Which narrative?

What a week!

Wednesday, early morning, I reluctantly prise my eyelids open to peak at the headlines on my phone. Aghast, I bury my head in my pillow and want to go back to sleep – for the next four years. 

But hibernation is not an option.

• Not for anyone concerned about the future of Ukraine, or of NATO.

• Not for those worried about sustainability, the environment and ongoing climate disasters such as Spain is still cleaning up after.

• Not for the most vulnerable, the poor with little access to healthcare, and migrants who have risked life and limb to eke a better future for their families.

• Not for the women who feel threatened by alpha-male behaviour endorsed at the top level of power.

• Not for those perturbed by the increasing gap between the rich and powerful and the poor and weak.

• Not for those disturbed by growing autocracy in formerly stable but increasingly dysfunctional democracies.

For most Europeans, it is incomprehensible that Americans could allow ‘a foul-mouthed demagogue, a convicted felon, a macho-bully surrounded by sycophants’ a second term in the White House.

For most European Christians, it is doubly incomprehensible that many American Christians seem to believe that same man to be God’s chosen deliverer, a modern King Cyrus, anointed to make America great again, to reclaim the so-called ‘seven mountains’ of society for Jesus!

So how do we process this and come to grips with the new reality and make sense of our world? 

A friend sent me this link to a very helpful discussion between three American Christian journalists, Curtis Chang, David French and Russell Moore, processing together the election results and their ramifications.

Chang described his own emotions as moving from initial anxiety through to avoidance, then anger, followed by anguish and settling on alienation – from his own nation and from fellow believers. He then quoted the familiar exchange from Tolkien’s Lord of the rings:  “I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo.

“So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”

Moore and French offer insights into the narratives informing American voters, reminding us that we all view reality through different lenses according to our presuppositions.

Older readers may remember that illustration of a woman Stephen Covey made famous in his book, The 7 habits of highly effective people. 

Some will swear black and blue that the picture shows a beautiful young woman wearing a choker around her neck. Others can only see an old hag with a big bent nose. Yet it is the same picture they are viewing.

So too we join up the dots of life around us to create our own narratives, to explain the realities that we perceive.

How we perceived the presidential candidates depended on the sources we deemed the most reliable.

As if on cue, a book I had ordered arrived in the post just as I was wrestling with these questions, Jesus and the powers by Tom Wright and Michael Bird, subtitled ‘Christian political witness in an age of totalitarian terror and dysfunctional democracies.’ Very timely and insightful, and worth reading and discussing with others.

Thursday evening: From our apartment in the centre of Amsterdam we watched in apprehension as a phalanx of police vehicles converged with flashing lights on the central station, herding into the metro what we later understood to be Israeli football fans in town for the Europa League match against Ajax.

Live television showed a simultaneous pro-Palestinian demonstration 600 metres away on the Dam Square. The police action was to ensure the two parties were kept apart.

Friday morning: Now the morning news was filled with international condemnation of attacks in Amsterdam on Israeli fans after the match the evening before.

Executed by small mobile gangs of pro-Palestinians on motor scooters avoiding the large police squads on foot ill-equipped to prevent the violence.

While inexcusable, these acts were laden by the violence currently being perpetrated on both sides in Israel, Gaza and Lebanon.

The attackers saw themselves wreaking vengeance on IDF soldiers out of uniform – as all young Israelis have to serve in the army – thus on those implicated in the killing of over 40,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children.

Their narrative, right or wrong, was their justification for their actions. 

Saturday: This month’s Schuman Talk,was with the co-author of the book: Through my enemy’s eyes, Lisa Loden, a messianic believer, has been engaged in reconciliation dialogue between Israelis and Palestinians in recent decades.

She writes that learning about the other party’s narrative is a starting point for reconciliation. Read Lisa’s poem Under the shadow of death here.

November 9 was also the anniversary of Kristallnacht, ‘The Night of Broken Glass’, when violent Nazi mobs viciously attacked the Jews and Jewish communities of Germany, Austria, and the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia.

This week’s events make this talk highly topical. Lisa and I will talk about bridging the narrative gaps in our world today. I invite you to join us here. 

Jeff Fountain, Director of the Schuman Centre for European Studies. This article was first published on the author's blog, Weekly Word.