Millennials and Their Metanarrative
While the postmodern worldview has rejected the notion of metanarrative (a grand and overarching story explaining the past, defining the present, and suggesting the future) in favor of a plethora of localized stories (reflecting postmodernism’s penchant for pluralism), the fact is that the third millennial generation has been steeped in a prevailing metanarrative from childhood. For they, with their parents, are the generation weaned on the stories of George Lucas, the mastermind behind the Star Wars metanarrative and franchise. The world knows well this collection of science-fiction tales chronicling an intergalactic struggle between the forces of good and evil. Lucas’ lucrative franchise has now “sequeled” and “prequeled” this big-screen cinematic narrative nearly to death.GOP 373.3
But the truth is his Star Wars metanarrative and nomenclature have not only permeated Hollywood and the entertainment industry, but also been injected into the language of politics, literature, and even religion. William Romanowski observes:GOP 373.4
Popular artists have found many ways to depict God and the supernatural realm. . . . Artists can fashion allegorical worlds that give symbolic existence to the unseen—think of C. S. Lewis’s Narnia, Tolkien’s Middle Earth. . . . Or look at the “world” in Star Wars. . . . By inventing imaginative worlds, artists can affirm that there is more to reality than what we experience with our senses, even though these portrayals may not match our real-life experience. GOP 373.5
Whether George Lucas set out to depict the supernatural realm or not is beside the point. What is clear is that his intergalactic tale of cosmic war between light and darkness has become a popular (and arguably prevailing) sociocultural metanarrative. And as Romanowski suggests, the imaginative Star Wars metanarrative can affirm to those steeped in it the notion “that there is more to reality than what we experience with our senses.”GOP 373.6
It is that numinous recognition that can become the access point or touchstone in an appeal to this generation to consider the writings of Ellen White. For one of the profound contributions of Ellen White and her writings to human thought is the “great controversy” metanarrative, the dramatic and inspired amplification of Holy Scripture’s depiction of the internecine war that broke out in ages past in the very precincts of God’s kingdom and that continues on earth today:GOP 374.1
Then war broke out in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back. But he was not strong enough, and they lost their place in heaven. The great dragon was hurled down—that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray. He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him. Then I heard a loud voice in heaven say: “Now have come the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God, and the authority of his Messiah. For the accuser of our brothers and sisters, who accuses them before our God day and night, has been hurled down. They triumphed over him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony; they did not love their lives so much as to shrink from death. Therefore rejoice, you heavens and you who dwell in them! But woe to the earth and the sea, because the devil has gone down to you! He is filled with fury, because he knows that his time is short” (Rev. 12:7-12).GOP 374.2
It was this cosmic war metanarrative that Ellen White chronicled in her magnum opus, the five-volume Conflict of the Ages series. In The Great Controversy, the final volume of this series, Ellen White summarizes the great controversy metanarrative:GOP 374.3
Through the illumination of the Holy Spirit, the scenes of the long-continued conflict between good and evil have been opened to the writer of these pages. From time to time I have been permitted to behold the working, in different ages, of the great controversy between Christ, the Prince of life, the Author of our salvation, and Satan, the prince of evil, the author of sin, the first transgressor of God’s holy law. Satan’s enmity against Christ has been manifested against His followers. The same hatred of the principles of God’s law, the same policy of deception, by which error is made to appear as truth, by which human laws are substituted for the law of God, and men are led to worship the creature rather than the Creator, may be traced in all the history of the past. Satan’s efforts to misrepresent the character of God, to cause men to cherish a false conception of the Creator, and thus to regard Him with fear and hate rather than with love; his endeavors to set aside the divine law, leading the people to think themselves free from its requirements; and his persecution of those who dare to resist his deceptions, have been steadfastly pursued in all ages. They may be traced in the history of patriarchs, prophets, and apostles, of martyrs and reformers. GOP 374.4
But as with the biblical metanarrative, Ellen White’s great controversy motif is more than a recitation of sacred history. It is also the divine vehicle by which an urgent warning regarding the impending future is given to the contemporary church and world:GOP 375.1
In the great final conflict, Satan will employ the same policy, manifest the same spirit, and work for the same end as in all preceding ages. That which has been, will be, except that the coming struggle will be marked with a terrible intensity such as the world has never witnessed. Satan’s deceptions will be more subtle, his assaults more determined. If it were possible, he would lead astray the elect. Mark 13:22, R.V.GOP 375.2
As the Spirit of God has opened to my mind the great truths of His word, and the scenes of the past and the future, I have been bidden to make known to others that which has thus been revealed—to trace the history of the controversy in past ages, and especially so to present it as to shed a light on the fast-approaching struggle of the future. . . .GOP 375.3
In these records we may see a foreshadowing of the conflict before us. Regarding them in the light of God’s word, and by the illumination of His Spirit, we may see unveiled the devices of the wicked one, and the dangers which they must shun who would be found “without fault before the Lord at His coming.” GOP 375.4
Is it far-fetched to attempt to bring Scripture’s prevailing metanarrative to our postmodern generation? Christian philosopher Douglas Groothuis does not think so:GOP 375.5
Christian theology—whether articulated in books, articles, seminary classes, Christian colleges or preaching and teaching in the local church—ought to capitalize on the postmodern fascination with narrative by speaking of God’s own story in all its richness, complexity and drama. It is a drama in four principal acts: creation, fall, redemption, and consummation. But we must set forth this narrative, not as just one among many micronarratives that give meaning to disparate communities but as the cosmic Story of the Creator himself, who not only has given us the key to history in Scripture but has entered history in the incarnation for the sake of our liberation from sin and death. . . . God is the personal being who tells us the true Story and orchestrates the whole Story. GOP 375.6
It is precisely because the contemporary generation is steeped in narrative (evidenced by the billions that are spent annually for movies on the big screen or downloaded to the little screens) that the great controversy metanarrative embedded in Ellen White’s writings can yet find a fertile and significant connect with millennials and their elders.GOP 375.7
Thus one of the strategic methods to make Ellen White relevant to this generation is to accentuate the metanarrative of the internecine cosmic conflict that she so dramatically portrays. Particularly, her five-volume Conflict of the Ages set can be marketed as a compelling retelling of the greatest stories in all of sacred literature, stories that not only depict this generation’s place in history but foreshadow this generation’s role in what is yet to come. We must tap into what Groothuis describes as “the prodigious and prodigal quest of postmodernism for some larger meaning beyond contingently constructed cultures.” We must tell the story, and offer the writings of Ellen White as a powerful retelling of it.GOP 376.1
In fact, Ellen White herself identified The Great Controversy as the one book in all her writings she wished would have the largest readership:GOP 376.2
The Great Controversy should be very widely circulated. It contains the story of the past, the present, and the future. In its outline of the closing scenes of this earth’s history, it bears a powerful testimony in behalf of the truth. I am more anxious to see a wide circulation for this book than for any others I have written; for in The Great Controversy, the last message of warning to the world is given more distinctly than in any of my other books. GOP 376.3
It is surely more than coincidental that a century later we have a generation steeped in the Star Wars metanarrative, a generation positioned by its proclivity for a compelling intergalactic story to be drawn to the very book Ellen White wished would receive the widest circulation of all.GOP 376.4
Therefore any strategic plan to connect this generation with the writings of Ellen White must include the mass marketing and distribution of her apocalyptic classic. While it is not within the parameters of this paper to prescribe specific marketing strategies (although suggestions for packaging her writings follow below), it is clear that this woman author, who championed the metanarrative of the great controversy as the prevailing paradigm for grasping divine truth, must be promoted and presented to third millennials as one who understands their longing for story and who can effectively guide them to their place in the continuing saga of the greatest story of all.GOP 376.5