T. LEARNING THE LANGUAGE OF MYTH

This word myth is a word that has two quite different meanings and that's confusing. One meaning is "falsehood".  When we call something a "myth" we mean it's a fairy tale, it's not true.

The other meaning of "myth" is altogether different.  In this sense a myth is something that is so true it can't be expressed in ordinary language.  The opening chapters of Genesis in the Bible, for example,  provide a good illustration.  They describe the creation.  (There are two stories actually, somewhat contradictory.)  They are myths, not to be taken as literal descriptions of creation, but the fact of creation.  They don't provide answers to the questions of how creation came about and when (those are questions for scientists), but rather answers to the questions of Who created it and why? (which are questions scientists don't try to deal with.)

"Mythic Horse", by Tim Holmes
The problem some people have in understanding the Bible is that they fail to see that the Bible carries two kinds of truth - factual truth (Jesus was crucified on a cross) and poetic or mythological truth (Jesus rose bodily into heaven.) When scripture reports Jesus saying, "I am the door," I know what he means and I don't expect to see him hanging on hinges.  Literal interpretation of the Bible does it a great disservice.

Myth is not to be taken literally as it it were the truth.  It is a special form of language to be taken seriously because it points to the truth.  Art in its various forms is often mythological or metaphorical.  When I think about a myth I think of what Picasso said about art, that it is "a lie that tells the truth."  To say that "the way to a man's heart is through his stomach" may be good counsel for a housewife, but it's poor instruction for a surgeon.

Check today's weather report and you'll see how we use mythological truth every day when we report on the time of "sunrise" and sunset."  We know the sun doesn't actually "rise" or "set."  The earth revolves and gives the appearance of the sun moving, but we understand what those terms mean.

It's even a problem in science.  Werner Heisenberg, one of the principal theorists of Quantum Physics has said,

"The problem of language here is really serious.  We wish to speak in some way about the structure of the atom. . . but we cannot speak of the atom in ordinary language." 

If that's true of atoms, consider our problem of talking about God, for example.

We must learn to understand and sometimes employ the language of myth.



TOOLS AND APPROACHES  - T

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