Demythologizing

Just a few thoughts on the nature of Scripture...

I've been reading about how the Creation story is essentially a "demythologizing myth," so to speak. There are many ANE myths somewhat similar to the Creation story, yet these differ from the Creation account in that they depict the beginnings of the gods and goddesses as well as human beings. What the Creation myth does is re-orient the other myths to reveal that what the ANE peoples thought of as "gods" were, in truth, not gods at all, but men created by God. There is no goddess named Ishtar - Esther is merely a human queen. Adam and Eve were not gods, but human beings created by God to enjoy His garden, care for it and subdue evil. My brother is writing a paper on a Psalm that was apparently originally written for Baal worship (Psalm 29 - I think) but was rewritten as a Psalm to the Lord.

So it seems that much of what God is doing through the biblical writers is taking the pagan stories of man and rewriting them to show who the true King is: Yahweh. It is as though He is saying, "Man is not the one who has the final say on history - I do. I AM the one who determines what was, what is, and what will be."

If this is what God has done with Scripture, isn't this also what He is still doing in our lives today? The witness of God is not just through Scripture, but the testimony of the Church and God's redemptive acts in the lives of His people today (one witness to the authority of Scripture is the fact that God is still speaking through it today - it is still alive because God is alive). As Joseph said to his brothers, "As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today." We experience this every day as we continually fail to "write our stories well" by the choices that we make. Yet God is ultimately the great Story-Weaver who takes all that we intend for evil and intends it for good. He is "demythologizing" our lives and showing us that all these things that seem so absurd and out of control are really under God's control and He is ultimately the one who determines everything.

Similarly, we are not fallible gods who rule the universe (very selfishly) apart from any sort of accountability to a greater, infallible God; we are human beings created by God to be sub-creators and servants who are accountable to God for our actions (not for controlling what we cannot control, but for being faithful with the earth God has given us).

God is "rewriting" us so that our selves are becoming theocentric instead of anthropocentric.