Miracles and Myths

(This is a letter I sent to a member of a church where I preached recently.  The conversation began with a letter to me from the member, politely but firmly objecting to my statement that the miracle stories in the New Testament were mythological.  This is the second round of our correspondence.)


Thanks for the letter - again, I am enjoying this exchange with you.

In your last letter, you offered examples of extraordinary events experienced by people today.  These suggest for you a "third way" between taking all of the Bible literally and rejecting all the miracles described in the scriptures.  What is the rubric for choosing which fanciful stories might be true and which ones should not be taken literally?  Doesn't this set up a standard of veracity that applies to the Christian scriptures but not to the rest of experience?

I don't suggest that extraordinary events are impossible.  On the contrary, I myself have experienced some unexplained, remarkable things that would fit nicely in your list of such reports.  I view these events not as supernatural miracles but rather as events that are as yet lacking in explanation.  These events don't prove, nor do they even suggest, that God acts supernaturally nor do they suggest that we should look at the biblical miracle stories as something other than myths.  They simply reveal that not everything that we experience has been explained yet by science and reason.

If there is such a thing as a myth at all, the miracle stories in the Bible fit the definition.  For one thing, many of the stories have literary functions in the biblical narratives that strongly suggest their fictional nature.  For instance, there is the story of the Gerasene man from whom Jesus cast out a "legion" of demons.  The word "legion" refers to the Roman occupation army.  The story says that the demons were driven into a herd of pigs who then ran over a cliff to their deaths.  Jews don't eat pork, so it's clear that the pigs were being raised to feed the Romans.  The story isn't about a miracle that proves Jesus' divinity.  The story is about the great social issue of Jesus’ time and place, which was how the Jewish people should deal with the foreign military occupation of their country.  If we can find a satisfying explanation for the story which has nothing to do with its factuality, why would we bother to read it literally?  Why would we need to suspend our good common sense about what is real and what is not, since the story has its own power and value in any case?

The story of Jesus walking on water fits the commonly held definition of a myth because it is factually implausible and because it has value apart from its historical veracity.  In it I find a beautiful illustration of finding faith in turbulent circumstances, and also a depth-psychological image of mastery of the “sea” of the unconscious realm of our lives.  The story corresponds remarkably to imagery very commonly reported in night-time dreams.  In any case, if he indeed walked on water, there would be no reason to account for it supernaturally.  It would be no more or less of a miracle than the shimmer of hummingbird feathers.

Abandoning concern about the factuality of fanciful Bible stories needs to be accompanied by whetting interest in the power of biblical mythology.  Myths can have life-changing impact on people.  For me, the real “miracle” in Christianity is how its mythical stories have transformed the lives of millions of people over the centuries.  These stories don’t lose any of their impact at all by being understood as fictions.  On the contrary, by liberating ourselves from concern about whether they really happened or not, we can focus on what really matters about the stories: the ways they hold up mirrors to our own spiritual journeys.

The culture that prevailed in the New Testament era had little interest in the kind of fact-checking and scientific analysis that prevails today.  Outside the Christian community, as well as within it, stories abounded of paranormal events, resurrections, miraculous healings, and the like.  Such reports were given less skeptical scrutiny than they'd get today, so I think it stands to reason that most if not all these stories were confabulated.  We care much more today about historical veracity than people did in that era. Libraries in the first century didn’t have “fiction” sections separated from “non-fiction”.  All the more reason to begin with the assumption that the miracle stories are mythical.

I think this topic is an important one because it has such profound consequences for the future of the Christian tradition which both you and I treasure.  Over the last few centuries, science and reason have shrunk into a little corner the realm once attributed to the supernatural.  What used to be acts of a God outside of nature are now mostly understood as acts of nature itself.  It is hundreds of years past time for Christians to recognize that God and nature are one, and that the more we learn about nature, the more we know of God.  Unless we do so, the faith will get stuck in a smaller and smaller corner.  Already, nearly ¼ of the young adults in this country have abandoned organized religion altogether – a number that keeps growing.  They see a disconnection between supernatural Christian doctrines and the reality of the world around them.  So I believe it is time for straight talk about our faith, especially with young people.  It is time to keep the heart of the religion and drop the dogma that obscures it.  That way, we can pass along the essence of Christianity which you and I cherish.

Good to be in conversation with you!

Jim