM (School of Everyday Mission).

I learned my fellow SEM students were with me

Two seminal assignments marked our first year:

to tell our life story
to articulate what the Meta-Narrative meant to us.

For me, that required returning to the beginning of my faith—

asking not what I believed, but why I had begun to believe at all.

My Beginning…

In my sophomore year of college, I sought help for heartbreak.

My academic advisor met me there. He offered comfort—and something more.

He started me on the path toward believing in a God

I could actually believe in.

Since then I found my faith journey has had different periods

My journey – from Love, to Hate, to Deconstruction, to Restoration

I also brought in some digging into myself – and my internal parts

And I found four spiritual traumas – recently reinforced

#2 If God is All-Powerful, does God cause **evil and suffering**?

#4 How can we (Christians) **do hate, while loving**?

Then the Meta-Narrative…

#1 In the beginning GOD – and God is love

The symbol I have found for me best illustrates God’s trinitarian – relational love – it starts wth the Father, Son, Spirit in a continuous, eternal, loving relationship.

#2 Existence was tohu vavohu (without form, and void)

Vanta Black is currently the darkest color humans know
*And the earth was **tohu vavohu** (without form, and void) ; and darkness was upon the face of the deep.’*
Genesis 1:2

#3 God created the universe

#4 Including the earth

**God revealed the world within the cosmology the Ancient Near East (ANE) people actually lived in.**

#5 God created all the creatures of the world.

God created humans in his image and likeness – to be the stewards of creation

#8 God has given us Free Will

A risk of our free will – becoming an individualist

#9 God’s Power

God is over all and chooses to love rather than control or coerce.

The idea that God operates by rigidly controlling the world according to a divine blueprint is a distortion of his character.

God operating off of his divine blueprint – controlling the world.
False doctrine.

#10 But because of free will we and all other beings can chose good, or evil

**יֵצֶר הַטּוֹב וְיֵצֶר הָרָע**
**Yetzer ha-tov** (the inclination toward good) AND
**Yetzer ha-ra** (the inclination toward evil)

#11 Evil and Spiritual Warfare

Evil is real and distinct from God, and God stands opposed to it.

This is spiritual conflict: God and God’s kingdom resisting evil and the powers of empire.

#12 Evil has infected the Church

In 313 AD Roman Emperor Constantine takes control of the church “Under this symbol (Chi-Rho – Christ) we will conquer.”

Then Augustine brought Empire-based ideas into church doctrine

And so, Empire came and the Church..it’s never been the same

Since then, the church has often spoken Jesus’ name while operating in the ways of empire.

So, I had to go back in the Meta-Narrative…before the church became what it is

#13 Jesus-Centered – who is Jesus, what did he say? what did he do?

God incarnate – God most fully revealed to the world and humanity

Jesus as I envision him – the most full revelation of God in history

#14 Ultimate sacrifice – death for life, our lives

Jesus loved us so much that he gave himself

God challenged Empire and was executed – the ultimate sacrifice for us…who has demonstrated love more than this?

#15 Resurrection

After execution by empire, Jesus raised from the dead.

In his resurrection, God overcame death and exposed the power and distortion of evil.

Jesus rises on the third day – taking the power and distortion away from death and evil’s power

#16 Restoration

Jesus embodies love and restores the world toward shalom—marked by enemy-love, peace, and mishpat (justice).

#17 Rescue

God rescues us by inviting each person into forgiveness and freedom from evil’s deception.

We are invited into God’s forgiveness – a release from evil’s deception

#18 God’s Kingdom

God invites us to participate in his kingdom here and now.

#19 Covenants

God offers covenants—ways of life ordered toward flourishing.

Time and again, God’s people have failed to live into them.

#20 The New Covenant
The New Covenant renews God’s commitment to humanity—restoring relationship and forming lives of love, justice, and shared flourishing.