The Myths of Christianity

The End of Religion

The deep questions about the meaning of life - our religion - are part of our humanity, but religion has been dominated by special interest groups with their own agendas which don’t necessarily conform to scripture.  There are no universally accepted answers!

A minority of Christians long for the old days of dominance and control.  Most are members of ‘modern’ institutions operating in an increasingly ‘post-modern’ world – the Anglican Church for example seems to be in a state of transitional futility!

The ordination of women was seen by some as a small adjustment – others saw it as the beginning of the end!

Comfortable coexistence with friends who are on their way to damnation is a real problem – especially for those who believe the Bible is the literal “Word of God” – while others have already deconstructed the traditional views of the Bible – which has led many to abandon Christianity.

Can we accept that the Bible is a human creation?  What place traditional theology?

What place “Follow me”?  Do we have a view of the mystery of life – can we look beyond the physical and see ourselves in it?  What place the language of myth and symbolism?

Consider the significance of a national flag as an emotionally potent way of expressing national loyalty (as a Brit with many American friends this seems to be particularly true of the States).  But the symbol ‘God’ seems to be one of the most ambiguous of human inventions!  What is our own understanding?

We cannot do without myths but we must never see them as the final status.  A myth (such as Adam and Eve) needs to be understood as a myth – but not be removed or replaced – it needs to become a broken myth – something that is always resisted by the official keepers of the myth (it threatens the authority of those in charge as well as the peace and security of those people who have submitted themselves to the systems that they control).

Tillich is eloquent on the subject: 'The resistance against demythologisation expresses itself in "literalism". The symbols and myths are understood in their immediate meaning. The material, taken from nature and history, is used in its proper sense. The character of the symbol to point beyond itself to something else is disregarded. Creation is taken as a magic act which happened once upon a time. The fall of Adam is localised on a special geographical point and attributed to a human individual. The virgin birth of the Messiah is understood in biological terms, resurrection and ascension as physical events, the second coming of Christ as a telluric, or cosmic, catastrophe. The presupposition of such literalism is that God is a being, acting in time and space, dwelling in a special place, affecting the course of events and being affected by them like any other being in the universe. Literalism deprives God of his (sic) ultimacy and, religiously speaking, of his (sic) majesty. It draws him (sic) down to the level of that which is not ultimate, the finite and conditional'.

Tillich goes on to describe two stages of literalism, which he calls the 'natural' and the 'reactive'. In the natural stage of literalism, the mythical and the literal are indistinguishable. This stage is characteristic of primitive individuals and groups who do not separate the creations of the imagination from natural facts. Tillich says that this stage has its own rights and should be left undisturbed right up to the time when humanity's questioning mind challenges the conventional acceptance of the myth as literal (something I have become very conscious of - I always try and avoid asking questions that people are not yet ready to consider - and I'm assuming that if you have read this far you have a reasonably open mind).

There are only two ways to go when this moment arrives - when people begin to move beyond the conformist stage.  The first is to replace the unbroken myth with the broken myth, which yields its inner meaning through interpretation and the power of metaphor. Unfortunately, many people find the uncertainty of the broken myth impossible to live with, so they repress their own questions and denounce the questions that others put to the myth. They retreat into reactive literalism, which is aware of the questions but represses them, either consciously or unconsciously. The instrument of repression is usually an acknowledged authority, such as the Church or the Bible, which claims our unconditional surrender.

Natural literalism is obviously an honest response to myth and symbol. In Kuhn's language, it is to remain within a traditional paradigm that is still working and still offers the best answer to the going questions. Reactive literalism, on the other hand, is usually a rear-guard action on the part of those who are still emotionally invested in a breaking paradigm. Their fear is that if the myth is broken it will lose its power. Richard's aim is to show that it is only the broken myth that can speak to us today, and still speak with transforming power.

The Myth of Original Sin 

This has to be one of the most unsympathetic of Christian doctrines – those who are not baptised go to hell after death!  What is this sin that babies are born with?  The doctrine is not found in the story of Adam and Eve.  Gen 3 says nothing about the transmission to humanity of Adam’s guilt.  It is interpreted by Jewish scholars as an allegory of the human condition, not a historic event – a myth!

Richard suggests that Paul seems to have been the first person to treat it as an historic event – see Rom 5 (but I can’t see this).  Death was the punishment for Adam’s sin.  If sin is missing the mark of what God wants us to be we are all going to die.  It’s as if we have to learn from our mistakes!

The Myth of Justification by Faith 
Theology, like psychology is another way of describing human experience and its struggles with itself.  Many, like Luther have been souls in torment about themselves who found peace through the discovery of spiritual truth that rescued them from despair.  The genius of Buddhism is that it is a ‘middle way’ that repudiates two extremes, the worthless life of self-indulgence and the equally worthless life of self-torture.  How many people see Christian doctrines as life saving?  How often do we not understand our own thoughts and actions?  What place the obsession with guilt and punishment?

The Myth of the Incarnation 

The church has been called an extension of the incarnation - to continue the divine work through history!  This is surely something that is not possible for an institution to do!  Consider Caiphas the High Priest and expediency!

The Myth of the Resurrection

One of the problems people have with Christian beliefs is that they don’t know what they are for or why they might be important.  How for example do we verify the existence of God (intuition or philosophical argument)?  What difference does it make whether we believe or not?  What place miracles?  In that day and age that was the way in which people interpreted what was happening around them!  Darwinism makes more sense than Creationism but are either right?  People have a need for certainty!  When we discover more honest ways of understanding the world we may be left with utter contempt for all religion! 

What is the significance of the central Christian belief in the resurrection of Jesus from the dead?

Just as the ‘big bang’ theory is a hypothetical way of accounting for the origin of the universe, we could say that there was some kind of decisive event that got the Christian movement going.  Something happened to the disciples to change them from demoralised followers of a fallen leader into people of courage who now proclaimed the message of the one they had earlier deserted.

The resurrection was the defining moment when the penny dropped and the disciples discovered who Jesus really was.  The gospel writers defined this in varying ways.

Thoughtful people should not quarrel over the different ways in which they express their loyalty to truth because, if they are being honest, their disagreements are at least about something real and all genuine attempts to struggle for truth must be honoured (as differing approximations of the truth we see in front of us)?  What are the consequences in the lives of those who encounter it?

There was a ‘big bang’ that originated the Christian movement – what is the ongoing impact – and to what extent has that been distorted?

The resurrection of Jesus as a symbol of the human possibility of transformation.

Resurrection is the refusal to be imprisoned any longer by history and its many hatreds – the determination to take the first step out of the tomb – resurrection calls us to action – transformed lives!  Joining with others to bring new life to human communities that are still held by the grip of winter.  There are lots of frozen churches and deep-frozen human institutions that need thawing out with resurrection fire!