Many of us believe that the histories of families, peoples, nations, cultures, etc., are what define them, but they don't. That's what mythologies do. Our myths are what tell us who we are.
History, for as long as it has been around, has been a difficult and conflicted thing. History is not a natural thing for people to do. It is part art, part science; part story, part witness, part documentation. It's artificial, and therefore highly conscious. Myth, on the other hand, even at its richest and profoundest (and I am a great espouser of the good of myth) comes naturally. Of course we have stories to explain how and why we do and are.
Myths are not interested in objectivity. Histories are. Objectivity is not a virtue in itself, but only in certain circumstances. When objectivity is needed, however, it is life-giving. It is the difference between the right and the wrong path. For mankind objectivity is an impossibility, a tortoise Achilles can never overtake. Nonetheless, objectivity is a real thing. God, even though relational and incarnational, is objective.
The less objective a history is, the more mythological it is, and the more dangerous it is. It is not dangerous because it is myth-like, but because it is lying about its nature.
Writing our history ("doing history", the hip among us might say) is the noble attempt to create an accurate self-picture. It is noble because we can never fully complete the task; we are doomed, from a certain perspective, to always fail. But the more objective we are, and the more we strive for accuracy and unbiased truth, the more salutary our history is for us.
A man is who his stories are. The bed-time stories and fables and myths and anecdotes and inside jokes he was a part of growing up made him. But a man's spiritual health comes not only from knowing who he is in his myths, but in his personal history. He recalls the documentable fact that he usually lies when his superiors put him on the spot, or perceives how the impact of a previous relationship is affecting him in a current one. If he only knows his personal myths, and is not truthful about his history, he can say to himself "I am not a liar" and lie yet again. He lacks objectivity. He is, as N. D. Wilson might put it, unable to see what character he is in the story.
It is a great pity that prospective pastors are made to study so little history, and that when they are, they are provided with ecclesiastical surveys. Myths are powerful, they bestow both particularity and universality. But histories provide the opportunity for sympathy and interaction. Myths are narratives in the barest sense; history is essentially narrative. It is important for a pastor in upstate South Carolina to know the history of that region: the immigrants, the tribes, the slaves, the trading, the churches, the industries. Knowing the history of an individual helps us to minister to him; so it is with places and groups.
Cultures in which the line between myth and history blur are dangerous. Myths are eschatological. Nazi mythology had a desired conclusion, and it was a wicked one. History had to be destroyed for that mythology to prosper. We are in a dangerous place today, because we pretend that myths aren't even real. We've left only history, but history will drift toward myth if myth is absent.
We, as Christians, have two duties here. We must preach true myth. And we must preach true history. We are comfortable with myth. Let us therefore study and teach and proclaim more history. And let us value objectivity. Our brothers and sisters need us to. The world needs us to.
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