Evangelism and the Need for Myth

The are four ways for humans to relate to transcendence, or God, or ultimate reality. One is through myth; participation in a narrative  that draws together the world experienced through the humans senses and reality beyond the grasp of human senses. Some Christians dislike the term “myth” because the Greek “mythos” in the New Testament is often wrongly translated into the English “myth.” This is an instance where the translators of the KJV had right. Paul means by the word “fables,” as is clear in context. But myths are the furthest thing from fables, because they often tell the truth when facts fall short.

The second way of relating personally to ultimate reality the is through mysticism and the release of the ego from its self-limiting embrace of immanence. (see above) 

A much vaunted third way, serving God by serving serving humanity, may prove unsatisfactory except in the context of either myth or mysticism, just as the forth, intellectual engagement with metaphysics, may prove unsatisfactory. The reason these may prove unsatisfactory is that it appears that humans, for whatever reason, find satisfaction in placing their lives in relationship to ultimate reality. This is true however the ultimacy of reality is  conceived, whether temporally, geographically, physically, socially, or psychologically. Our lives are drawn toward and beyond whatever we perceive to be the horizon of our lives. We appear to be restless in immance.

(It is tempting to relate these four ways to "heart, soul, mind, and strength," which might work for pedagogical or homiletical purposes but would take require more exegetical work than I intend in this short essay.)

Those who focus on human service often forget that Matthew 25:31 - 48, the story in which Jesus locates service to God in service to humanity, is  mythological in character. It hinges entirely on the history of interaction between human life and the life of the Divine. 

Similarly the mythological story of Job is far more accessible to human experience than a handbook of philosophical theology. Job we get; Whitehead, Hartshorne, or even Pinnock probably not so much.

Unfortunately, within my lifetime much of American Christianity has become so anxious to avoid both myth and mysticism that it has locked itself into activism and intellectualism in the immanent frame. This may be why it is of declining interest to rising generations: generations raised on myths from The Narnia Chronicles, to Star Wars to The Lord of the Rings to Harry Potter and Indiana Jones. (The last is, after all, an archaeologist exploring the world of myth in search of just those objects through which Transcendence meets the mundane.) These are the generations who increasingly identify as spiritual but not religious, perhaps because religion has failed to be recognizably spiritual in the way that they understand spirituality. 

It will be useful to briefly examine that path that brought us here.

When I was a child the common preaching in the Methodist churches of which I was a part focused on faith as a means by which we were saved from sin and hell. Heaven and Hell were the going terms for ultimate reality, and one was obviously preferable to the other. This was my grandfather's evangelism (he was a Texas circuit rider,) and that of the pastor of the Methodist (pre-UMC) church I attended as a child. Having been well established in the generation of my parents and their younger peers the view of ultimate reality and the relation of religion to it persisted in United Methodist churches well into the late 20th century and remains in some places today. 

But it was increasingly ineffective by my college years. The God that would send us all to hell for doing things that didn't really seem so bad or even really matter wasn't worth going to church to meet and seemed a poor companion for eternity. 

I think this is why there was a shift in my youth (the 1970's) was a Jesus-centric evangelism. We heard that Jesus loved us, and wanted us to follow him so that we could experience his friendship and find meaning in life. We still needed to repent and change, but we did so because Jesus was on our side, urging us toward a better life in God's Reign. And that was a reign that we could help build Gods Reign with generosity, social action, political engagement, and self-giving love. Before we built a bunch of ugly boxes. Jesus was worth going to church to meet. 

People needed Jesus, and Jesus needed people. The Reign of God was to be experienced as an immanent enacted reality and the old myths in the Bible became emotional touchstones rather than ways of being lifted into the realm of God.

There was also another change was underway. It was a subtle but real shift from “Jesus loves you and wants you to follow him” to “this church loves you and welcomes you into its fellowship.” The church promised an experience of true fellowship and the opportunity to serve your fellow humans through the church, not so much as the mystic Body of Christ as the fully immanent body of Jesus the moral theologian, social activist, and political prophet. 

It was a shift away from a personal but intangible  relationship with Jesus into more tangible personal relationships within a church that manifest and exemplified Jesus’ teaching about God's love. A shift further into the limitations of immanence. In Hymn, (1968) Peter Paul and Mary sang of that emergent church:

Sunday morning, very bright, I read Your book by colored light, That came in through the pretty window picture.

I visited some houses where they said that You were living, And they talked a lot about You, And they spoke about Your giving. They passed a basket with some envelopes; I just had time to write a note, And all it said was "I believe in You."

Passing conversations where they mentioned Your existence, And the fact that You had been replaced by Your assistants.,The discussion was theology, And when they smiled and turned to me, all that I could say was "I believe in You."

I visited Your house again on Christmas or Thanksgiving, And a balded man said You were dead, But the house would go on living. He recited poetry and as he saw me stand to leave, He shook his head and said I'd never find You.

My mother used to dress me up, And while my dad was sleeping, We would walk down to Your house without speaking.

For many late boomers the move into an entirely immanent religion was a good evangelistic move. Heavily influenced by modernity and not particularly well socialized in a sacramental/mystical worldview, Jesus had become a remote historical figure and God an even more abstract metaphysical entity. We were already living in what Taylor calls the immanent frame, and even if we believed in God we didn't know how to experience God's love except within the framework of human relationships. We had been (often under the influence of Christian teaching) demythologized and so all that was left for us was a fully immanent religion. 

But just as many got up to leave, sensing that God had already preceded us.

But even immanent religion was under threat. 

By the end of the 20th century the arrival of shows like Cheers,Friends, Seinfeld, and How I met Your Mother announced that the immanent frame had become the primary frame for all relationships in popular culture. These and many other movies and TV series showed that the kind of mutual love and support the church once offered could also be found in many other settings as well. And all without the bother of referring to an abstract God and without the complex and sometimes abusive superstructure of professional clerics.

That trend has continued until the idea of church (or mosque or synagogue or temple) as an important realm for human relationships has almost totally disappeared from popular culture. Our culture offers no privileged place to religious institutions when it comes to human wholeness and service to humanity. Indeed it has excluded such institutions almost entirely. In the TV shows mentioned above groups of friends go through all of the phases of life together, including marriage, having children and nurturing them toward maturity without religion. So who needs the church? 

Despite this the immanent frame has proven unsatisfying for many if not most people. They are continuing to seek, under the name spirituality, some sense of being engaged with transcendence,  something beyond the horizons of their lives. Moreover, their quest, once considered antithetical to a scientific worldview, is increasingly acknowledged by science as it finds the hard limits in its capacity to characterize the whole of reality. As Marcel Gleisner writes in his Island of Knowledge, scientists now know that there are things that are real but which they cannot know through the rational analysis of sensory data (direct or mediated). Science must face its horizons as well, even if scientists choose (like Gleisner) to dwell entirely in the immanent frame. 

Yet instead of embracing the myth and mysticism running through our culture as a counterpoint to the limitations of the immanent frame, too many of us have doubled down on Jesus sentimentality, the dead letter of the creeds, and emotional fervor. As one recent commentator noted, why should she go to church when she could attend a Taylor Swift concert without all the other baggage? Why go to a pep rally for Jesus when we have professional sports? Why nerd out on orthodox theology when you can nerd out on economics, model trains, virtual reality, AI, or gaming?  

If these comparisons seem cold-blooded then bear in mind that Americans have voted with their feet. They are not coming to the church, or the mosque, or the synagogue. Religion is dying and sentimentality, rigidity (or rigor if you prefer), and fervor aren’t going to bring it back to life. There is no point dancing around like the priests of Baal, torturing ourselves and hoping for fire from heaven. 

A friend, and sometimes curmudgeonly priest once noted that when people walked into his church he wanted to make sure they knew it was a completely different place from the world outside.  He wanted them to know that it was a place of myth and mysticism, a place alien to the worldly and literally out of the world. He had some of the strategy wrong when it came to evangelism, but he understood something fundamental about the failings of the also failing churches around his. 

What we also know is that Americans of all generations are seeking spirituality; some sense of connection to the whole greater than the sum of its parts, the invisible connections running through all creation, and the assurance that the universe is on their side. This makes it the perfect time to talk about how God so loved the world that God came to live among us in Jesus the Son of God. But the gospel works only so long as the story isn't reduced to the immanent frame. It works only so long as it retains its fully mythological character, so long as it leaps beyond the horizons that define our existence and lift us up into the story of transcendence. 

Too often in the UMC and other mainline denominations we had become so focused on a realized eschatology within our walls which then emanates outward through social service and social activism that we are now living in a permanent Kingdomtide; the season of the church year we invented in the 20th century to celebrate exactly our aspirations to move on from the mythological language that no longer spoke within our captivity to the immanent frame. 

(An aside, it is noteworthy that my doctoral students in an entirely secular academic program continue to find Plato’s parable of the cave engaging and enlightening. 18 years plus of education and many feel they are still watching shadows on the wall, blind to the fire and even more to the light.)

In focusing on the immanent we ignored one of the oldest realities of being human: the need for a relationship with the transcendent, with the ultimate source, end, and connection binding reality into what might reasonably called the uni-verse. 

Humans are made for myth, for horizon seeking and boundary crossing and ultimate unity. Even an atheist like like the Nobel prize winning physicist Stephen Weinberg, could write Dreams of a Final Theory about a dream which if pursued with integrity “lifts life from above the level of farce to tragedy.”  If the church doesn't offer us myth then we'll seek it wherever we can find it. If the church won't witness that God came as a human so that we can relate as people to a Person who loves us then we'll go back to the old grind of making gods in our own image. Because at least for many that appears to be the only human choice: a relationship with God come as a human or a relationship with an idol trying to be God. Until, as in 2016, we wind up following the wrong god home.

If its just rock-pop emotionalism we offer then we've competing with Taylor Swift. If its just doing good for others and doing well for ourselves we've got plenty of charities, food banks, and civic service clubs galore. Even my sailing club does civil service. 

If its just the warm embrace by people who care for you and wish you well there is no end to social gatherings and coffee shops. And frankly Zen is in the air if what you want is peace of mind and glimpses of transcendence in the privacy of your own home or down at a local meditation center that accommodates your schedule instead of insisting on Sunday mornings. If that is too hard there are drugs. 

So how do we re-mythologize Christianity? How do we restore our connection with Transcendence? With God? How do we escape, (a final reference to one who understood the power of myth and remembered Plato) the shadowlands?