Genesis 3:1-7
September 25, 2011
Now the serpent was more crafty than any other wild animal that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God say, ‘You shall not eat from any tree in the garden’?” The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden; but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden, nor shall you touch it, or you shall die.’“ But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not die; for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate; and she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made loincloths for themselves.
Last summer I had an interesting, online conversation with a guy about the place of religion in public discourse. We struck up the conversation after I had written an op-ed piece for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, titled “God or No God Is Not the Only Choice.” I had written the piece in response to a previous op-ed piece in which an atheist wrote that religious people, when discussing and debating policy in the public sphere, should leave their religious ideas out of the dialogue. He was basically saying that Christians should check their religion when it comes to private matters of faith. We should only engage in religion-neutral language in politics.
My article argued against that, asking how we can ask someone to put aside perspectives and rationales that were developed out of their religious convictions. Why should a seemingly scientific logic and rational be allowed, while asking religious people to put aside thoughts that come from other sources as well?
When you write op-ed pieces, you expect a lot of emails afterwards. My articles in the past have almost always appeared in the Sunday paper, so often when I get home from church there are lots of emails waiting for me. Typically about 60% are nice, thanking me for the articles. Another 30 are respectful, telling me where I went wrong. Then there are the 10% that are rude, telling me how stupid I am. Fortunately, the original email I mentioned from the man above was one of the 30%. He was an atheist, and he was adamant that because religious and theological thought is rooted in thinking that lacks logic and rationality, it should be left by the wayside. He wrote, “Faith and belief, by their very definitions, mean accepting things without sufficient evidence. And that's fine in the privacy of your own home. But should we decide court cases without sufficient evidence? Should we decide to go to war without sufficient evidence? Should we pass financial laws without sufficient evidence? Tell me what topical issue or policy debate cannot be resolved empirically and morally without needing to invoke metaphysical beliefs. It may sound cold, and it may not be aesthetically pleasing, but when it comes to public discourse and policy we should stick to ‘just the facts.’"
I’m certainly not going to disagree with him about deciding court cases based on the facts and rational thinking. We should. Still, our religious convictions can lead us to offer mercy at times. But that’s not what our discussion was really about. He assumed that being religious meant being irrational, illogical. What I ended up arguing with him about was how truly logical and rational any of us can be. The fact is that as logical and rational as we might like to be, we aren’t built for merely that kind of thinking. Humans were created with the ability to think logically and rationally, but we were also created to think in another way. The ancient Greeks, Jews, Romans, Persians, and others understood that we humans balance two ways of thinking. All of them certainly embraced logic, but they also embraced “myth,” and they knew that myth opened us to a whole different way of thinking.
Quite simply, ancient people balanced both logos (or rational logic) and mythos (mythological thinking). The problem we have in the modern world is that we are so logos-oriented, we’re so oriented to logical, rational, empirical, and scientific thinking that we don’t see the need for mythological thinking. As a result, we dismiss mythological thinking. For example, whenever you hear that something is a “myth,” what does that mean to you? It means that something isn’t true, right?
We think that because we are stuck in a logos-only thinking culture that prizes logic and rationality. We only see value in logic. But ancient people knew that wisdom isn’t truly gained through rational thinking. Wisdom is gained from myth that moves us into a deeper kind of wisdom.
So what’s the difference between logos and mythos? Logos, as I’ve already said, is logical, rational thinking. It is the thinking that undergirds so many of the wonderful technological miracles that we’ve had in the past 500 years. Logos underlies things that we take for granted today: rockets, electric power, digital music, movies, television, cameras, telephones, cellphones, computers, houses, buildings, cars, and everything else surrounding us on a day-to-day basis. Without logos, we cannot have all the conveniences we love. Logos is good, and logical thinking is good, especially in the religious and theological spheres. Logos helps us to think things through, and to test ideas. The Bible embraces logos in John’s gospel, where he calls Jesus the Logos.
The problem with logos is that it advances knowledge, but not necessarily wisdom. Logos doesn’t tell us how we should use all of those technological advances. It doesn’t tell us how to balance life, it doesn’t tell us how to love, it doesn’t tell us how to care. People come up with logical reasons for these, but they are justifications, not wisdom.
Mythos is a more ancient, symbolic, metaphorical way of coming to understand life. Mythos underlies stories, legends, art, music, poetry, and everything else that tries to communicate something deeper. It taps us into a way of understanding that we can’t access through logos. It tells us how to live, it tells us about God, and it tells us about life. The stories of Genesis aren’t really trying to teach us history. History is a discipline developed out of logos. In fact (and this may be hard to grasp), history as a discipline really didn’t exist till the Age of Enlightenment, beginning in the 17th century. People didn’t study history, or even really write history, till the economy was such that people could carve out a living studying history. To do so requires time to read, time to investigate, and time to study. Prior to the Age of Enlightenment few had time for any of those things. Coming out of the Dark Ages, and the Medieval period, it was hard enough for people to survive. Ancient people didn’t think historically. They though mythologically.
The writers of Genesis were more interested in mythos than in history. They were trying to teach us about God and us. They were telling us, in the story, that God wants to walk among us and live in a state of blissful innocence, but we don’t want that. We want more than were ready for. So when God says, “Don’t eat of that fruit,” or when God says don’t in general, we become consumed with it. It also tells us of our tendency to blame others for what we do. When Adam gets caught, he blames Eve. And when she gets caught, she blames the serpent. The poor serpent had no one left to blame. The story also tells us that we constantly reject bliss and peace, instead pursuing ways of life that lead to struggle and pain. But the rest of the Bible teaches us how to live in the midst of that struggling and pain.
In the end, logos gives us knowledge, but mythos gives us wisdom. Wisdom without knowledge makes us misguided, while knowledge without wisdom makes us fools
So what does this teach us about how to deal with skeptics? Skeptics want us to cut off one whole way of thinking when we talk with them. They want us to stick just to logos, which is what they value, while dismissing mythos, which is part of what we value. Ironically, many of them do value mythos in the form of movies and video games. Many love movies like Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, and The Matrix, which are all films that appeal to mythos. But what they don’t like is ancient mythos.
So what do you say to skeptics? Well,… you can talk extensively about mythos and logos, but they’re going to probably dismiss you. What I would simply say is that our faith is rooted in something beyond just human logic and knowledge. We’re rooted also in ancient wisdom.
Amen.
