Literal vs Mythological Truth: One Theory on Why So Many “Christians” Follow A Meanie

“Though not true in a literal sense, a myth is not what it is considered to be in everyday speech—a fantasy or a misstatement. It is rather a veiled explanation of the truth. The transformation from fact to myth is endlessly fascinating.” —Joseph Campbell

I saw a Trump flag flying the other day and under his name, it said “Fuck Your Feelings.” I know this is exactly why that sign was made, but: it hurt my feelings. That’s just SO mean. And I know we’ve all made this connection between how mean this political party is and Christianity, but it just keeps astounding all of us, right? And yeah, I mean, at the end of the day—full circle—fuck my feelings. Because this isn’t about feelings. This isn’t just about being mean (even though that IS so mean). This is about right and wrong and the fact that so many Christians who profess to be deeply concerned with what’s morally right are forsaking the essence of Love. This is about detaining immigrants in military bases and separating families, deliberately eliminating diversity and inclusion from policies and hence society, firing hard-working laborers in all kinds of employment positions while lining the pockets of billionaires, and attacking the most vulnerable members of society, specifically based on the color of their skin or their gender identity. I mean, that’s just few things off the top of my head. 

Which brings me back to the fact that a lot of people are wondering how so-called Christians can align themselves with someone who is SO mean (noting here that “mean” is now an understatement. I think the words more aptly associated with the actions I listed above might be hateful, cruel, and sociopathic). I know there are a lot of people who identify as Christians and do not endorse this administration. I have to imagine they are shocked and horrified by how much “Christian” support Trump has. How can two such different expressions exist under the same label?

To understand this better, let’s discuss the nature of words.

Spoken words are sounds (phonemes) to which we assign meaning. Words are, in and of themselves, arbitrary. That’s one of their fundamental characteristics. Apart from onomatopeias (words that imitate the sound of what they symbolize, i.e., “quack, clang, buzz”), there is nothing innate about the sound of a word that determines its meaning. We take phonemes and assign them meaning in any specific language. Then we string these sounds together to make words. These words represent an idea, which is how we communicate or transfer thoughts or ideas from one mind to another. With the dawn of writing, which came with a pictographic language called Cuneiform circa 3,400 BCE, civilizations could transmit their ideas across space and time. People no longer needed to speak face to face to communicate; they could write their ideas down and they would last. 

This was a great technological advance, but like all technological advances, there’s a ripple effect in how it changes culture. With the invention of cuneiform came laws, government, and social class. From 3,000-1500 BCE language developed even further, moving from pictographic forms to abstract, phonetic alphabets. And as cultural anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss noted: 

“There is one fact that can be established: the only phenomenon which, always in all parts of the world, seems to be linked with the appearance of writing…is the establishment of hierarchical societies, consisting of masters and slaves, and where one part of the population is made to work for the other part.”

With the phonetic alphabet came even more change—including neurological evolution that favored abstract, linear thinking over intuitive, holistic thinking—according to Dr. Leonard Shlain, author of The Alphabet vs the Goddess: The Conflict Between Word and Image. Shlain presents archaeological evidence and links data to conclude that with the dawn of the alphabet came patriarchy, monotheism, and religious wars. No one is arguing for a return to an illiterate society, but his research does warrant a look at the correlations between the invention of the written word and violence as well as the one between religious texts and oppression.

The version of the Judeo-Christian God penned down from roughly 1200-165 BCE was transcribed into written Hebrew (the language of the government and the upper class) at a time ripe with patriarchal, violence-obsessed, themes. This version of God reflects that. When modern Christians align themselves with this version of God—the one that lacks empathy and compassion and smites whole civilizations that don’t follow His laws—they are living in a worldview that endorses an Us vs. Them mentality. In this mentality, there is a stark binary between those who deserve good (Us) and those who deserve wrath (Them). Anyone who doesn’t conform to the Us group is othered and dehumanized so that the hateful deeds that are done to them can be justified (rape, murder, slavery, etc.). Look, I’m not being dramatic, it’s all in the book. And this is the same God affiliated with Christianity. I’m really sorry for the offense this may cause, but that God is a sociopath and anyone who believes literally in and is loyal to this version of God (rather than holding it as mythological truth), is endorsing sociopathic ideas and behaviors. 

The brand of militant Christianity emerges when followers get too bogged down into the literal level of the words written on the pages. This type of religion has been weaponized all throughout history. When religious adherents value in-group loyalty and obedience to their leader over inclusivity and critical thinking, conquest ideology replaces a pursuit of Love and spiritual growth. The crusades were fought as “Holy Wars” between different religions sure that their version of God deserved vengeance and a violent display of loyalty. The Protestant Reformation was riddled with violence about different technicalities and beliefs about God. Priests and white colonizers used this brand of Christianity to justify forced assimilation and genocide of Indigenous nations. All throughout the founding of the United States this type of Christian thinking has been enmeshed with the idea of Manifest Destiny and white supremacy. To this day, nations and cultures justify religiously motivated violence and genocide against whole people groups. In the name of God. Sadly, our nation is becoming one of the aggressors aligned with this way of being. 

Trump specifically uses this Us vs. Them thinking that his fundamentalist constituents are primed to embrace. Among others, he has villainized immigrants and Transgender people. He preys on people’s worst stereotypes and phobias and further others these already vulnerable groups of people. He is stripping them of dignity, respect, and safety in the name of making America great, prosperous, and safe again. Fundamentalist Christians are buying into it. It’s racism and bigotry wrapped in an American flag and branded as the Lord’s work. It feels awfully glaring from the outside, but so many are so deeply afraid. His hate mirrors their deep fears and their idea of a wrathful God. 

In my heretical opinion, Jesus died to save us from that God. Please contemplate it for a moment; Jesus was trying to save you from the Biblical God of vengeance and dominance that was documented in the written word. Everyone says that Jesus came to save humans from themselves or from sin or from death—some go as far as to say God’s wrath—but have you ever just thought that Jesus’ whole life and death was about trying to save people from a wrathful God? Cause one could make a strong case for that.  

Living under the fear of a wrathful god who hates you, believes your nature is evil, and smites people—that’s such torture. It is why there are so many people so quick to hate, to support this administration, and so slow to question the meanest authoratarian voice in the room—especially when he poses with a Bible. 

If you read the words that authors credit to Jesus, they are all about love, social justice, upending the institution of church, and creating an egalitarian society. He is a very different concept than the God before His lifetime. Sidenote: Jesus likely spoke Aramaic, the language of the common people.

So, to quote the book from whence my arguments arise “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” 

The concept of Logos or eternal meaning and substance is described here in that verse. 

But it doesn’t end there, after about 13 verses of stuff about Jesus and John there’s a verse that says:

“and the Word became flesh.”

I think the Christians who internalized the deep truth that “the Word became flesh” are the people who are able to remain compassionate, dynamic, and alive in their faith. 

Before the written word, meaning and stories were passed on in the oral tradition. And so as life and knowledge evolved, so did the story. The deep truth remained constant, but the superficial contexts and details evolved to stay relevant. When people began writing things down, people started getting fixated on details. They stopped focusing on the deep meaning, the truth within, and they got hung up on the literal, factual level. They forsook the mythological or metaphorical level of truth which is a higher and deeper type of truth. Mythological truth endures. It persists. Literal truth is contextual. When we try to replace mythology with facts or view the two as the same currency that can be easily exhanged we rob ourselves of something much more lasting, more enduring, more universally true. 

So, when people wrote down their understanding of the truth, it worked for some while it was socially relevant. All the laws, the world view, etc—sure, thousands of years ago that was the context in which people were living and it made sense. But now, that mythology is obsolete and not operative because people aren’t allowing it to evolve. They argue about the details, the laws, and the truth at the literal, factual level. By doing this, they cheat themselves and everyone out of something much richer and what every soul needs—a cosmology that helps one find meaning and purpose throughout time and across cultures. They rob themselves of a relevant social and ethical code that creates more good than harm because it is dynamic and alive, exibiting the qualities of adaptation and evolution as anything alive does. 

Because some Christians refuse to let the truth evolve and adapt because they’re too fearful of losing some kind of “factual” element of the text, these Christians become dogmatic, militant, and inflexible. They live under the fear of a wrathful god who will smite them if they deviate from the details and don’t obey the literal words on the page.  

This is exactly what Jesus came here to alleviate—that fear of a wrathful, judgmental god who hates and judges more than loves and empathizes. 

The idea of Jesus, in the Christian faith, is that an expression of God (Eternal Logos) became embodied in human form to experience life as a limited mortal and to have empathy for what that’s like. The idea is that He came here to make a case—to that vengeful God— that it’s really difficult to be a human. Making this case, His purpose was to stand between humanity and the wrath of God as a bridge of understanding and empathy. And, through this lens of understanding, I’d like to think that He also came to reconnect with what was good here in the first place. To see the sunrise, to experience the awe and beauty that this natural world has to offer. To experience the satisfaction of seeking answers and finding them. To feel the rage of injustice and to take a stand against it. To feel hunger and then share a delicious meal with friends. To have good conversations, to laugh, to cry. To offer hope and see it take root in someone’s mind and heart. And most of all, to experience love and see how so much here in this very complex world in which we live is bound to (what we often think of as) it’s opposite. 

For example, Joy and Pain. There’s love and because of that there’s heartache. If we were unattached, we wouldn’t have pain or suffering. That’s the whole Buddhist idea. And I reject it. Yeah, sure. Take my material stuff and whatever, I get it that my meaning and purpose shouldn’t be all wrapped up in that. But actual attachment being something to eradicate? Hard pass. What’s the point without it? That’s love. That’s the deal. You love, you hurt. You care, you feel pain. You have something of value, it can be lost or broken or stolen. You live and you die. 

And I think that the mythological truth we can keep from that verse, “the Word became flesh” is that we no longer have to live in fear, shame, or in an unforgiving state of judgement. Jesus was an ally, and the whole idea is that He gets it. He knows how hard it is to be human. And also how beautiful it is. And the Word—the substance of law, the truth, the essence of the meanings contained within all the words that have ever been and what the archetype is of all those words—became one of Us. And made it possible for everyone to be an Us. And when rigid, literal Christians take up the old way of dividing, hating, othering, and trying to make this mythological truth fit into a list of tiny, literal and rigid facts, they are negating the very essence of Christianity as embodied by the life of Jesus. 

That is the problem with taking speech and locking it down in the written word: it loses that dynamic, organic quality that all living things have. The eternal Logos concept is that the numinous and the essence of what IS — all that exists—was always there. It was shapeless and devoid of form but dynamic and alive and it became a creative force that brought everything into existence. When humans started nailing it down in so-called sacred texts and overly defining rules and laws around how to properly relate to that numinous force, we killed the dynamic and living quality of the Word. And truly, if you believe the embodiment of the Word was Jesus, it checks out that the religious leaders killed Him. He was a little too lively and revolutionary for them. That’s because the literal level of truth changes but the deep substance of logos remains. That tends to make fear-based religious adherents uncomfortable. Our perspective adapts and evolves as life continues, but the deeper, archetypal level of truth remains. And that is why the Word had to become flesh for truth to be restored to the mythological, dynamic, and living level. 

So, Christians, do you make your life a practice that aims to embody and honor the mythological truth of Jesus’ life? Do you live and act like the Word became Flesh and is alive and dynamic? Or do you still hinge your soul’s worth and everyone else’s on a series of laws and rules that are static and dated and made by a wrathful version of a God devoid of empathy? The choice is yours, but there is so much evidence that Christians need a new mythology—one that is relevant, dynamic and suited to our current reality. 

You can take this or leave it, as I’m not a literal Christian. And the reason for that is that about 16 years ago, I developed a deep conscientious objection to the literal beliefs of Christianity. I could no longer believe that God hated people or that being gay was wrong. I could no longer believe that only the people who believe the Bible is a book of literal facts are not going to eternal damnation. I could no longer let my mind be thwarted by requiring it to remain obedient to a list of static, non-living words. Obedience is not a virtue; it is only as good or as evil as the ideas or people you are obeying. Critical thinking on the other hand, it’s a pretty good skill to have. You should never have to dim your intelligence to believe something. You should never have to squelch your compassion to obey someone. Ideas worth believing should check out with your intellect and your conscience. 

So, I unsubscribed to all the literal beliefs I had been indoctrinated to cognitively obey, and I started sifting through these beliefs for what actually resonated with my soul. This means that many of my core values have remained (Love, kindness, generosity, social justice, honesty, etc), but my beliefs have changed. 

Many of us who were raised in the Christian faith can no longer adhere to the literal beliefs of the Bible in good conscience. We need to find a way to evolve, adapt, and keep improving our knowledge and understanding of the world in which we live. We need to find a way to accept and celebrate scientific discoveries without fear that our entire framework for meaning and explanations will dissolve if we do so. We need to find a way to champion human rights and celebrate diversity, moving toward progress and not away from it. But we also don’t want to throw away our entire notion of truth, our concept of Love, and our spiritual practices forged during the entire first portion of our life. That’s why I encourage you to consider examining Christianity through a mythological lens of truth. Again, mythological doesn’t mean fantasy; it means veiled truth. It means that not everything remains literally true–especially given the contextual changes over thousands of years– but there is deep, eternal truth veiled within the words that is alive and dynamic.

If you keep the literal beliefs but forsake the meaning contained within the Word, you have missed the entire point of the life and death of Jesus. In that case, you are religiously obedient but not in agreement with Love. And as for me, I will always strive to choose Love.