The grammar of Christian redemption cannot live solely in the
future tense. Despite confidence about the effects of Jesus'
resurrection in the present, Christians are tempted to depict
salvation as a future accomplishment, rather than a present
reality. No doubt this failing is well founded, for most Christians
know all too well that the power of the past - particularly past
suffering - shapes the present. But as Mindy Makant argues in The
Practice of Story: Suffering and the Possibilities of Redemption,
such reserve may cede too much to suffering and grant too little to
redemption. Makant admits the horrors of suffering: that suffering
damages and destroys, that past suffering renders one unable to
live in the present, and that profound suffering can make it
altogether impossible to imagine a future. Yet in the very midst of
this impossibility, Makant shows how suffering, even extreme and
profound suffering, does not have the final word. God does. The
story of suffering is not the defining narrative. Redemption wields
ultimate power to shape human identity. God has given the church
gifts - specific ecclesial practices - necessary to bear witness to
the story of God's redemptive activity in the world. These
practices constitute the practices of story. They re-order the
lives of Christians and make future redemption present despite the
destructive power of the past.
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