What Happens Next

I am a stranger on earth. Hide not your commandments from me. Psalm 119:19 (Abraham Heschel translation)

Stranger – John Oswalt’s book, The Bible Among the Myths, is an excellent analysis of the concept of myth in the ancient world. His insights help us see why the Bible is not to be categorized as myth, and, at the same time, why biblical themes can borrow from other mythological material without corrupting the uniquely biblical view. For this reason alone the book is worth reading. But Oswalt also draws some conclusions for the modern world based on the reinstatement of seeing the world in mythological terms (albeit modernized). His conclusions are foretelling and foreboding. As a result of dismissing the uniquely transcendent worldview of Scripture, Oswalt predicts the following:

1. First and foremost, ethics as an internal compass will disappear from among us. Ethics will certainly remain as civic desiderata, and there will be various public attempts to enforce them, but in the society at large they will be meaningless.
2. “Truth” will progressively be replaced by power, since there is no standard of reliability outside of each person’s own needs and wishes.
3. “Right” and “wrong” will become increasingly useless terms as they lose any agreed-upon basis outside of those same wants and needs. The terms will continue to be used, but only as code words for those who can shout the loudest.
4. There will be a dramatic upsurge in interest in “black magic” as a means of getting one’s way.
5. Any attempt to control absolute sexual freedom in any area and at any level will be labeled as “hate-mongering.”
6. Individuals will be increasingly devalued at the same time that “individual freedom” is more and more loudly trumpeted.
7. Altruism and other forms of self-denial for the good of others will steadily disappear.
8. Acceptance of responsibility for one’s own behavior, accompanied by appropriate changes in behavior, will be a rarity.
9. The study of history, except as an arcane antiquarian interest, will disappear.
10. The possibility of a genuine transformation of one’s character from the worse to the better will be dismissed out of hand.[1]

Oswalt’s book was written nearly ten years ago. I leave it to you to decide if his analysis of the implications of a world bent toward myth are correct. I, for one, see these trends everywhere, including inside Christianity. Perhaps if you see the same things you might ask the question that I have been asking: “If these trends are observable within groups of people, doesn’t that indicate that the group as a whole embraces a worldview of pagan mythology rather than the worldview of the biblical texts?” The psalmist calls himself a stranger, a sojourner, in this place. I wonder if all who embrace the biblical worldview don’t feel the same, dwelling in a place that doesn’t fit what we know to be true.

Topical Index: John Oswalt, myth, stranger, ger, sojourner, dwell

[1] John Oswalt, The Bible Among the Myths, pp 191-192.