I don’t think it’s a stretch to say most people today are more interested in narratives than reality. When confronted with “facts,” “news,” and “data,” our impulse is to quickly, conveniently shoehorn these things into our preferred narrative rather than let them (often slowly and inconveniently) establish reality for us. We do this, I argue in the article below, for at least three reasons:

1) We’re too overwhelmed with the glut of data out there. Narratives are just easier.
2) We’re too impatient and have little tolerance for the slow, methodical process of uncovering reality. Narratives are a quicker fix.
3) We’re too self-oriented and would rather live in a fiction than be confronted or corrected by reality. Narratives serve us.

But even if narratives serve us in the short term, they won’t satisfy us in the long run. God-made, God-glorifying reality is so much more satisfying than self-made, self-serving narratives. Christians should be fighting for the former instead of falling for the latter. Part of my goal in writing The Wisdom Pyramid is to point readers to sources where wisdom and reality can be found (God’s Word, the church, nature) and away from places where narratives and spin dominate (chiefly, the internet and social media).

A properly ordered information diet is one way we escape the twisted web of narratives—drinking instead from the nourishing wells of reality.