Christ and Mythology

“The madman jumped into their midst and pierced them with his eyes. ‘Whither is God?’ he cried; ‘I will tell you. We have killed him—you and I. All of us are his murderers. But how did we do this? How could we drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun? ... Do we hear nothing as yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we smell nothing as yet of the divine decomposition? Gods, too, decompose. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.’ ...the madman fell silent and looked again at his listeners; and they, too, were silent and stared at him in astonishment. At last he threw his lantern on the ground, and it broke into pieces and went out. ‘I have come too early,’ he said then; ‘my time is not yet. This tremendous event is still on its way, still wandering; it has not yet reached the ears of men. Lightning and thunder require time; the light of the stars requires time; deeds, though done, still require time to be seen and heard. This deed is still more distant from them than most distant stars -- and yet they have done it themselves.’” -Nietzsche

Nietzsche was right. Christianity really ought to be dead by now. Indeed, as Chesterton noted, Christianity has died, many times over: “Christendom has had a series of revolutions and in each one of them Christianity has died. Christianity has died many times and risen again; for it had a God who knew the way out of the grave.”

If Christianity was just another form of mythology (a pejorative that the secular humanist clings to hopelessly when discussing the Bible), if it was just another superstition, then, yes, it really ought to have died out by now just like any other myth. It ought to be as disbelieved as any other superstition. The fact is that, unless they are being brought to life by authors or Hollywood screenwriters, almost every mythology that arose coextensively with the birth of Christianity have not just seen their followers dwindle—it has seen them literally drop to zero. There is no one, literally no one, who argues that Greek or Roman mythology might be more than myth. There is no one, literally no one, who would pray to Thor or Odin; who would worry about offending Ra or Osiris. The Celtic druids are not merely in hiding; they are extinct. Their temples and statues have been overrun by moss and are steadily crumbling into the earth.

Nietzsche was right in the 19^th century when he thought that Christianity was in some trouble. Like the first centuries after Christ or the period of reformation, theological crises were commonplace then, and it could even be said that, in a sense, Christianity was dying. One would have expected the trend to continue, as trends often do, and yet the 20^th century saw a number of revivals, and even today there are vast pockets of society wherein the Christian faith is growing, not just in terms of demographics, but in terms of devotion. Nietzsche could never have believed that a preacher like Karl Barth would come along and renew theology, or that preachers like James Stewart or Billy Graham would arise and that countless millions would still be willing to hear a message that has not changed in more than two thousands years. There is a strange truth of Christianity that says that a generation of apostasy does not have to lead to a generation of greater apostasy. In any mythology, and even in most religions, when one generation abandons their beliefs, the avalanche has begun and in the next generation this apostasy will be heightened. Why should a son ever come to believe in something that his father has abandoned? In Christianity this is precisely what has happened, time and again.

Christianity is different, not only because it is true, but because it is believed to be true. The Greek and Roman myths were not merely abandoned, they had really never been believed in the first place. Yes, perhaps they had been believed inasmuch as a deist or agnostic might hold some vague notion that a god may have some form of existence, but they had never been believed as one believes in the world. Faith is a conviction of the unseen; myth is the hope for a daydream. Faith is a discovery, myth is a creation.    

When a person becomes a Christian, he ceases to allow his mind to create a world as he wants it and begins to discover a world that God has created for him. It is not creating the savior that we desire, it is discovering the Christ whom we need. This is what has led to the otherwise unaccountable survival of Christianity through the many moments when it really ought to have died. This is what keeps sons coming back to the faith even after their fathers fall away; it is what leads to revivals when the world thinks we ought to hold a funeral for God; it is what leads to awakenings long after Christianity seems to have fallen asleep. If there was no more Christ in Christianity, the faith would certainly have been killed off long ago, swallowed up by the incorporeal nonsense of Gnosticism or the worldliness of the Manicheans and then killed entirely by the cultures of the world.

This ought to be seen as remarkable! That Christianity has managed to survive, that churches grow and that non-believers become believers and that the faith thrives most under the greatest persecution, is one of history’s greatest contradictions. Chesterton likened Christianity to a river—an independent flowing of fresh thought that is racing unstoppably toward the salty sea of culture and, yes, myth. “Some expect it to go down in a cataract of catastrophe, most of them expect it to widen into an estuary of equality and moderation. In other words, most moderate people thought that faith like freedom would be slowly broadened down; and some advanced people thought that it would be very rapidly broadened down, not to say flattened out.”  

To Christianity, the delta—the place where river and sea meet—should not be considered the life of the sea, but rather the death of the river. When a tiny stream of fresh water meets an infinite ocean, it is the fresh water that is made salty. The vast ocean swallows the river whole. Even the mightiest river—one that has carved canyons in solid stone and swept both away man and beast by its deadly currents—is rendered impotent the very moment it touches the vast ocean.

The river of Christianity has somehow (and by this I mean “by the power of God”) collided with the sea and yet remained a river. No, much more than that! It has made the sea less salty! Though moments have arisen that have seen the river disperse, losing ground to the mighty tide, let it be known that the faith is not subject to entropy. Though creation itself may be groaning for redemption, not so the river that cuts its way through the ocean—it is the church that carries the great promise of redemption to a groaning world. In the church is held the mystery that, though an entire generation may seem to slip away and the faith may appear to fail, the next generation may very well bring about an awakening. The river, though cutting through the ocean, might in fact grow stronger, sweeping the sea along in its path. It is not necessary that periods of darkness must prefigure periods of even greater darkness; they may, in fact give way to glorious light!

Christianity may be called untrue, but it cannot be called a myth, because it is a thing that has been believed and it is a thing that has swept its way into the world while remaining pure. While every myth is swept away easily by the changing tide, Christianity alone marks the place where the river at last begins to overcome the sea.

This is a thing to be believed! What if we truly lived as if it was the sea whose identity was threatened by exposure to the river? What if we understood that it is the world that must flee from the church in order that their addictions and idols might be spared, rather than the other way around?

This boldness is the great promise of the gospel, and it is a truth borne out by history. Christianity lives and thrives and has been regularly walking out of its own grave for two thousand years, following in the footsteps of its founder.

Christ and Philosophy

Of the most effective attacks on Christianity, the most common today seems to be the attacks from those who oppose “religion” in its most general meaning and proceed to argue against the concept of “god” in the most abstract sense, arguing against one by arguing against another. An argument against Hinduism, then, is an argument against organized religion, hurting the Christian as much as the Hindu. This form of attack (like so many) is, of course, disingenuous when applied to any religion, but is even more profoundly wrongheaded when applied to Christianity, for Christianity cannot be compared with the religions of the world.

I could scarcely begin to describe the myriad ways that Christianity is unique, and not only among the religions of the world (that much has been said time and again). Far more interesting to me has been the revelation that even as a general philosophy of man, it is unique among philosophies. And I do not mean “unique” in the watered-down and inane sense that there might somehow be different “stages” of uniqueness, nor do I mean that Christianity is only unique by a matter of degree. I mean it in the definite, exact sense of the word: Christianity is unique. It is not just to be differentiated among the world's religions; it stands absolutely alone. It does not merely offer an alternative to other philosophies; it is really the only philosophy.

Philosophers see themselves as the observers of mankind. They see themselves as theater-goers observing the many acts of a sweeping play, every scene filled with equal parts comedy and tragedy. It is a performance of such depth and magnitude that every member of the audience might take something different from it—they, having seen the very same play, might come to a multitude of conclusions, all of which seem, in some sense, true, but are really contradictory. Some will give rave reviews to the performances of the actors; others will have endless criticisms for the dialogue or the set construction or the direction. Philosophers have witnessed the same performance time and again; it is not the play that changes, it is their views of it that change. Philosophers provide a haughty, pretentious audience, and it all stems from their belief that they have somehow stepped outside this farce themselves, looking down from a private box, musing after the strange behavior of strange creatures they could never understand. The philosophers have forgotten that the stage extends to them, as well; they have forgotten they cannot abandon their humanity for the sake of their philosophies, just as no historian can ever step outside of history.

Christianity, on the other hand, is the only philosophy grounded in objective absolutes rather than human ingenuity; it is, in other words, the only philosophy not rooted in failure. Secular philosophers pride themselves not in understanding things fully, but in understanding them slightly better than other philosophers, which can only mean that they do not understand things at all. The same could be said for the pursuit of science, which is not to understand things perfectly, but to understand things better than those who came before. Even among the philosophers and scientists there is rarely any pretension of knowing everything, and there is a tacit acceptance of the limitations of knowledge. Not so with Christianity.  

Christians have long held the key to philosophy, for ours is a philosophy not originating in human observation, but originating outside of humanity. A man cannot fully understand himself without first forgetting that he is a man; but Christian philosophy originated with a God who is separate from man, but who also became man; a God who knows man’s heart both from the outside and from within. This powerful truth has been wielded by men and women of all ages and with varying degrees of education, beginning not with the educated elite, but with lowly fishermen and tent makers. The poor and the humble have been speaking more common-sense notions on philosophy than the richest and most educated since long before we bothered to keep track of these things. Ever since all philosophy found its ultimate meaning in the incarnation, the most reasonable philosophers have been those that recognize the utter futility of philosophy itself, for the philosopher, with his endless degrees and his almost worshipful devotion to language, will inevitably spend the course of his life in trying to understand why a man should decide to do what he does, while at no point recognizing that he really ought to just ask himself. 

Secular philosophy begins by asking a question about human behavior; why, for instance, should we be so driven by greed or power? Why are we so afraid of death? From these questions are devised increasingly clever (and, consequently, increasingly less likely) explanations and algorithms that seek only the broadest possible generalizations. All of man’s actions are driven by a will to power, a will to live, a will to procreate, etc. Once the philosopher discovers the ultimate driving force of man, all of his decisions will somehow come to make sense at last. But as philosophers stumble about in the darkness looking for the light switch that might finally illuminate the mysteries of man, Christians are free to sit in the comfortable warmth of a bright sun that has been shining all along; an oasis to which I may freely invite others, for there is room for all.

Christian philosophy alone does not begin with an observation of man, but begins instead with two principles: sin and grace. The scientist, like the philosopher, will tell you never to begin a principle, for a principle must always be based on observation and never the other way around. One should never begin by saying that the stars are made of chicken soup, because there is a very good chance that, once we learn how to study the stars, we will most likely discover that chicken soup is nowhere to be found. The secular philosophers are very much more in tune with the scientific method—observe, hypothesis, theorize, observe, re-theorize. That is all well and good, but only until one realizes the strange truth that the presumptuous principles of the Christian faith have for thousands of years offered a perfect description of man, while the philosophies of men seem to come and go on every changing breeze of fad and folly.

Christians are also blessed with a perfect philosophical text. Secular philosophers have wasted countless volumes in defining the abstract principles of humanity, decipherable only to those who have learned the language, while the Bible stands alone as the most complete description of man ever assembled. Alone among ancient literature, the Christian scriptures offer man in his most primal, vulnerable state, as a sinner desperately in need of grace; as a fallen being in desperate search of salvation but unable to procure it for himself. There is no thousand page philosophical tome that comes close to equaling the 42 chapters of Job in explaining hardship, suffering and injustice. There are no expressions of joy, sadness, brokenness, humility, gaiety, loss or victory that can equal the Psalms. There are no modern histories of any race of men that equals the Pentateuch, both in describing the fickleness of man and prescribing a cure. There are no works that are so candid about failure, no depictions of life so honest about difficulty, no religious tract as blunt about its difficulties. The Bible stands alone.

Every human philosophy is built on truth; but it is only ever a partial truth. They are based on observations of man rather than the whole man. The truth of philosophy is always overshadowed by its inadequacy, simply because it tries to make man a rational creature, whose choices can always be explained. It is strange that the philosophers who carry on this tradition, who seem so sure that humanity can be explained, seem to have never stopped and looked at themselves; to observe their own strange decisions and inexplicable actions. A secular philosopher who bothers to look at himself will recognize quickly that he is the best evidence against his own philosophies. Philosophers can wax on and on about the condition of man, but until they recognize that man is best defined by his relationship with God, their words and insights will pass away. They will never stumble upon anything as lasting or insightful as the words of King David: “What is man that you are mindful of him, or the son of man that you care for him? Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. You have given him dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under his feet, all sheep and oxen, and also the beasts of the field, the birds of the heavens, and the fish of the sea, whatever passes along the paths of the seas. O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!”