THE GREAT MODERN MYTH
PART 1
Modern people look with condescension on men of earlier times whose worldview was
shaped by myths. The Olympian gods of ancient of Greece, the Babylonian creation story,
the praying mantis god of early Africans, the animistic views of the Pacific Northwest
– all these, along with the Biblical accounts of creation, flood, virgin birth,
physical resurrection, and miraculous interventions in human history, have been relegated
to the storeroom of interesting, antiquarian artifacts no longer relevant to modern life.
This attitude is so common and so deep that it is usually unconscious. We are the curl on
the cresting wave of progress. It would be beneath our dignity to forgo the freedom which
rationalistic materialism has provided the return to a world where spiritual realities
clarify our vision of the world and direct our lives in it.
This modern attitude is not without its pain. Since the discovery of the principle of
interminacy in the first half of century, thoughtful western man has had a sense of
loneliness in a vast, inscrutable universe. The world he thought he was so close to
knowing completely has turned on him, closed the door, and left hum orphaned. Ordinary
people have not understood the complexities of research that has led to this situation,
but have felt keenly in their existence the sense of impending chaos that the discovery
has introduced into the Western mind.
What has not been apparent to Westerners, whether academic sophisticates or ordinary
citizen, is that the movement has not been from a worldview shaped by religious
presuppositions to a clear, factual, provable scientific one. Modern man lives by faith as
much as ancient man ever did. There is, indeed, no other way to live, for man bears
God’s image and cannot live without some meaning-giving key in which he believes. The
denial that he lives by faith is simply modern man’s way of "suppressing the
truth in unrighteousness (Romans 1:18). What modern man has failed to perceive is that he
has moved into the force field of an even greater myth than the ones that he now disdains.
As Goudzwaard insightfully points out in his first "basic biblical rule" "
every man is serving god(s) in his life." (see footnote 1) Earlier men, outside the
enlightenment provided by God’s self-revelation in the Bible, had erroneous
worldviews, but at least they knew there were gods. Modern man has fallen victim to the
worst and most powerful myth of all times, the myth that there is no god. A material world
is all there is.
There is an abundance of evidence in recent literature Christian and non-Christian alike,
that this is the case. C.S. Lewis, for example, says,
"remember your fairy tales. Spells are used for breaking enchantment as well as
for inducing them. And you and I have need of the strongest spell that can be found to
wake us from the evil enchantment of worldliness which has been laid upon us for nearly a
hundred years. Almost our whole education has been directed to silencing this shy,
persistent, inner voice; almost all our modern philosophies have been devised to convince
us that the good of man is to be found on this earth." (see footnote 2).
Tom Howard says that "The ‘secularization’ of life urged on us by
science and commerce and modernity generally is surely one of the bleakest myths ever to
settle down over men’s imagination." (see footnote 3). In another place,
contrasting the worldview of medieval times with that of modern ones, he comments,
"The myth sovereign in the old age was that everything means everything. The myth
sovereign in the new is that nothing means anything." (see footnote 4). Facts are
just facts!
William Barrett, after mentioning the loss of confidence in mathematical logic that has
occurred among philosophers today, goes on to comment:
"Yet the belief in the decisive role of technique has not vanished; it has passed
from the philosophers into the culture at large. It has become a general faith widespread
even when it is unvoiced, that technique and technical organization are the necessary and
sufficient conditions for arriving at truth; that they can encompass all truth; and that
they will be sufficient, if not at moment, then shortly, to answer the questions that life
thrusts upon us." (see footnote 5).
Later, he asserts:
" . . . there is no doubt that the suspicion of technology has become so
widespread that the dominant myth of our time may very well become that of
Frankenstein’s monster. . . the horror movies, for example, are mostly a re-creation
of this myth in one form or another, and their audience has grown steadily. Most of
science fiction, as a prophecy of the future, is one prolonged horror story . . . While
our writers . . . were seeking to recreate myths in literature for the sake of an age that
seemed to have lost the capacity for myth, all this time technology was bringing on one
very big myth through the back door." (see footnote 6).
Schumacher reiterates the same theme in a different way:
"The leading ideas of the nineteenth century, which claimed to do away with
metaphysics, are themselves a bad, vicious, life-destroying type of metaphysics . . . The
errors are not in science, but in the philosophy put forward in the name of science."
(see footnote 7).
Illustrations could be multiplied. These will serve to support the thesis that modern
man is perceived by Christian and non-Christian thinkers alike as being deeply gripped by
his own modern mythology. It is far more pervasive and influential that even Christians
usually recognize.
WHAT THE MYTH IS
To clear the ground, let us note first what the modern myth isn’t. It isn’t,
for example, faith in astrology, or luck, or some form of mystical eastern religion. These
and many similar views are held by a great number of Western people, but they are not a
great modern myth. In fact, they are quite contradictory to the modern myth. That they are
held by people who at the same time live under the spell of the modern myth is simply an
illustration of the brokenness which characterizes human life and culture when men turn
from the one true God who alone, in Jesus Christ, is great enough to hold the whole
creation in its created unit. Forsaking Him, men fall under the sway of multiple –
and often diametrically opposite – idolatries. This is part of the judgement that
fell at the Tower of Babel and continues to this day. There can be nowhere wholeness to
human life or scholarship that is not rooted in the centrality of Christ, the Word of God
in all of creation. The inability of modern scholarship to come to agreement as to the
fundamental nature of any of the scholarly disciplines illustrates this.
The modern myth is the contemporary form of man’s age-old declaration of
independence. When, in the Garden of Eden, man stood out from under the godhood of God and
insisted upon going it alone in life, he began to live the lie of independence. (cf.
Revelation 22:15). The modern form of that assertion is found in the greater part of human
life and culture. For all practical purposes, it is not necessary to postulate any
transcendent influence in order to get at theoretical truth and sound practice in any area
of life today except what is thought of as the distinctively "religious" or
"spiritual" area. And that area has gotten progressively smaller as the recent
centuries have moved along. Earlier men saw gods involved in all of life and culture.
Modern man sees through all those superstitious imaginations and "knows" that
there is no need to postulate gods in order to understand most, if not all, of life. C. S.
Lewis makes the penetrating comment, in this connection, that seeing through things is all
very well provided that we see something beyond. To see through everything is the same as
to see nothing at all! (see footnote 8) The modern myth is that facts are all we have.
Empirical data and careful logic are the key to understanding all things. They have worked
very well in unlocking the secrets of the physical universe. If we pursued with sufficient
vigor and patience, they will unlock the entire human world as well. This is all we have,
and the sooner we get rid of our antiquated superstitions about the influence of divine
elements in the practical world, the better off we will be.
WHERE THE MYTH IS EVIDENT
Before tracking the outworking of this modern mythology in various aspects of modern
culture, it is well to note that it would not be so prevalent in today’s world if
modern man’s heart were not so securely locked into its orbit. The heart is the
central, pivotal point in human life. Out of it, as the Bible says, are the issues of
life. (Proverbs 4:24). Goudzwaard refers to the heart when he says, "Every man is
serving god(s) in his life. Modern "gods" do not go by that name, and the
consequent confusion is tremendous. Modern people assume that they are not influenced by
"religion" in their thinking and their lives. They look with pity upon religious
or Christian people who insist that transcendent influences must be invoked if we would
understand what is going on in the daily news. But the fact is that all men are, by
creation, image bearers of God. They cannot live without putting their trust in some key
factor that gives meaning to life or to its parts. For most people today that factor has
come to be the great modern myth that empirical data and logic will lead us to the truth.
Let us look at some illustrations of this phenomenon.
Statecraft
The study of political science is almost universally regarded today as something that
has no connection with religious realities. To know what makes political life function and
how to achieve one’s objectives in that area, one must simply study the discipline
itself. The key to politics must lie within the discipline, and the way to find it is to
collect the facts, analyze them carefully, and wait for the truth of the matter to emerge.
The naïve faith implicit in such an assumption – especially among people who are
self-consciously non-religious in their approach – would be humorous if it were not
so ominous in its consequences.
One of the by-products of this modern approach is the divorce it has entailed between
means and ends. The most important element in political life today seems to be the
technique of getting elected. The process is one which depends increasingly upon
artificial, process-oriented activities and less and less upon questions of political
principle or political ability once election has been achieved. To get elected, one seeks
the best political technician one can find and follows his advice carefully. Meanwhile,
any real human significance in the conduct of elected officials has fallen by the wayside.
When the key to statecraft lies within the discipline of political science itself, the
judgment of God becomes increasingly manifest in the undesirable results that follow for
the electorate.
Editor: Al Greene
Alta Vista College
Footnotes:
- Goudzwaard, Bob. Aid for the Overdeveloped West. Wedge, 1975. P. 14
- Lewis, C.S., The Weight of Glory. Eerdmans, 1965, p. 5.
- Howard, Tom, Hallowed Be This House. Harold Shaw Publishers, 1979. P. 13
- Howard, Tom, Chance or the Dance. Harold Shaw Publishers, 1979. P. 14.
- Barrett, William, The Illusion of Technique. Doubleday, 1978. P. 10-11.
- "ibid," p. 24.
- Schumacher, E.F., Small is Beautiful. Harper, 1973. P. 84.
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