All Our Mythologies

We are Christians here at the Blasphemy Blog, but we believe that the Bible is mostly made up. However, we also believe that the Bible speaks the truth.

How’s that, you ask? Made up, but also true? Have the denizens of the Blasphemy Blog been altering their substance abuse policy?

No, the policy remains in effect. And yes, we believe that the Bible is made up, but also true.

We believe this because we hold dear a conception of Truth that is different from the Whole Truth and Nothing But that you’ll encounter in a courtroom. Truth, we believe, is not the historical record.

Truth is nothing less than a shared comprehension of the human condition. It’s not complicated, and though it is contemplated by philosophers, it’s available to all of us, and is all around us. “What goes around comes around.” “Every nation has the government it deserves.” “Love is all you need.” We’ve all said things like this, in conversation and perhaps to the annoyance of our friends; it’s our way of attempting to describe something universally…true.

It’s important to separate this idea, Truth, from the idea of history. An accurate historical record may be truthful, but it is not the Truth.

We wish, oh how we wish, that more of our fellow Christians could realize this. It would ease their suffering and insecurity to no end. Those poor folks at the National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools (NCBCPS), for example, could really help themselves out of years of litigation hell if they’d just accept that the Bible is wonderful even though it’s made up.

The NCBCPS is pushing for all kinds of Bible study in public schools, and they’re going to get the pants sued off them because of it. They’ve been sending their curricula all over the country, which just means that they’re going to put food on the table in the households of many ACLU lawyers.

The NCBCPS claims that they’re just providing information for unbiased, critical study of the Bible. Their argument is pretty weak, though, because their material devotes a lot of effort to proving, scientifically, that the Bible is a literal history. Trying to prove the fantastical miracles of the Bible literally happened is a mug’s game, though, and the NCBCPS, which is probably made up of earnest people, merely embarrasses the idea of religion with its conflation of science and mythology.

For example, in the course of trying to prove that the events of the Bible literally happened, they rely upon dubious scholarship, including some writings by a guy who thinks the Egyptian Pyramids were giant radio antennae for sending messages to the Grand Canyon.

Friends, Christians, Brothers and Sisters: Christianity is not about proving itself. Christianity is about speaking the Truth. Back in the old days, when Ezekiel was seeing his wheel and Moses was talking to his burning bush, people understood that sometimes you could use mythology to speak important Truths.

But we should never, ever let mythology get in the way of Truth. Divorced from the lessons and messages of the Bible, the miracles depicted therein are nothing more than stage magic.

Preachers and Biblical scholars should not be turned into carnival barkers. The world we know is not a world where seas part at the whim of mystical forces. It’s stranger than that. Let’s keep it that way.