True Myths

True Myths

by Paul Kowalewski

I was listening to a public radio station yesterday. A prominent atheist was giving a talk, and he said something that struck me as being very odd: “All the stories in the Bible are nothing more than myths. So, they are all false.” I thought to myself, “Does this guy really believe that myths are false?”

Then I had this flash of insight that in general, most people today probably don’t understand what myths and metaphors are all about – and this lack of understanding may be the primary roadblock people encounter in conversations and dialogue about “God.”

Modern-day people (believers and non-believers alike) hear stories like those found in the Bible, and they read or listen to these stories as if they were fact-based descriptions of “objective” history, data-based, scientific reporting. Of course, snakes don’t actually talk and people can’t walk on water – so the stories must be false. But this is not the language of scriptures.

Scripture “stories” are told by storytellers, and they are told to a “pre-scientific” storytelling culture – people who understood that stories were “vehicles” for getting at some deeper truth, not descriptions of actual historical events.

Several years ago, my wife and I had a wonderful opportunity to travel into the rainforest of the Amazon in Ecuador, and we visited a village of native “Achuar” peoples. Since ancient times, these people had made their home deep in the jungle, and to this very day, they have very little contact with modern, so-called “civilized” society.

When we visited, we were invited to a tribal gathering. Just after nightfall the people assembled around a campfire and told stories to one another. Luckily, we had a guide who could translate for us.

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