…There are great mythic themes in the Bible and majestic moments, as when God descends upon Mt Siani in fire and smoke. It is a myth to be awed by. Many who are not sympathetic to religion would trivialize the Bible and in so doing discard such epiphanies. We do this at our peril. Failure to understand the power of those myths and their hold on people leads to nothing more than further division.
Those faithful to the myths – and those comprise far more than fundamentalists – sill simply ignore any critique of their beliefs if the critics are contemptuous of the Bible. Therefore one should respect the mythic material and understand that such myths endure, at least in part, because they resonate with deep psychological needs. Myths can also have a validity beyond that of literal truth.
…Yet if these tales are held to be sacrosanct, if we must accept them as literally true, if we are forbidden from looking beneath the surface of myths, they will almost surely be used by agents of repression, burdening society with unreasonable limitations and irrational directives, and in extreme cases inciting assassination and war.
Even if the forces of repression are held in check, they may alienate us from the myths they have so misused to the point that we will be robbed of the richness of mythic understanding and will lose the insights to be gained by seeing the human condition from the perspective of humanity’s collective yearnings and strivings through the millennia to comprehend what lies behind the surface, what is the true nature of the cosmos.
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I am a student of Paul Tillich. He (and I) heartily agree with the importance of holding on to the Biblical myths. The liberals of the middle of the last century tried to get rid of them. It is better that we learn how to understand them and rejoice in the insights we can gain from them. Literalists fail in this, but progressives have a chance to help today's Christians find value in them.
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