This post is a follow-up to my recent post on the necessity of doing real history in the world. The previous post in a nutshell is as follows. History helps a culture and society have an accurate self-image. Mythology is important because it is foundational and eschatological. Mythology tells us we're special. History tells us we're nothing special.
Given the rationalistic nature of our current universe, history is seen to trump mythology. In fact, mythology is despised. All this does, alas, is make a hole that must be filled, and we fill it with history. We make history mythological. We deconstruct "history" and call it metanarrative and power structures. We create civic myths and a civic religion.
The dominant push having been to change history to myth, there exists a push back to change myth to history. Nationalistic "trad" movements dress their myths up as history, and the more racially focused they are the more passionate they are about this conflation. This is one of the reasons for which they are associated with the resurgence of Nordic pagan religion in Germany, Scandinavia, and the U.S. Paganism takes to their false mythico-histories more readily.
This is because God has been a God of history since way back when. God is also a God of myth. Myths are good things, as are histories. It is lies that are wicked. But myths are by nature obscure things, and God has always shone light on them. The movement of Christian/Jewish myth was historical, culminating in Jesus. Jesus was, among other things, a historical myth. He did mythical things and people saw them and wrote them down. One did not replace the other (see Melchizedek in the New Testament), but history and myth co-exist in a unique way in Christianity.
Even before Jesus, God messed with his people's mythology by using history, and had it written down to resist over-mythologizing.
Remember, the myths of the people of God tell us that we are special. I think that one of the roles of history is to tell us that we're nothing special. And both are true from Scripture. We are nothing special, and yet we are God's special choice, both at the same time. This is an integral part of believing in grace. There was nothing about us that would have disposed God to love us over other nations, except perhaps that we might have been extra non-special.
We were God's very own people, chosen out from among many. And yet we were only one people among so very many. Our father was an Amorite and our mother a Hittite. We had stupid judges and wicked people and wicked judges and stupid people. Our kings assassinated political rivals while prophets cringed and priests stole meat and took mistresses. And it was all written down.
This is still who the Church is. It is who we are in Gospel hope, and in sanctification, but it is still who we are.
We ought to be repulsed by any efforts to mythologize the history of the Church.
But even more repulsive ought to be any efforts to mythologize the history of the common nations of the world. If the Church is the Church by grace alone, how much more so the mere nations, who must stream in to the Church and bow to Jesus King?
God loves us for who we are, and we are nobody.
Again the word of the Lord came to me: “Son of man, make known to Jerusalem her abominations, and say, Thus says the Lord God to Jerusalem: "Your origin and your birth are of the land of the Canaanites; your father was an Amorite and your mother a Hittite. And as for your birth, on the day you were born your cord was not cut, nor were you washed with water to cleanse you, nor rubbed with salt, nor wrapped in swaddling cloths. No eye pitied you, to do any of these things to you out of compassion for you, but you were cast out on the open field, for you were abhorred, on the day that you were born.
“And when I passed by you and saw you wallowing in your blood, I said to you in your blood, ‘Live!’ I said to you in your blood, ‘Live!’ I made you flourish like a plant of the field. And you grew up and became tall and arrived at full adornment." (from Ezekiel 16)
If Israel ever wondered if they were truly that humble and despised, their holy histories confirmed it.
When a tribe or nation wants to think much of itself, it must erase its histories and inflate its mythologies. And perhaps this goes without saying, but it must turn to pagan mythologies, old or new, if the myths aren't to implode.
When we as our civic and ethnic selves (not distinct from being Christians, but it is true that there are American Christians and French Christians) are evaluating our place in the world and the direction we're going, singly or in our civilization or tribe, we must be very leery of replacing history with myth. We must avoid exceptionalism and founding myths. Any nation or tribe that writes a history to vaunt itself in worth over any other is lying to you.
This doesn't mean we're not glad and proud of our ancestry, language, or place. But it means we have an accurate view of their intrinsic worthiness, i.e. have mercy Lord Jesus.
I've been going for a while now, and risk becoming repetitive. What do I want to be the takeaways here?
1. History is an art, but also a science. Be skeptical of both history and myth.
2. Love details. Details make for history. Doubt yourself if you don't want to know the details.
3. Trust in Jesus. Hold loosely to all else if you can.
4. Preach the Gospel. Build the Kingdom of the King of kings.
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