Story and truth

[gluadys]

I just made this same post on the all members Creation and Evolution board as it came to me in response to a creationist poster there. But the overall thrust is more appropriate here.



Can a fictional story be a true story?

This is a key question regarding the truth of the bible.

Yesterday, at a book sale, I picked up some re-issues of Madeleine L'Engle's time travel series (A Wrinkle in Time, A Wind in the Door, A Swiftly-Tilting Planet, Many Waters). In her introduction to them Madeleine L'Engle says:

"What a delight to see these beautiful new covers for the Time Quartet. It is another indication that stories have a life of their own, and that they say different things to different people at different times. And it is an affirmation that story is true and takes us beyond the facts into something more real."

Story, even fictional story, possibly especially fictional story, is true.
Story takes us into something more real that mere facts.

As an inveterate reader and former teacher of literature, I agree strongly with L'Engle on this point. That is why I find it amazing that people suggest those of us who consider the biblical accounts are story rather than history are denying the truth of the bible. Story, biblical story, may not always be fact, but its purpose, like that of all great literature is to connect us with that which is more real than mere fact.

As I see it, the truths of scripture are of such a nature they require the clothing of story to reveal to us what is most real.

Even the ability of story to say different things to different people at different times provides an insight into God's wisdom in choosing to convey truth through story.

People of different times and places and experiences come to story with different questions. A bare historical account of creation or any historical event cannot adapt to people's differing needs to have different questions answered. But a story can be lifted up like a many-faceted jewel and looked at from many different angles. Through the adaptability of story to different people, different times, different places, different experiences posing different questions, God can assure, as through no other vehicle, that each questioner hears the answer s/he needs to hear to connect with the true reality revealed in the story.

 

[Vance]

Agreed.

Can you imagine the all-powerful, all-knowing God, having created the entire universe in all its amazing intricacy and detail, with its amazing natural processes and balanced systems, and its billions of years of history, who wants to convey to His beloved, special humans that He DID create it all, creating order out of chaos, that He is in charge of it all, that He did it systematically and with a desire to establish a framework within humanity applicable to our own lives, but needs to do so in a way that conveys these overarching truths and theological messages in powerful and understandable language?

It is not surprising that He did it so well.

"In the beginning, God created . . ."

 

[gluadys]

Agreed.

Can you imagine the all-powerful, all-knowing God, having created the entire universe in all its amazing intricacy and detail, with its amazing natural processes and balanced systems, and its billions of years of history, who wants to convey to His beloved, special humans that He DID create it all, creating order out of chaos, that He is in charge of it all, that He did it systematically and with a desire to establish a framework within humanity applicable to our own lives, but needs to do so in a way that conveys these overarching truths and theological messages in powerful and understandable language?

It is not surprising that He did it so well.

"In the beginning, God created . . ."

And doing it in a way that can be apprehended by all peoples of all times, histories and cultures.

Science develops, histories get revised, cultures vary, but through them all the essential story is preserved intact.

 

[rmwilliamsll]

i think one of the first books that got me interested in this topic is K.Armstrong's _the Battle for God_

i'd be interested in other people's references on the logos-mythos distinction and if anyone has written an essay on the topic.

my review of the book

review of _battle for god_ by karen armstrong
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This book literally pushed its way from the bottom of my to-be-read list, and forced me to regret every minute i didn't read it. From the tone of concern, through the extraordinary well researched data, to the high level threads it is a must read book.

Two interrelated but distinct pairs of complementary ideas are at the center of the book. Everything else revolves around these most interesting ideas. First is the pair: conservative and liberal. She gives conservative the meaning of a person, rooted in the past when religion was part of an agrarian culture. The key element is the binding of people's consciousness to a traditional way that would not out run the resources available to an agriculturally based pre industrial society. The thesis looks mildly Marxist with its superstructure of intellectual things build on the means of production. But i think it is just a recognization that how we make a living will greatly effect how we think. The liberal is defined as modern, future orientated, post industrial, built on the limitless abundancy of modern industrial-scientific materialist output.

The second pair is: logos and mythos. This is where her organization really shines. I dont think a page goes by where you are not aware of how she is intertwining and relating the story back to these ideas. Logos is reason, personified in science, mythos is the pre rational, deeply felt side of humanbeings that gives rise to stories, myths, scriptures which try to capture in words the passage of people into this supernatural world.

The organization is chronological, where the 3 monothesistic Abrahamic faiths are posed side by side in time, to show how their respective fundamentalist movements orginated and grew.

The insights are important, apropos to a world where polarization and the failure to communicate is a problem increasing almost daily. One particularly appropriate idea is that mythos translated into logos is a disaster, it yields bad religion and even worse science......

So. drop whatever you're reading and get ahold of this 5 star book and have at it. I used up an entire yellowing pen on it...*grin*

my short attempt at writing something on the topic

a continuing question:

as robertstheology posted to christianity:


"In a religious context, however, myths are storied vehicles of supreme truth, the most basic and important truths of all. By them people regulate and interpret their lives and find worth and purpose in their existence. Myths put one in touch with sacred realities, the fundamental sources of being, power, and truth. They are seen not only as being the opposite of error but also as being clearly distinguishable from stories told for entertainment and from the workaday, domestic, practical language of a people. They provide answers to the mysteries of being and becoming, mysteries which, as mysteries, are hidden, yet mysteries which are revealed through story and ritual. Myths deal not only with truth but with ultimate truth."

THE MEANING OF CREATION, Genesis and Modern Science, by Conrad Hyers



To 21stC modern secular scientific unbelieving minds there are no myths worth believing.
for we have struggled against the old gods and killed them off with our sword of science.
from now on, only truth and justice will prevail. we will eliminate ignorance, banish myth and superstition with the clear light of rational reason.

myths are storied vehicles of supreme truth---
What about love of country, patra-tism? America(substitute your own country's name here) love it or leave it? isn't that a myth?
It moves mountain of equipment half way around the world today, tears the world apart at regular (once per generation?)intervals. kills millions.
millions are ready to sacrifice someone else children. to litter the sands with uranium. to fill the air with black smoke. and the land with oil well torches.

the myth that there is NO GOD to whom we will have to give an accounting, to whom we are responsible, either individually or collectively.
the myth that reason will pummlet the depths of the universe and we will be able to be as gods knowing good from evil, and everything else (worth knowing)
for after all it-reason is just "the mind of a monkey", created by accident and fortunatous matings, foolish to trust such an instrument. dont you think Mr Darwin.
so what are the modern myths we deny exist, that we deny have power over us?
that we are reasonable beings, capable of controlling our own darkside, "the one with the most toys when they die win", then silence and nothing, forever and ever. amen

so what regulates our lives?:
that progress is forward, evolution is a great plot to produce ME, that might make right, that politics makes strange bedfellows and judges wear black robes to cover the nakedness of the judical system, but they sit up high so they must be important.
that love will conqueor all, despite 1 out of 2 marriages ending in divorce, that my children will have a better life than i did, despite their inability to (fill in your children's failures) as did our parent's before us.
actually sounds like pretty bad regulation to me.....

that money is worth trading time for, wage slaves, that the body is more important than the mind, for feeding it consumes our culture and our world. it is never satisfied.

that old is worn out and new is better, a conservative is a person who thinks his father was at least as smart as he is, a traditionalist thinks his grandfather was smart too.
a neo conservative is a liberal that was mugged by reality, that right is good but left is better, neither right nor left but out in front.

that there is nothing sacred, not any book, not any place, not anyone, all is de-sacralized, de-mythologized, except of course our beliefs, for they are rational, real, empirical, naturalist, materialism, true, factual, anti-supernatural, logical versus THEM who are ignorant, superstitious, unreasonable, irrational, illogical, divorced from the real world, mythos-needing, stupid, bible-thumping, backwoods country yokels


so of course us moderns have no mythos only logos.
what a crock.

so i'd be interested in following this up.

thanks for links and references you can offer.

 

[gluadys]

i think one of the first books that got me interested in this topic is K.Armstrong's _the Battle for God_

.

Now I am ashamed to admit that _the Battle for God_ has been sitting on my shelf for nearly a year and is still unopened. Guess I better dig into it.

 

[Vance]

And doing it in a way that can be apprehended by all peoples of all times, histories and cultures.

Science develops, histories get revised, cultures vary, but through them all the essential story is preserved intact.

Indeed, the power of God is awesome to behold.