Just because it didn’t happen…

A couple of weeks ago I saw a tiny item in some newspaper or other about a preacher browsing through the book department of a big chain discount store. He noticed that they had placed the Bibles in the “Fiction” section, and he took offense. The store apologized profusely and fell all over itself to right this supposed wrong.
But was it such a wrong? In one sense, no, if by fiction we mean something that arises in the human imagination rather than something established as historical fact.
Very little of the Bible is about something that happened in history. From Adam and Eve to the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, the stories come forth to give us a meaningful worldview and promote a blessed way of life, but if we insist that it all really happened as described, we are, in my opinion, in real trouble.
In fact, I suspect one reason religion is losing its hold on people these days is because, in the face of readily available evidence to the contrary, the historical accuracy of the Bible has been insisted upon too often and too strongly.
Whether it’s the story of Moses, the main figure of the Hebrew Scriptures, or Jesus, the main figure of the Christian writings, the Bible gives us very little if anything that can be considered factual. Lo and behold, important scholars these days go so far as to say that Moses and Jesus probably never lived in the flesh on earth but are composite figures generated by oral traditions, that is to say they come to us by way of traditional stories handed down and added to over many generations.
Whatever is true about that, I feel the preacher in the department store was right to get the Bibles taken out of the Fiction section, not because the Bible is mainly factual, but because there is an important difference between fiction and myth. Myths are grand stories that arise from the life and culture of a people. They try to explain the unexplainable, establish foundations for understanding life, and form a basis for ethical behavior. So, to my mind, the important thing is not how factual a Bible story might be, but what the story tells us about the meaning of the world and how to live in it.
Now let’s look at the Christmas story. An angel speaks to a young woman telling her she will have a special child. At the birth, a star moves across the sky to lead philosophers to the place. Choirs of angels sing to shepherds out in the fields. The child is born in a stable, is laid in a manger, and his mother looks down upon him and ponders all that has happened.
It’s beautiful. It’s wonderful. And almost all of it is grounded in myth. It fits right in with other ancient stories of special births, many of which are also beautiful and wonderful. The Christmas story projects a tenderhearted view of things, a warm and peaceful place in a cold and hostile world, a sense of the ultimate worth of loving connections. It’s good to have a story like that in a world like this.
The other night, some 30 of us senior citizens were singing Christmas carols in a majestic high ceilinged chapel. The notes of those glorious tunes rose up from our throats, reverberated off the walls, and swirled among us with vitality and grace. All of us had seen a lot of life. Pains and sorrows had come upon everyone there. Still the sound of our singing was strong, deep, and full.
We sang about those angels and wise men, those shepherds and their sheep, that mother and her child. And the old story came once again to comfort us, to strengthen us, to bolster our spirits, to bring goodness into our hearts. It mattered not a wit that most of what we sang about didn’t happen in the world as we now understand it.
It was clear that a story, even a Bible story, need not be about something that happened in order to speak true.
Bob Jones is the former minister of the Gueneville and Monte Rio Community Churches.