On Mythical Motifs And Religious Validity

There is a lot of evidence that all religious myths and doctrines go through a process of re-interpretation, often incorporating historical data and the cultural milieu of the immediate writer/thinker while incorporating the earlier insight and adapting it. Older myths and proverbs were a way for people to interpret, understand, and talk about the situations and experiences they were immediately encountering.

This happens in our own culture today. Part of the reason religion still remains a part of the cultural economy is that religion often gives people a way to talk about what they are experiencing that other modes of discourse don't. So the African American struggle for civil rights is interpreted, for instance, through the lens of the Exodus, and any scapegoated person is likely to talk about being 'crucified'. Not to mention the way stories and sayings in the Bible are just a part of the way we talk...'read the writing on the wall, 'pearls to swine', 'you need to be a good samaritan'...I could go on and on.

People find a nexus between their own experiences and the stories, ideas, and outlook of the Biblical stories. So the story of creation, for instance, helps me express the otherwise ineffible experience of the beauty of a sunset or sunrise. I might, and often do, recite a psalm to try to describe to someone what that beauty comes to me AS, effectively.

Another way to illustrate what I am talking about is to look at the Jewish writings from the Hellenistic Period, the WISDOM OF SOLOMON or the MACCABEES. Images like the suffering servant from Isaiah are used to interpret the experience of the suffering of the Jews under Greek and Roman rule, and a key to how that suffering should be understood and responded to is found within the Servant Songs. What's more, the experience of, say, the Maccabean revolt itself went on to shape how later writers (like the gospel writers) understood and looked at the servant songs themselves. So its two way, with mythological and religious language shaping culture and historical experience, and historical experience influencing and changin how the myth and language itself is used and understood.

There is tons of historical evidence to back up this account. This is simply how religious language functions. It shapes the experience and is shaped by the experience.

People are right, for instance, when they point to the evidence that the resurrection account of Jesus has mirrors in earlier cultures. But this makes good historical sense, and religious sense. One can construct a reasonable historical scenario where the disciples use the earlier stories to express what they were experiencing in and through the events surrounding Jesus. THOSE stories were ways for them talk about what was happening to them. And indeed the experiences surrounding Jesus then shaped how we think about death, and rebirth, and plays a role in how we Christians experience life. The real question, the fundamental difference is whether these interpretations serve to hide, or reveal, something about the experience and possibly life itself. I am loathe to bring those old arguments up yet again. I'd rather focus on something new.

Another way to put all this is like this: we need not think of memes as parasitic. We can be impressed by the idea that ideas themselves act alive in some sense without assuming that they impose themselves upon us without any deciding subject involved. It may be that I CHOOSE to become apart of this or that living idea because it indeed allows me to say, see, think, the truth in a way I couldn't otherwise do.

Peace Within The Storm

Peace Within The Storm

One of my favorite Biblical passages is 1 Kings 19:11-13. Elijah, after facing down 400 enemies on Mt. Carmel, has fled to Horeb. There God proclaims that He will appear to Elijah. Elijah encounters a windstorm, a firestorm, and an earthquake but, we are told, God was not ‘in’ any of these. And then a gentle whisper comes to Elijah, and in this whisper Elijah finds God.

Religious experience is rarely something overpowering. God is self-emptying, as Jesus Christ is self-emptying, and as such He does not overpower or overwhelm anyone. God always gives us the power to say ‘no’ to Him. This is simply the nature of Suffering, Self-Giving Love. Alfred N Whitehead, the philosopher and mathematician said of religious experience that it is “equally individual and general, equally actual and beyond completed act, equally compelling recognition and permissive of disregard.” And that is the paradox. God’s word comes to us as something of supreme import; it calls us to not only response but action. Yet, it is always permissive of disregard, it always allows us to choose who we want to be.

The problem is that in this world, there are so many other voices, and those voices are not subtle, not quiet, they scream to us all the time, and they are terribly distracting. This is especially true of young people, bombarded as they are by all kinds of media and social influences. And it is not only external voices that are distracting. We are so often pulled in so many directions by our impulses, our instincts, and our desires. It is so often hard to even HEAR God’s voice, and even harder to trust in it the way we know we should. And again, if this is true for all of us, it is especially true for those in the formative stages of their adulthood. So the question arises, how can we learn to listen to and trust the still small voice that IS our very encounter with God?

First and foremost, we have to learn to recognize what God’s voice sounds like. To do that we have to spend time with scripture, we have to learn what other people hear when they hear God’s voice. Without community, tradition, and a study of scripture, we will never be able to recognize God’s call to us when it comes. Second of all, we have to learn to still the other voices, if only for a moment. Prayer and meditation help. So does getting away from all the input. That is what Elijah did: he went away from the crowds to a mountaintop all by himself. Obviously, there is a tension between the need for solitude the need for community, and finding out how to balance is something that takes a lot of time and work.

These are the ways, which I’m sure many of you are familiar with, by which we learn to HEAR God’s voice. But I wonder how much of our trouble is not an inability to hear but an unwillingness to listen. So many of those other voices are that of the stranger, the adversary, the one who wants us to doubt God’s love, God’s goodness, God’s existence even. In those moments when you are pressed upon to walk AWAY from the still small voice, to doubt, it what is so often needed is resolve. You have to reach out to God for strength, and make a decision that right here, right now, you are going to give yourself over to that vague sense that you are called to something better. So, ironically, that freedom that God is giving us BY keeping His voice small and still is also the very key to our success in following Him. The Way is not always smooth and straight, sometimes you have to crawl on your hands and knees and fight for every inch, but in that whisper calling you forward, you can find genuine peace within the storm.