We live in narratives. We construct narratives. We interpret life through narratives.
That thought struck me as I reflected again on the Trayvon Martin tragedy. The truth of what actually happened on that day (Feb 26, 2012) may never be fully known. One thing that is clear is that it was a tragedy. A 17-year old boy lost his life based on a confrontation that from all appearances could have…and should have…been avoided.
But from the first day of Martin's death, many media outlets tried to fit the event into an overall narrative–a white man shot an unarmed black youth out of racial profiling and racial hatred. This narrative governed how many media outlets covered the event. And whenever evidence emerged that contradicted the narrative, it was either ignored or interpreted differently. The most glaring example of this was NBC's editing of George Zimmerman's 911 call to purposefully make his words appear racially charged. The initial pictures of Martin and Zimmerman on most major newscasts also clearly presented Zimmerman as a big thug and Martin as a small smiling pre-teen even though at the time of the shooting Zimmerman was 5'9" and 170 lbs. and Martin was 6'1" and 150 lbs.
As a USA Today article (July 14, 2013) noted, "Some of the media's major mistakes stemmed from stories that fit neatly into that widely accepted narrative."
Of course, on the other side of the aisle, a few conservative news outlets and various online postings did all they could to defend Zimmerman and present the most unfavorable picture of Martin as possible, highlighting a recent suspension he had from school and finding as many unpleasant photos of Martin (including some not of Martin) they could find.
I confess…I tended toward the more conservative news outlets and couldn't understand why some people seemed completely unable to separate this tragedy from a larger racial narrative.
But then I began to put myself into a different scenario.
Suppose I was a Christian in a Muslim-dominated country and an unarmed Christian teen was shot by a Muslim young adult in a predominantly Muslim neighborhood. As a Christian, I would almost immediately place that incident into a larger narrative of Muslim oppression and hatred for Christians. And despite the evidence that would emerge, I would still have a hard time processing the story any differently. In fact, I would probably look at any re-interpretation of the events as further Muslim opppression.
My narrative would dictate my perspective.
Isn't that what happens with most major stories? We come to the story with our own story, our own narrative. And we often go to the news outlets that we already know will reinforce our narrative. For instance, if Obama makes any political decision, we can almost assume that liberal news outlets will put a positive spin on it and conservative ones will put a negative spin on it. And even if the decision is somewhat conservative in nature, many conservatives will still find some hidden agenda to make it even more insiduously liberal.
Our narratives dictate our perspectives.
And the current glut of media information and instant accessibility to every possible viewpoint means that we can always find information to fit our own preferred narrative. Thus our own narrative is reinforced and the divide between me and anyone who disagrees with me is widened.
Welcome to the present-day USA.
So what does all this mean? Since we all see things from our own narrative should we give up on all narratives? That is the post-modern solution. No one is truly objective. All is subjective. So just construct your own narrative, accept everyone else's narrative as equally valid, and get used to ambiguity.
As Nietzsche once said: "There are many kinds of eyes. Even the sphinx has eyes – and consequently there are many kinds of 'truths,' and consequently there is no truth."
Sounds good on the surface but the postmodern narrative is its own narrative. So who is to say that it is right?
Going back to the Trayvon Martin tragedy, something did happen on February 26, 2012. There is a reality. We may never personally know the true story but there is a true story. There is a real narrative. The challenge is resisting the tendency to try to fit the real narrative into our own preconceived narrative. Instead we have to submit our narrative to the larger one, the real one.
How can we do this? How can we ever know what the real narrative is?
We can't know unless the one who knows the real narrative accurately tells us. If Martin were still alive, and both he and Zimmerman were honestly objective, then they could tell us the true story. We could know what happened on that day, what thoughts went through their heads, their reactions, their choices, their mistakes, their actions. And if we humbly and openly listened, then we could know the truth.
Projecting that out to the larger narrative of reality, we can know the Truth only if the One who objectively sees and knows all things reveals the Story to us. And if there is such a One, and He reveals the Story, then we could know the Truth if we listened humbly and openly…and if we were willing to submit our smaller, personal narrative to this larger, real One.
We live in narratives. We construct narratives. We interpret life through narratives.
And we either stay in our smaller stories or we find our place in a larger Story. We either construct our own reality or we submit to a larger Reality and let it reconstruct us. We either interpret life through our own narrative or we let a larger Narrative interpret life for us.
Yes, this is the intersection of faith, reason, and revelation.
There is a God. There is a Reality. There is a Story.
And through faith, I have placed my narrative in His.
