Conflicting narratives

Here are a couple of pointed passages co-written by my friends and colleagues, Al Wolters and Mike Goheen, in the second edition of Creation Regained. Biblical scholars, preachers and others would do well to read it and take it to heart:

To miss the grand narrative of Scripture is a serious matter; it [is] not simply a matter of misinterpreting parts of Scripture. It is a matter of being oblivious to which story is shaping our lives. Some story will shape our lives. When the Bible is broken up into little bits and chunks — theological, devotional, spiritual, moral, or worldview bits and chunks — then these bits can be nicely fitted into the reigning story of our own culture with all its idols! One can be theologically orthodox, devotionally pious, morally upright, or maybe even have one's worldview categories straight, and yet be significantly shaped by the idolatrous Western story. The Bible loses its forceful and formative power by being absorbed into a more encompassing secular story. . . .

[F]aithfulness to the gospel of the kingdom will mean a missionary encounter with the idolatrous powers of our own culture. Loyal allegiance to our kingdom mission will mean a clash of comprehensive stories. The gospel makes an absolute claim on the whole of our lives. The story that shapes our Western culture is likewise a comprehensive story which makes totalitarian claims. There is an incompatibility between the gospel and the story of our culture.