06/22/2024
G K Chesterton, C S Lewis & George MacDonald: The 3 Amigos!
Evgeny Terekhin · ·
Why True Myths Resonate: Ordinary People, Extraordinary Courage
My son asked me yesterday: “Why don’t you watch the Marvel movies? They are all about myths. You like myths.”
I said: “Hmm… Good question. You know, some myths are more true than others. The Marvel movies are all about giants among men, not men among giants. In a true myth, the hero is a man, not a superman. It’s much easier for an ordinary person to relate to Frodo Baggins than Iron Man.”
I saw he was intrigued, so I left him at that. A thought from G.K. Chesterton popped up,
“To be in the weakest camp is to be in the strongest school.”
In a true myth, an ordinary person is caught up in extraordinary circumstances. Like Frodo in a barrow-down, we have to grapple with forces that are much much stronger than us. We are not Thor or Loki. We can’t wield the Mjölnir hammer. We are in the weakest camp but in the strongest school.
It’s a school in which our hidden spiritual power gets awakened. When we face a Goliath, we will either cower or get awakened. When we face Barrow-wights, we will either escape by putting on the Ring or wake up to an idea of a noble end.
“There is a seed of courage hidden (often deeply, it is true) in the heart of the fattest and most timid hobbit, waiting for some final and desperate danger to make it grow. Frodo was neither very fat nor very timid; indeed, though he did not know it, Bilbo (and Gandalf) had thought him the best hobbit in the Shire. He thought he had come to the end of his adventure, and a terrible end, but the thought hardened him.”
A true myth is about ordinary men and women becoming spiritual giants. It’s not about giants fighting other giants. It’s not about one Superman fighting another Superman. If the main hero is Superman, we can’t relate to him. He is no longer a man. It’s not a story about us.
A true myth is a story of awakening to your hidden power in weakness. We must not be stronger than a giant. We must be stronger than ourselves.
As G.K. Chesterton said,
If we are weaker than he [giant], that is no reason why we should be weaker than ourselves. If we are not tall enough to touch the giant's knees, that is no reason why we should become shorter by falling on our own.”
Modern myth-makers are heavily focused on the giant. They invest their heroes with superpowers. Gods clash with gods and prevail. With all this hero worship, they lose ordinary people. What we want and need is to awaken to the giant within, not to become a giant without.
We don’t need a new weapon or technology to become a match to the giant. We don’t need to be their match. We need to be a match to ourselves. A true myth always anticipates this corollary: when we become who we are, all Goliaths in our lives are defeated. We don’t defeat them with our own external power. They are defeated because we have become stronger than ourselves.
