Why Jim Did a Marathon (A Flash-Fiction)

As Jim rounded the corner of Michigan and 35^th Street, he tried to think of why he had decided to take part in the Chicago marathon. He remembered telling his wife as they got into the car that day that running the marathon was something he had always wanted to do. He just couldn't remember why he had always wanted to do it.

He passed another crowd who were yelling at him to go faster, to just do it, to be a winner. Was he racing to be a winner? So that he could raise his hands in victorious jubilation? Maybe. He couldn't remember.

Four years ago he weighed in a two hundred and seventy pounds. He had done little exercise for all the fifteen years since he left school. When he had started training the pounds dropped off him. He had a collection of before and after photos and had recorded his weight loss on a series of cards he kept in his desk. Maybe he would write a book on how to loose weight and beat the fat. It would be a best seller. A real truth teller. No special diet, just sweat and determination, a book about overcoming the odds. But that was not why he was running.

Jim panted as he passed the 25 mile marker. He looked at his watch. Not a record breaker by any means, but a respectable pace. He laughed as he realized how much faster he could go now compared with two years ago. He was ready for a marathon then, in fact he was signed up for 2007 Chicago, but that was when his life had changed.

At last he could see the finishing line. The crowds were screaming now and his heart thumped as he raced for the line. Then bump. The wheels hit the line and he swerved to a halt a few yards passed the line. “Well done Jim!” someone shouted beside him. He was quickly wrapped in a shiny sheet and a volunteer began to push his chair through to where they were handing out medals. His time was not bad, it would be a good half hour until a Kenyan would cross the line, leading the pack of runners.

A woman bent down to hang a medal on his neck. He wished his wife was there, she would have been proud. Jim couldn't remember why he had always wanted to do a marathon, but he knew why he did this one and that was all that mattered.

Living by the Script

People often wonder why Christians have an obsession with the bible. They can see why being a church together is important—for fellowship etc—and they can see why we might conduct certain rituals as part of worship or perhaps to appease our deity. So why the obsession with words written in a book?

We will return to the book in a moment, but let us firstly look at how we speak and act in the world. Everyone leads a scripted life. Our cultures offer us scripts—ways to speak and act in the world—and even when we don't notice them consciously, we act upon them. As Christians we dedicate ourselves to the scripture and thus are given a different script. Our life of faith is, in a sense, a gradual learning and conforming to the script of the bible. It offers us ways to speak—truthfully, lovingly, morally and gospelly—and ways to act—against sin and for God.

You could say that Jesus adopted and lived out the script found in the Old Testament. Christ, after all, performed the narrative found in the Jewish scriptures. His act of sacrifice was a fulfillment of all that Israel longed for. The atonement of Christ is the culmination of the story found in the minds of the children of Israel. Kevin Vanhoozer, Blanchard Professor of Theology at Wheaton College, calls this a reincorporation of previously assumed events, promises and ideas: “The cross...reincorporates the earlier action: Adam, the Exodus, bloody sacrifices and sin offerings; the exile; the Passover supper; the offices of prophet, priest and king; the destruction of the Temple—all are taken up, “recapitulated,” in Jesus' Death” (Vanhoozer 388).

We might surely wonder which script is the right one, or even merely the best one, to live by. Is there a superior myth or narrative which explains the world as we see it and scripts our interaction with it? A common belief in the west is that all scripts have equal validity. None hold an absolute priority over the others. The Christian story is just as valid as the materialist story. The problem with this is that it requires the creation of its own script. The story goes something like this: as primitive cultures emerged, each one passed on tales of its origin. As events happened—great wars were won, hunger overcome and heroes made—new myths were added to the canon. At some point, much of the wealth of myth became formalized, taught as official doctrine and translated into laws and constitutions. The Christian myth in this sense is merely one of the more successful myths that emerged from the ancient world. The problem with this is that it is itself a myth reliant upon a belief that we evolve from simple cultures into more complex cultures, which itself relies on a materialistic take on how the universe works.

According to Jesus, to choose his script over the alternatives is akin to building a house with solid foundations:

“Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash” (Matthew 7:24-27).

According to Christ, his words—and ostensibly the words of the whole bible—will stand up to any test, challenge or attack. His script can deal with life when it goes to pot. It doesn't fold when people oppress you, oppose you and even persecute you for the script you live by.

The question most prescient to a person who inhabits a given culture is: which script do you speak and act according to?

Vanhoozer, Kevin J. Drama of doctrine a canonical-linguistic approach to Christian theology. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2005.

Happy Snobbery

We have bred our new elite. Happy people. As our culture has embraced happiness as its highest ideal, our new elite are those who have become superlatively happy. They can maintain months, if not years of uninterrupted happiness. The rest of us look up to them as perfect examples of humanity. They appear on Oprah and have ministries passing out advice on how to get God to make you happy. They tell stories about how, once upon a time, they were unhappy, downtrodden and miserable, but that they worked out how to get happy. Some will sell you their secret at a substantial sum. Just listen to the tape, find Jesus, pop the pill, obey the law.

However, where there is elitism there is always snobbery. For some of our happy elite, contentment is enhanced by looking down on others who have not achieved their level of happiness. Enter the happy snob.

For the happy-snob, life's sole purpose is happiness. It is his defining self-identity and it has become the way in which he defines others. His approval is bestowed only on the content person, not on the miserable. For what right has a person to be miserable? Such a waste, such unnecessary melancholy.

The happy snob judges of worth those people who are on par with his level of wellbeing. Not saturated in it or on a high, but consistently self-satisfied. He selects his companions by this measure: If a person he meets projects just the right amount of inner warmth, he is in. If, on the other hand, happy-snob's new acquaintance reveals even the slightest suffering then the relationship will be terminated. Or at least it will be subject to conditions such as the agreement of the unhappy partner to listen to a series of motivational talks, pop some pills or receive a course of therapy.

However, there is a flaw in the happy snob's ability to select friends. The happy-snob is only able to judge others on the basis of their proclaimed wellbeing. Happiness, with careful study and practice, may be faked.

If you want to remain in the in-crowd, my advice is this: If you're happy and you know it clap your hands, but if you are miserable as hell you should fake it and join in with the clapping.

My instructions are simple. You should do everything to appear happy, even if you are caught in the grip of despair. If, for example, a happy-snob were to visit you in your home, you should provide evidence to the man from jollyland of your upbeat existence. Find symbols of life satisfaction and point them out to your visitor. Perhaps by hanging pictures on the wall of yourself smiling or serving up cup-cakes with colorful sprinkles, you could pass the contentment test. When looking up the nose of the happy-snob, assert that, whether you are rolling in cash or claiming for free milk, you are in the right place and very happy about it. Most importantly, purge the home of all signs of melancholy. There should be no requiem in the CD collection, no Thomas Hardy in the book shelf and certainly no complaining about life's circumstances. Do not, no matter how bad you feel, even intimate a woe or longing for something more or different.

Our new prejudice may be based on levels of wellbeing. If you are, or at least appear to be, happy, you are accepted. If you are unhappy, you will be, if not outcast, at least the object of suspicion. The in-crowd will be armed with the tools to maintain happiness. The out-crowd, on the other hand, will be the object of conferences, self-help books, how-to DVDs and life-coaches which will attempt to elevate the unhappy to the status of happy-normal.

If staying attached to the incrowd is not your thing, then by all means rebel. Stand firm against the happy snob. Shout, “Happiness is no reason for happiness!” When the happy-snob looks down his nose at your misery and offers you tickets to a motivational speaker, you should reject his offer, and tell him to get lost. Tell him that a class system based good feeling and superior smiles is no place for a human being.

Incidentally, if you can fake happiness, it may well be that happy-snob is faking it too. If you take a stand, he may capitulate and break down in tears. You may liberate him from his cell.

The question is not whether or not we have a right to be happy, it is whether it is right to be happy or not. Paul certainly implies that contentment is a worthy condition when he writes, “I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want.” But his secret to contentment is not his own work but the work of Christ as he goes on to say, “I can do everything through him who gives me strength” (Philippians 3:12-13).

However, There are things which should make you unhappy. For example, sin should make you unhappy. When a murderer gets away with his crime, you should feel unhappy about it. When children are killed at the behest of hatred, you should not only be angry, but deeply saddened. When you cheat on your wife, it should bring you despair like that of David who had an affair with another man's wife and then murdered the husband. David didn't fake happiness in order to keep up appearances. He was scorned for his remorse. Instead of turning to an elite, he turned to God. He lamented:

“For I endure scorn for your sake,and shame covers my face. I am a stranger to my brothers,
an alien to my own mother's sons; for zeal for your house consumes me,
and the insults of those who insult you fall on me. When I weep and fast,
I must endure scorn; when I put on sackcloth,
people make sport of me. Those who sit at the gate mock me,
and I am the song of the drunkards. But I pray to you, O LORD,
in the time of your favor;
in your great love, O God,
answer me with your sure salvation. Rescue me from the mire,
do not let me sink;
deliver me from those who hate me,
from the deep waters. Do not let the floodwaters engulf me
or the depths swallow me up
or the pit close its mouth over me. Answer me, O LORD, out of the goodness of your love;
in your great mercy turn to me” (Psalm 69:7-16).

Doing what's right often requires unhappiness. How else can a struggling marriage survive? If a sense of wellbeing governs the decisions to stay together, what chance has the marriage? But that is exactly the reason many give to ending their lifelong commitments to each other.

There are also other kinds of suffering which are unavoidable or which produce something of worth. Think also of those who suffer inexplicable bouts of depression. Who have little control over their happiness dial as it drops further than the Dow Jones average. We may wish to eradicate these downturns, but we all spend time admiring the works of the most unhappy people because certain kinds of beauty are only possible when there is pain. Christ's pivotal moment in the garden of Gethsemane portrays the submission of the desire for personal wellbeing, not merely for the hope of a happier outcome, but for the purpose of the honor or glory of His Father. Paul wrote that Christ's purpose in his death was to show the righteousness of the Father. “For God presented Jesus as the sacrifice for sin. People are made right with God when they believe that Jesus sacrificed his life, shedding his blood. This sacrifice shows that God was being fair when he held back and did not punish those who sinned in times past, for he was looking ahead and including them in what he would do in this present time. God did this to demonstrate his righteousness, for he himself is fair and just, and he declares sinners to be right in his sight when they believe in Jesus” (Romans 3:25-26).

Wellbeing is not a condition of the normal, whilst those who fail are left by the wayside. It is terrifying that those whose self described condition is that of “decidedly unhappy” are marginalized. The bible exhorts us not to marginalize those who are in this condition, but to love them. Love for others should trump our desire for a happy society and for securing our own needs. Those needs should be left to God whilst we give out to others in love, whether or not it makes us or them happy. “If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth” (1 John 3:17-18).

Well, are you in or out of the happiness club? Feel like you should be happy, but aren't? Happiness, especially if it has to be fueled with therapy, materialism, chemicals and moral ambiguity, is no reason for joy. It is not a good measurement for a life well lived. Measure my life, sure, but don't use happiness as the yardstick. Find something else. I hope I never judge my life by how happy I was. I want to live a life that might experience the depths of pain whilst growing to love God like David, “I am weary with my groaning; All night I make my bed swim; I drench my couch with my tears. My eye wastes away because of grief; It grows old because of all my enemies” (Psalm 6:6-7). I want to be like Paul who judged his own life by how he poured it out for Christ. He wrote, “Do everything without complaining or arguing, so that you may become blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation, in which you shine like stars in the universe as you hold out the word of life—in order that I may boast on the day of Christ that I did not run or labor for nothing. But even if I am being poured out like a drink offering on the sacrifice and service coming from your faith, I am glad and rejoice with all of you. So you too should be glad and rejoice with me” (Philippians 2:14-17).

Joy, sustained and undiluted, is possible, but it is not achieved, it is given. It is promised to those who wait for Christ. For with Christ comes great joy. As Jesus told his disciples, we may be in grief—and therefore in the world's underclass—while the world is full of happiness, but when Christ comes our grief will turn to rejoicing and our joy will never end:

“I tell you the truth, you will weep and mourn while the world rejoices. You will grieve, but your grief will turn to joy. A woman giving birth to a child has pain because her time has come; but when her baby is born she forgets the anguish because of her joy that a child is born into the world. So with you: Now is your time of grief, but I will see you again and you will rejoice, and no one will take away your joy” (John 16:20-22).

The Tyranny of Suspicion

There is a mood of suspicion in the west at this time. It is demonstrated by our mistrust of politicians with their hidden motives and big-business backers. It is also reflected in the way in which we reject opinions due to the cultural context from which they appear, rather than the content of the idea being proposed.

In part, our reason for suspicion is due to an obsession with the social context from which a particular opinion emerges. We are far more likely to ask ourselves what cultural and economic conditions led to such an idea than about the merits of the idea itself. I am often told that the reason I believe the things I do is because I was conditioned to by an evangelical Christian context. These conditions have become our guide for the verdict as to whether or not a claim is true or valuable.

This perspective is problematic for Christians who espouse the story of the son of God who died on a cross to pay the price for our sin. For some, the person of Christ is the symbol of an ideology of a particular group or culture. They reject the claims of the person of Christ because of the suspicion that the story is used to justify a certain set of ideologies.

The evangelical church in North America, for example, is now widely considered to be little more than a voting block. They are known as the “Christian right” and struggle to present their message without appearing to have a hidden agenda. As Kevin Schilbrack, head of the philosophy and religion department at Western Carolina University intimates, “Myths have typically served to legitimate a particular social order.”

However, if we are so busy analyzing the context of a given story, we will give no time to its content. If the decision to reject an idea is based, not upon the idea itself, but upon its beholdents, we have surrendered our opinion to tyranny. The tyranny of suspicion.

In the face of such suspicion I must stress three things. Firstly, that the power of the gospel is not due to the power or greatness of man. No culture, no matter how much influence it holds, can cause the gospel to be powerful. As Paul writes, “When I came to you, brothers, I did not come with eloquence or superior wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. I came to you in weakness and fear, and with much trembling. My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit's power, so that your faith might not rest on men's wisdom, but on God's power” (1 Corinthians 2:1-5).

Secondly, the wisdom of the gospel did not emerge from a particular culture, but from God himself. The message of Christ, I believe, was not created by the church to justify a political or social agenda, but it came from God himself, “We do, however, speak a message of wisdom among the mature, but not the wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing. No, we speak of God's secret wisdom, a wisdom that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began. None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory” (1 Corinthians 2:6-9).

Thirdly, we come to know the gospel not because a cultural myth has been effectively taught, but because God himself reveals it to us, “However, as it is written: "No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him" - but God has revealed it to us by his Spirit. The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the man's spirit within him? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. We have not received the spirit of the world but the Spirit who is from God, that we may understand what God has freely given us. This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, expressing spiritual truths in spiritual words” (1 Corinthians 2:9-13).

The truth claims of the gospel originate not in any culture we can create, but in the culture of the triune God who reaches out to us with a message that should not be judged primarily as a cultural phenomenon, but as an eternal message unbound by fad or theory and always efficacious to those who believe in it.

Sacred Texts and Public Policy - Bedfellows or Archenemies?

Separation of Church and State does not mean that those who hold to positions on stem cell research, abortion, foreign policy and alike should find non-religious reasons for those positions. So argues Oliver Thomas, who wrote an article in USA Today entitled, “Would God back universal health care?” He wrote, “Mixing church and state might be inexcusable, but the influence of religion on our political views is inevitable. Accordingly, the First Amendment does not prohibit laws that reflect our religious values as long as they have a secular purpose and effect.”

It seems that others are less prepared to listen to reasoning that contains reference to deity and religious texts. Even President Obama, a professing Christian, is nervous to allow religiously motivated debate to make it to the floor. During a conference prior to the election, then Senator Obama proposed, “Democracy demands that the religiously motivated translate their concerns into universal, rather than religion-specific, values. It requires that their proposals be subject to argument and amenable to reason.”

The implication of the President's rhetoric is that a religion-specific argument is not amenable to reason. On the one hand, according to Obama, we have universal values amenable to reason and on the other hand we have religion-specific values. However, could we not have religion-specific values which are also universal and reasonable? Indeed, according to many Christians, universal truth is only to be found within its own religion. Furthermore, they would argue, God is entirely reasonable, as He is the source of all reason. Therefore, the Christian can argue that ethics based on God’s revealed will are by no means unreasonable.

Secondly, religiously motivated concerns require no translation, they only require a vote. A voter who wishes to outlaw abortion due to religious conviction may vote for an official who best represents that view. The elected official must adhere to the constitution and protect the separation of church and state, but this in no way inhibits religiously motivated concerns. In defending the First Amendment and the separation of church and state, we should not redefine representative democracy. If representative democracy is the election of officials to represent the values and opinions of those who elect the official, then those values may certainly be religion-specific concerns. The elected official may also share those views due to a religious conviction.

However, as Oliver Thomas' article reveals, those with a religious motivation toward a policy do not necessarily reach the same conclusion even within a single religion. Thomas writes firmly that all three major religions in America—Christian, Jewish and Muslim—would support universal health coverage based on their sacred texts. I am writing this in a small town in the mid-west where I may not find such support for the president's health-care plan. The Christian community here are more likely to espouse small government and the churches'—not the government's—responsibility for welfare. They may also cite equally authoritative texts which provides their reasoning.

Nor should we turn the tables and require that policies are exclusively discussed in religious terms. This would be more akin to a theocracy. A country, such as the United States, should be wary of man's claims to be the voice of God on a policies such as health care. Especially if the religious position also contains an explicit agenda to form a theocratic state.

Even this scenario provides little reason to silence the religious man who opposes abortion, gay marriage or even universal health care based on his reading of scripture. As Harvard professor, Micheal Sandel argues, “I don't think we should constrain, or rule out, any sources of moral argument, whether informed by faith traditions or whether they may be purely secular.” Sandel argues that it is not a question of ruling out all sacred texts in debate, but a question of choosing what texts are to be treated as sacred. If one rules out religious underpinning for debate, one must find an alternative “text” or source from which to form the basis for decision making. Consequently, Sandel argues whilst turning President Obama's metaphor on its head, “I don't think that we can properly weigh and asses and take seriously the range of moral convictions that citizens bring to public life if we require some citizens to shed, as if it were an article of clothing, their moral and religious convictions before they enter the public sphere.”

For the Christian, values are nearly always, at least in part, religiously motivated and subject, not to the corrupted wisdom of man, but to the incorruptible wisdom of God. If God is without evil, and He is able to speak and reveal His wishes to us, and if we are able to understand this revelation, we would be wise to adhere and not ignore it. If man is corrupted, then we would do well to recognize our own affinity for evil and therefore our liability to make bad choices in public policy. Christians should approach the public square with their ideas, opinions and formed policies with just as much humility as conviction. The Christian should not be discounted from the legislative processes merely on account of their motivation and, just as their conviction of what is true should not lead to arrogance, the Christian's nervousness of dishonoring God with their mistaken opinion should not lead to lifelong silence.

Sandel, Michael. "What Shouldn't be Sold." Interview. Audio blog post. Philosophybites.com. Philosophy Bites, 28 May 2009. Web. 27 July 2009. <http://www.philosophybites.libsyn.com/index.php?post_id=485229>.

Thomas, Oliver. "Would God Back Universal Health Care?" USA Today 27 July 2009: 9A. Print.

Obama, Barack. "Call to Renewal." Speech. Building a Covenant for a New America Conference. Call to Renewal Building, Washington, DC. 28 June 2006. Obama.senate.gov. Barack Obama U.S. Senator for Illinois, 28 June 2006. Web. 23 Oct. 2008. .

A Happy Hen is a Tasty Hen

I was brought up by a muesli-mother. She grew, milked and bred most of what was placed before us at meal times and what she couldn't produce herself, she ordered from a whole food delivery company from where she obtained her muesli by the sack load.

My childhood memories are filled with food production. I remember the sight of jam being made in the kitchen. Mum poured stewed fruit into a hammock-like structure made of a sheet of muslin tied between two chairs. The juice from the fruit would drip slowly through the muslin into a bowl. It was delicious. Less fondly I remember the taste of soil in the vegetables and the pungent stench of goat's milk which filled the house.

My earliest rebellion—before cigarettes and booze—was to eat fast food whenever I went out to lunch. All my mother's hard work in getting me to eat healthily was lost as I gorged on big macs and strawberry shakes (I never liked the fries). But, her influence in how I see food is appreciable to this day. My mother's axiom, “a happy hen is a tasty hen” led to a vociferous hatred of battery farming and what can only be described as organo-snobbery. For the latter I repent as I am now a poor college student and am unable to afford such luxuries as organic food.

Above all my mother led me to appreciate food for more than its material value. For my mother, food was more than fuel. It was an object of beauty and making it was a process of romance. In the face of the efforts to industrialize farming, my mother made food production more artful. Not fine art, as her crumbly bread would attest to, but beautiful nonetheless.

As thrift makes a comeback, it is likely that there will be a reemergence of musli-mothers who, whilst looking for cheap food, will reject industry's produce and begin to look to their mothers and grandmothers for some advice on self-sufficiency.

Food, however it is produced, is not the result of human efforts alone. It is the result of a gracious God who supplies our needs. Our physical need is met by the nutrition which attests to his providence. As the psalmist writes, “He makes springs pour water into the ravines; it flows between the mountains. They give water to all the beasts of the field; the wild donkeys quench their thirst. The birds of the air nest by the waters; they sing among the branches. He waters the mountains from his upper chambers; the earth is satisfied by the fruit of his work. He makes grass grow for the cattle, and plants for man to cultivate-bringing forth food from the earth” (Psalm 104:10-14).

The creation also points to beauty and our desire to worship. That is because the beauty of food attests to the beauty of God. Our response to him should be gratitude for the nutrition and worship for the beauty. In fact our worship joins in with the creation's worship of God, “Praise the Lord from the earth, you great sea creatures and all ocean depths, lightning and hail, snow and clouds, stormy winds that do his bidding, you mountains and all hills, fruit trees and all cedars, wild animals and all cattle, small creatures and flying birds” (Psalm 148:7-10).

We have significantly twisted these two attitudes. Now we either treat agriculture as a work of man without giving credit to God, or we bow down before nature in idolatry. But God's creation is a witness to the creator, “Yet he has not left himself without testimony: He has shown kindness by giving you rain from heaven and crops in their seasons; he provides you with plenty of food and fills your hearts with joy” (Acts 14:17).

Consequently, his anger is aroused when we do not recognize him either for his providence or for his nature. For this, we are without excuse: “The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse. For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles” (Rom 1:18-23).

Christ - Myth, Metaphor or Metaphysic

The Christian story—that found in the bible—is neither a myth nor a metaphor, but a reality.

Myths are narratives which cultures adopt in order to make sense of the world. They are not judged by their truth or reliability, but by their impact upon the cultures in which they dwell. The Archbishop of Canterbury recently described the Christian story as a myth. Commenting on Philip Pullman, the atheist who wrote the “Dark Materials” trilogy, the Archbishop said, “He takes the Christian myth, or a version of it, seriously enough to want to disagree passionately with it...It's not just dull or remote, it's dangerous. You've got to tussle with it. It's still alive.” Alive it may be, but not merely because a culture lives it. It is alive because God is real and the coming of Christ really happened. Whereas a myth does not necessarily have to be true, the Christian belief is dependent on the events described in the bible—especially in the gospels—being a reality. Whereas myth describes a story which a culture adopts and uses to define its actions, the Christian life is one that is adopted into the story of God. C.S Lewis, a maker of many myths, declared of the Christ event, “Here and here only in all time the myth must become fact” (qtd. in Montgomery 30).

It is also not sufficient to refer to the good news about Jesus Christ as a metaphor which describes God. Christ does not merely declare what God is like, he shows who God is. Jesus does not claim to be simply like God, but to be God himself. Consequently, access to the Father is restricted to those who come to Christ because the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are one triune God.

We also need to know what the actions of God in Christ do as well as what they show us. This requires more than metaphor, it requires an explanation. For this the Christian looks to the apostles who unpack the workings of the cross and its place in the larger narrative of scripture. According to the writers of the New Testament, the events recorded in the gospels have a real effect on the reality of the reader—even we who read them a couple of thousand years later. By faith in Christ and his sacrifice on our behalf, we are changed not merely in our adherence to a set of beliefs or a myth, but in our standing before God. Our reality is transformed by the events of the coming of Christ, his crucifixion and his resurrection. As Paul tells the church in Ephesus,

“Therefore, remember that formerly you who are Gentiles by birth and called "uncircumcised" by those who call themselves "the circumcision" (that done in the body by the hands of men)— remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ.

For he himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by abolishing in his flesh the law with its commandments and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new man out of the two, thus making peace, and in this one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility. He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit.

Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God's people and members of God's household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit” (Ephesians 2:11-22).

No myth or metaphor can accomplish such a change in our nature. We require a real event which has a corresponding real effect in us. Myths supply stories by which we guide ourselves, the gospel, on the other hand, promises to change our very condition from dead to alive.