True Myth

I found myself recently in an interesting perspective shift. As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve spent a lot of time lately trying to understand the mind of the unbeliever. Most of my attention has been on the atheist point of view. Much of what makes it hard for the atheist to believe in God and Christianity is the idea of the supernatural. To many atheists, science, over recent centuries has done a lot to answer questions that religion used to. A classic example would be epilepsy. Before it was better understood by science, they would say, religion attributed it to demon possession. Now that science has answered this and many of our other questions, religion has less of a functional role in our lives. Science, being more credible, has completely taken over the role of “God” for many of these guys. So when those of us who still hold on to a belief in the credibility of the bible try to have a discussion with these guys, they find it incredulous that we still believe in things like creation, Noah’s arc, and the virgin birth of Jesus, etc. They would say we can’t let go of the past. Although many important questions aren’t answered by the atheist, they still feel they are on more intellectually honest ground than we are, and no further discussion can happen until we let go of our “myths”.

I developed a bit more of an appreciation for this point of view the other day while flying with a Saudi first officer who was helping me understand some of the Muslim sentiment regarding the importance of their two most important cities: Mecca and Medina. He was telling me Medina is important because that is where the “holy prophet Muhammad” is buried as well as most of his successors. It is where Muhammad fled to when the people of Mecca didn’t like his insistence that there was only one God and they should give up all their pagan gods. Eventually Muhammad was able to come back to reclaim Mecca when he had finally developed a large following during his time in Medina. Mecca is significant to the Muslim, not only because it is the city where Muhammad was born, but also because the Kaaba is located there. The Kaaba is a cube shaped, one room stone structure that is traditionally believed to have been built by Abraham and Ishmael. Set on the outside of one corner of the structure is a black meteorite that is solemnly kissed by all pilgrims who can gain access to it. All Muslims are to visit the Kaaba at least once in their lifetime, a tradition that actually started well before Muhammad. All the prayers of Muslims are to face the Kaaba. Near this shrine are some large preserved “footprints” that are believed to be Abraham's. My first officer used his hands to show me these footprints are roughly two feet long, and he explained that in the early days people were much bigger than us and have gradually gotten smaller. He also told me that the Kaaba has been long held by Muslims to be the middle of the world, and science has recently been able to corroborate this. Another part of the Muslim pilgrimage in Mecca includes circling the Kaaba seven times, walking fast between two mounds near the sanctuary seven times, marching three miles to Mina, then proceeding six miles to Arafat, listening to a sermon, and then marching back to Mecca where a sacrifice is offered in memory of Abraham’s attempted sacrifice of his son, followed by one more circuit around the Kaaba. Somewhere in this journey is a spring of water that my first officer claimed was the water that God gave to Hagar when she was dying in the wilderness after being sent away with her son Ishmael. The water of this spring has become “holy water” for Muslims and is distributed all over the Muslim world. He said it has a distinct taste that he doesn’t particularly like, but is evidence that it is special and unique.

While he was telling me this I watched him intently looking for any hint of disbelief. There wasn’t any. He really believed everything he said about the footprints, the center of the world and the spring and all that. I couldn’t help but think of the Midwest American myth of Paul Bunyan when he was talking about the footprints, and both the holy water Catholics use in their ceremonies, and the Ganges River in India, when he was talking about the spring. I realized that this must be the feeling atheists have when Christians profess their belief in the miracles of the bible.

One of the concepts that helped C.S. Lewis convert back to Christianity from atheism was the idea of “true myth”. The bible has plenty of fantastic stories that are used to teach a lesson or bring home a point. The literalness of these stories is a bit challenging to believe, but to discount the literalness would be to undermine the bible’s overall authenticity. Jesus referred to Adam and Eve, and Jonah as real people. Sorting out what is true and what isn’t is a difficult task for those of us who believe in the supernatural, but I feel that an appreciation for the difficulty of belief is important if one is to have an open and honest conversation with an unbeliever.