I attended a worship service at my parents’ church this weekend. And I was struck anew by certain aspects of the service: symbolic acts and references to seminal events in Christian history. Actually, what struck me was the solemn stillness of the congregation. The words and rituals possess great meaning for those folks.
My parents’ church is liberal in its theology, meaning that they’re sceptical about many of the things written in the Bible. Nonetheless, the Christian faith still acts as a focal point for them and provides meaning that might otherwise be missing from their lives.
How can this be? How can someone doubt the accuracy of the biblical text, and yet derive meaning from it? It’s a bit like that movie, True Lies. Only, in this case, it would be better to speak of True Myths.
When we hear the word “myth”, we quickly think “not factual” and then “false”. But maybe this chain of associations is too facile. Perhaps a myth can be not factual and yet true.
Allow me to illustrate the point with an example that would offend many Christians: a sculpture of a female Jesus, naked on the cross. It wouldn’t be historically accurate, but perhaps it could still express truth. Here’s a charitably sympathetic interpretation from a Salvation Army web site:
There once was a sculpture exhibited in the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, New York, which depicts Jesus, naked, on the cross. Not terribly original, except for the fact that Jesus is here portrayed as a woman.
This work of art has been labelled both pornographic and blasphemous, a desecration to the image of Christ. It is a shocking piece of art, there is no question, and offensive to many. …
We can also find paintings depicting Jesus as a black man, as an Asian, as a Native American, and as any other number of races and body types. We generally do not find those images to be blasphemous, but rather representative of the fact that Christ identifies with all people at all times. But Christ as a woman? For many this seems a step too far.
Is sculpting Jesus as a woman simply an extremist feminist statement? Possibly. But there may be other ways to look at it. The birth, life, and death of Jesus should be seen in the light of God’s radical and total identification with humanity. All of humanity. Jesus does not belong exclusively to any particular sub-section of the human race.
So perhaps this artist was merely taking seriously the claim that “in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, male nor female, slave nor free.” Perhaps she was trying to wake people up to the fact that Christ’s identification with humanity — women included — should very much impact the way women are viewed and treated in the world today.
When God took on human flesh it made false for all time the idea that the human body should be despised, used, abused, or objectified.
In this case, “not factual” does not necessarily mean “false”. A work of art can be unhistorical and yet meaningful.
The same may be true of religious rituals. For example, the church service I attended included two baptisms. The minister began that portion of the service by praying, “Bless this water, O Lord, that it may become an instrument of your grace.”
Was the water changed by the prayer? No doubt its chemical composition was the same: it consisted of two parts hydrogen to one part oxygen. But was the water spiritually different after the prayer? What could this phrase, spiritually different water, possibly mean?
Here we are in the realm of faith and myth. Consider this analysis of the subject from a book by Karen Armstrong:
The people of the past evolved two ways of thinking, speaking, and acquiring knowledge, which scholars have called mythos and logos. Both were essential; they were regarded as complementary ways of arriving at truth, and each had its special area of competence.
Myth was regarded as primary; it was concerned with what was thought to be timeless and constant in our existence. Myth looked back to the origins of life, to the foundations of culture, and to the deepest levels of the human mind.
Myth was not concerned with practical matters, but with meaning. Unless we find some significance in our lives, we mortal men and women fall very easily into despair. The mythos of a society provided people with a context that made sense of their day-to-day lives; it directed their attention to the eternal and the universal.
Myth could not be demonstrated by rational proof; its insights were more intuitive, similar to those of art, music, poetry, or sculpture. …
Logos was equally important. Logos was the rational, pragmatic, and scientific thought that enabled men and women to function well in the world. We may have lost the sense of mythos in the West today, but we are very familiar with logos, which is the basis of our society. Unlike myth, logos must relate exactly to facts and correspond to external realities if it is to be effective. It must work efficiently in the mundane world. …
In the premodern world, both mythos and logos were regarded as indispensable. Each would be impoverished without the other. Yet the two were essentially distinct, and it was held to be dangerous to confuse mythical and rational discourse. …
You were not supposed to make mythos the basis of a pragmatic policy. If you did, the results could be disastrous, because what worked well in the inner world of the psyche was not readily applicable to the affairs of the external world. …
Logos had its limitations too. It could not assuage human pain or sorrow. Rational arguments could make no sense of tragedy. Logos could not answer questions about the ultimate value of human life. A scientist could make things work more efficiently and discover wonderful new facts about the physical universe, but he could not explain the meaning of life. That was the preserve of myth and cult.
In my view, Armstrong’s analysis is insightful. I do not insist that meaning can be found only in mythos. But I think our culture is impoverished by its narrow (and narrow-minded) fixation on logos, to the exclusion of mythos.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
originally posted August, 2005
