It is a holdover from our modernist past that we consider “myth” to be synonymous with false. We also tend to think it means “old.” Now in our postmodern maturity we’ve reached the conclusion that while myth is not true, truth is myth. But there is an important distinction between myths and lies, one that, sadly, Bill Moyers and Joseph Campbell understand better than we do. The good news is that C.S. Lewis understood it also, and wrote brilliantly on it in a little essay “Myth Made Fact.”
Some have sought to make anti-apologetical hay out of the historical fact that there are all sorts of religions that have as a part of their story, not only a flood myth, but even a dying and rising God. Some argue that therefore the Christian message is necessarily borrowed from these older, and now nearly forgotten religions. Others instead argued that this notion of a dying and rising God, even it is not borrowed, flows out of some Jungian collective unconscious, and therefore cannot be true. Lewis took the tack not that the Christian story is so different that these accusations do not stand, but rather that it is different for this reason, that our story is history, that our myth invaded time, and became reality.
Have you ever wondered why it is that one weak-spined, pagan king made his way into our most universal confession? When we say, in reciting the Apostle’s Creed, of Jesus that He, “suffered under Pontius Pilate,” did that ever seem strange to you? That statement is there for this very reason. Jesus lived in real space and real time. He suffered under a real man, in a real place. While our faith is indeed ancient, going back to the righteous sacrifice of the first martyr, Abel, it did not grow up in the misty tradition of a pre-historic people. While the Holy Spirit did come and inspire the New Testament, He did not do it 1800 years after the fact through golden plates and magic glasses, behind a curtain.
But Lewis went one step further. He argued not only that these myths were not evidence against the Christian faith, but that they were evidence for it. He reasoned that these myths demonstrated that the message of the cross was built into the very nature of reality. He saw not only the myths as a sort of universal pre-evangelism, but the humdrum realities from which they came as pre-evangelism as well. That the seed corn must die so that the corn might flourish in the fields not only bespoke that there might be a great Corn King who sacrifices his son for the good of the crop, but that God the Father might send His Son, that His bride might be won. The temporal reality (corn) pointed to a spiritual non-reality, (the Corn King) which in turn pointed to a temporal and spiritual reality, the historical Jesus, who lived, died, and was resurrected.
We should never be surprised when the omnipresent one shows up in our stories. He is in ET. He is in Tron. He is in Oz as well. Some have seen in Baum’s fantasy story a repudiation of the Christian faith (as well as a host of other subtle intentions. Some say it is a screed against the gold standard.) That great, unsung Sean Connery film, Zardoz, says as much, with the savage warrior discovering that the warrior god he worshipped was not real when he discovered a copy of The Wizard of Oz. The wizard is not real, but a carnival barker, with a powerful combination of technology and show biz. All that we need is within us, and only the silly dream of a place over the rainbow when there’s no place like home. While this understanding has much to go for it, we cannot be sure. Such might have been the author’s intention, but Jesus seems to have crashed his party. Dorothy comes to Oz from another world. She has left behind all that was familiar to her. She is assaulted by the forces of darkness, heals the sick, and having been locked up as for dead, she escapes and destroys the evil one. (Which, you’ll remember, she had to do before she could go home.) Her minions, that is, of the Witch, rejoice to have been set free from the dominion of the devil. And Dorothy ascends back to her home. However reluctantly, the little girl from Kansas reminds us of the Man from Galilee.
It takes imagination to see these things. The muse, like machine-shy ectoplasm in ghost stories, doesn’t come in a context of high-tech gadgetry, and cold, abstract reasoning. In fact, nothing kills the muse faster. God is not the author of confusion. I am not arguing that we will all reach spiritual maturity if we will but figure out the sound of one hand clapping. But neither is He a mathematician. He is instead, a poet. Such need not send us off into New Age fantasies, but instead can reveal the depth, and the beauty of the gospel.
To too many the Christian life is a myth, in the sense that it is false. We cannot live all our lives to the glory of God. We cannot love our neighbor as we love ourselves. We cannot love our wives as Christ loves the church. And so we grab as reality the ways of the world, and embrace the myth that we will still one day make it over the rainbow. When, however, we are caring for the sick, we are Christ to them, just as they are Christ to us. When we are suffering we are a flesh and blood picture of the Suffering Servant. When we are the church, loving one another, we are the body, Christ made tangible. That is what we are here for, to make visible, enfleshed, the glory of God. That is the reason for our being.