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.