Age of Myth


Lenten Vespers, Week One


Homily:

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

St Augustine divided human history into six great Ages of the World.

He did this as a tool for catechetical instruction, to teach people the story of the Bible, in parallel with the Six Days of Creation. Just as the Six Days in Genesis lead to the Sabbath, the seventh day of God’s rest, so do the Six Ages of history lead us into the Age of the world to come: the Second Coming of Christ, when the dead shall rise and God at last will be all in all.

The First Age of the World, by Augustine’s reckoning, covers the time from Adam to Noah—or as I like to call it, the Age of Myth. Now that’s a loaded term, “myth.” People think that a myth is a lie, a fiction, a made-up tale. But it’s not. A myth is a foundational story that makes sense of our world. It tells us who we are, why we’re here, and what our purpose is.

Myths explain to us why the world is the way that it is. And that’s what the stories from Adam to Noah do for us.

They’re quite remarkable, really. Every culture has a Creation story, and while the details differ quite a bit, the central lessons are always the same: we are told that the gods are part of nature; that the universe is indifferent and cruel; and that human beings don’t much matter in the grand scheme of things. This is still the story that many people tell about our world today—fickle forces of nature, an uncaring universe, and insignificant people.

But the myths of the Bible turn all those pagan myths on their heads. The foundational chapters of Genesis tell us in no uncertain terms that there is One God from whom nature and all things arise; that the universe was in fact made good and true and beautiful; and that human beings are deeply, existentially loved. It is a complete inversion of our default worldview. It tells us that we have purpose, it tells us that we matter, and it tells us that our ultimate fate is more glorious than any we have heretofore imagined. And these stories are so remarkable because they strike us as true—truer even than we’d hoped they could be.

Of course, if God is good, and made the world good, and made us good, then we have to explain why it seems to have all gone wrong. We have to tell stories about the nature of evil and how it entered into our world. And even then the Bible is going to explain things in very different terms than other myths, pagan myths do. The Bible will show us that evil is not a thing, not a substance, but simply the privation of good. As shadow is the absence of light and cold the absence of heat, so evil is separation from God.

Bad things, in other words, are just good things which have been broken, which have fallen short. Which is very good news indeed—for that which has been broken may be fixed, returned to its true nature. Humanity and the world will be made good again, because we were made good in the beginning, and our Maker has never forgotten our true purpose and potential. We were made in love, to love and to be loved, and we are loved still, in every moment of our existence, every heartbeat, every breath.

All the great myths of Genesis—the Paradise of Eden, the Flood of Noah, the Tower of Babel—even the existence of demigods, heroes, and monsters—all of these have parallels in other stories, other myths. That doesn’t mean these stories didn’t happen. Indeed, multiple attestation is a strong indication of veracity. The more people who share a story, the more likely we are to find truth at its root.

But the point of these stories, with their gods and monsters and people living to vast old ages, is not to teach us ironclad history. The point of these stories is to impart the deep truths upon which our world is founded, namely: God is in control, and He is neither cruel nor fickle but just and loving and wise. The world is a beautiful place—broken, yes; fallen, yes—but still founded in goodness and truth, with a future more wondrous than its past. And human beings, from the lowliest beggar to the loftiest king, are deeply, truly, eternally loved by the One who gives purpose, life, and hope to all things.

This is the Age of Myth. These are the stories that make sense of our world. And we have told them for thousands of years, and will continue to tell them unto the End of the Age, because they are good and they are beautiful and they are true.

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

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