Easter worshipers, Charlottesville, and the way our personal narratives blind us
If you saw the news on Easter Sunday, you might have seen that one of the worst coordinated terror attacks in recent history took place in Sri Lanka: churches and hotels were bombed by radical Islamic terrorists, and 253 people were killed.
The magnitude of an attack like this is hard to fathom. Over two hundred dead. On American soil, 9/11 is the only terror that took more lives than this one in Sri Lanka. It’s hard to imagine, unless you lived through 9/11, the impact such an attack would have here. If you’re a Christian, most of these victims are Christian brothers and sisters, and we should mourn that so many are experiencing this suffering.
But the conversation around these attacks quickly turned political, because of course it did in 2019 America. Many left-wing politicians, notably Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, were criticized for their responses to the attacks. Many people pointed out how, when an evil white supremacist killed 49 Muslims at a mosque a few weeks ago, Obama, Clinton, and others appropriately and specifically condemned white supremacy and Islamophobia and identified the victims as Muslims. But on Sunday, they issued only vague condemnations of hatred and identified the victims with the odd designation “Easter worshipers” rather than simply “Christians.” Many say there is something to this, some reason why they would not identify Christians as victims of a targeted terror attack, and I think they are right.
It reminds me of the conservative response to the events at Charlottesville two years ago, a response that presidential candidate Joe Biden highlighted in his campaign video he released last week. President Trump made some awful comments about the participants at the deadly and despicable white supremacist rally. Some people came to his defense, while others waited a little too long to issue firm statements of condemnation. They were rightly criticized for this, which only fueled the notion that right-wingers didn’t care about white supremacy.
These are not similar events. They happened on opposite ends of the world, were carried out in different ways, had vastly different numbers of victims, and were motivated by entirely different ideologies. But they do show a similar thing: How our own personal narratives constantly reinforce what we believe and cause us to reinterpret world events to fit those narratives.
What do I mean by a personal narrative? I mean the story that each of us have written of our own lives, the lives of others, and world history. Each of us lives by our own narrative. Our personal narratives are not unlike the stories we read in books and watch on TV. They have a beginning, middle, and desired end. They allow us to make simple categorizations of people and groups into good and bad, heroes and villains, minor and major characters. We form these narratives mostly based on cultural values, personal experience, and personal preferences.
We all do this, and most of us are aware to some extent that we do this. Not only do we have our personal narratives, but we also subscribe to cultural narratives — stories shared by those with shared backgrounds or shared values. None of us like it when real events are inconsistent with our personal or cultural narratives, and we usually try to reinterpret reality to fit our narratives.
Part of the reason for the hostility between people with different worldviews today is that we have entirely different heroes and villains. In the narrative of the political left, “Christians” include the privileged ones, the white, wealthy, anti-gay, anti-choice, anti-science bigots and hypocrites on the political right. Christians are seen as the creators of the Dark Ages, the crusaders, the colonizers. You may think I’m exaggerating, but if you read left-wing news media, I think you will see that I am not. Obama and Clinton buy into this narrative, and so they opted not to use the term “Christian,” because “Christians” just don’t have the status of victimhood in that narrative. However, because minorities do universally have the status of victimhood in that narrative, they were quick to see Charlottesville for what it was.
Conversely, in the mainstream political right’s narrative, white supremacists are supposed to be minor characters — a few irrelevant nut jobs, and mostly fuel for the fire fanned by a dishonest media. That’s why the first instinct of so many conservatives was to wonder what sort of spin the media was putting on the events at Charlottesville, rather than accept the overturning of that narrative and condemn it swiftly. But, because religious freedom is seen as precarious and fading in the conservative, right-wing narrative, and Christians as historical victims of persecution, we are quick to call out persecution of Christians when we see it.
This happens all the time. No one looks at the world objectively. No one reports on just the facts. Everyone interprets through their narrative. It is impossible not to do this. But we cannot lump each other into hero-villain categories like we are doing. That’s where hatred and violence begin. I know I do it. We all do it. So how do we change that and begin to accept the reality of things that don’t fit our narrative? We can start by doing these four things.
Acknowledge: Your narrative is egocentric and ethnocentric. You perceive yourself to be the hero of your own story, and your familial and/or ideological companions as fellow heroes with major or minor roles. You form these perceptions based on the values and narrative of the culture that’s shaped the way you think. People from different cultures and backgrounds don’t see most things the way you do. You may be a white American and see Christianity as a religion of oppressors and colonizers. But Nigerian and Chinese Christians don’t see it that way. You may be poor and see the lack of universal healthcare and the private health insurance industry as an injustice enabled by conservatives, but a Medicare patient who needs supplemental insurance to afford what the government won’t provide may see the elimination of private insurance as a danger to her well-being. You may be a white American and almost never encounter an open white supremacist, but it could be because some people’s racist sentiments don’t come out until they’re around minorities. All narratives are egocentric, and they don’t give us a full picture of reality. All narratives are ethnocentric, and ours are rooted in Western ideas of heroism and villainy, history and ethics, that are literally foreign to people from different backgrounds. That doesn’t mean all narratives are equally true — a white supremacist who sees Jews as trying to take over the world is completely wrong, no matter what experiences led him to that conclusion. Experience is relative, but truth is not, and some narratives lead us to erroneous or even evil conclusions. But we need to recognize that our stories are focused on ourselves, just as others’ narratives are focused on themselves.
Recognize: Your background alone does not make you morally superior to those with a different background. Someone coined the term “Oppression olympics” not too long ago to describe the modern mindset that a person’s opinion carries more weight if they are part of a historically marginalized group — and the more oppressed the group, the more weight said person’s opinion has. It results in a sort of hierarchy of oppression that gives certain groups the most credibility by default. We are uniquely qualified to speak about our experiences as members of our races, religions, etc., but it doesn’t mean we have unique credibility on all of life, nor does it mean we get to dismiss others’ experiences as less important than our own.
Learn: To see the world through other people’s narratives. I recently heard it said that if the setting of the New Testament was America, it would be told from the the perspective of the Native Americans and slaves, and if you think about it, that’s true. The New Testament allows us to see into the narrative of the Israelites, oppressed and marginalized under the boot of the powerhouse Roman Empire in their own native land. We need to learn to see the world through the eyes of other people today, too. Because we use our own narratives to categorize people into heroes and villains, minor and major players, we usually simplify their narratives, too. We think of a person or group’s story as heroic or villainous, and interpret what they do and say in that light. This is really easy to see in politics today. Look how conservative evangelicals, who care a great deal about moral living in their own lives, defend the actions of President Trump, and how progressives interpret every single thing he does and says as villainous. President Trump, and by extension his supporters and detractors, fall into the hero or villain category in most of our narratives.
If we can’t see the world in light of someone else’s narrative, then we will not know how to interact with them. We will interpret their words and actions in the best or worst possible light, depending on what role they play in our preferred narrative. And when something happens that doesn’t line up with our narrative, we will try to make reality fit into our narrative by being tricky with language and interpretation, even if it means ignoring the obvious or stretching the bounds of plausibility. And that’s exactly what we do.
Conform: Our narrative to the true narrative, God’s narrative. There’s a reason the Bible is filled with so many stories. You would think that a book meant to reveal to us vital truths about God would contain mostly a systematic analysis of who God is and how to be saved. But no; the vast majority of it is stories. Why is that? Because stories help us understand God through the narrative he is writing. They let us actually get to know him.
We live in our own story, and we view everything in light of our own narrative. But the Bible is there to help us get out of our own narrative and start seeing things in light of the true narrative, God’s narrative. We would do well to become as familiar with that narrative as possible, not reinterpreting the Bible to fit our own narrative, but reinterpreting our own experiences and beliefs in light of God’s narrative, which includes the narratives of every person in this world just as much as it includes ours.
How well can you articulate the narratives of the people who annoy you? How well do you know the narratives of those groups you categorize, even subconsciously, as villainous? How well do you understand the cultural narrative of the Democrats or Republicans, black people or white people, poor or upper-class? In general, if you cannot understand how someone who is part of those groups can look at their lives and believe they are just as decent a person as you think you are — whether or not that’s actually true — you probably don’t understand their narrative. I can’t say exactly how to understand others’ stories better. But it starts with getting rid of our preassumptions and trying to actually learn from people who don’t think like we do.
