Braden Blog #2: Myth and Fact of Christ

September 25, 2014

            I’m very intrigued by the notion of Christianity as both a myth (read: story) and a historical event. The myth, preceding the event, even is what is most curious to me. I recall being challenged in high school by someone who pointed out to me (and I’m actually yet to verify this, six whole years later) that many cultures share a common myth of a son of a god or a god in general, or a hero of some sorts who comes to sacrifice himself in some way for the world or a people group. This was introduced to me as counterpoint to the validity or veracity of Christianity or the story of Jesus. This person’s claim was that all sorts of cultures from different continents made up the same old myths (read: lies), and that the Jesus-story was just as much false as the others.

            But let us imagine that what Lewis and Tolkien and all these folks point to is true: that myth actually holds more truth than other avenues epistemologically, or at least it can get us to deeper places. This in turn implies that myth is not actually false, inherently. The implications of that are pretty enormous, actually.

If that notion is true, then this myth of the sacrificial hero common across cultures that my friend pointed out to me actually adds to the veracity of the Christ story. That’s the first implication. The second is more fascinating in my opinion, and that is this: if multiple cultures all shared similar myths, then there truly does appear to a collective human conscience of sorts. And if they had an element of truth to them, then it’s actually a contributive human conscience! It appears many cultures were reading the Roman’s 1 “Bible of creation” as some call it. Ted Loder, a poet and prayer-writer I’ve been reading lately comments in an introduction to his book that he has heard that oftentimes the images of artists and poets often precede and instruct scientific discovery. He then reflectively asks if it’s possible that they not only precede the discovery but in some way help to create what the scientist later discovers?