I used to think that when someone would say that they were “spiritual,” they were saying that they used to be “religious” but no longer practice the faith they were raised in. Generally, they’re not anti-religion, but they reject organized religion. In the non-believing community some feel it’s similar to someone saying that they’re agnostic because they’re not ready to say that they’re fully atheist. So, to the believers and non-believers it seems like a cop-out when someone says that they’re Spiritual but not Religious. But over the last week I’ve heard two different unrelated podcasts talk about being Spiritual as something different than being watered down “religious” or a half-step away from non-belief.

Office TV-show Alum, Rainn Wilson shared on the Apple News InConversation podcast his journey from his Bahá’í upbringing through his unsatisfactory successes with the Office and back toward finding joy in his life again. “Hollywood actor climbs to the top of the game and doesn’t find the anticipated satisfaction,” not a new story. The twist is that instead of going back to the faith he was raised in, he has chosen to reclaim the values he saw without accepting all of the religion’s truth claims. Not unheard of, but interesting, for someone to say that there is some important Truth there, but not be limited by the religion’s one specific narrative. And, of course, he wrote a book about it called Soul Boom: Why We Need a Spiritual Revolution.

Then in a science podcast, when discussing concepts of time, American theoretical physicist, Brian Greene, made the comment that Science is good with determining facts but falls short when it comes to determining meaning. Greene said that it’s an overstep for someone to claim “meaning” based on Scientific inquiry. That piqued my interest. And he was also selling his new book, Until the End of Time: Mind, Matter, and Our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe

This whole line of discussion reminded me of something written several years ago by former-Catholic nun, Karen Armstrong in her book, The Case for God.

She said that the Ancients divided knowledge between “Mythos” and “Logos.” 

In most pre-modern cultures there were two recognized ways of thinking, speaking and acquiring knowledge. The Greeks called them Mythos and Logos. Both were essential and neither was consider superior to the other. They were not in conflict, but complimentary. Each had its own sphere of competence, and it was considered unwise to mix the two. 

Logos, or Reason, was the pragmatic mode of thought that enabled people to function effectively in the world. It had, therefore, to correspond accurately to external reality. People have always needed Logos to make an efficient weapon, organize their societies or plan an expedition. Logos was forward looking, continually on the lookout for new ways of controlling the environment, improving old insights or inventing something fresh. Logos was essential to the survival of our species. But it had its limitations. It could not assuage human grief or find ultimate meaning in life’s struggles. For that, people turned to Mythos, or  Myth. 

Today we live in a society of scientific Logos and Myth has fallen into disrepute. In popular parlance, a myth is something that is not true. But in the past, Myth was not self-indulgent fantasy. Rather, like Logos, it helped people to live effectively in our confusing world, though in a different way. Myths may have told stories about the Gods, but they were really focused on the more elusive, puzzling and tragic aspects of the human predicament that lay outside the remit of Logos. 

Myth has been called a primitive  form of psychology. When a Myth described heroes threading their way through labyrinths, descending into the Underworld or fighting monsters, these were not understood as primarily factual stories. They were designed to help people negotiate the obscure regions of the psyche which had difficult to access but which profoundly influence our thought and behavior. People had to enter the warren of their own minds and fight their personal demons. 

When Freud and Jung began to chart their scientific search for the soul, they instinctively turned to these ancient Myths. A Myth was never intended as an accurate account of an historical event. It was something that had in some sense happened once but that also happens all the time.


Karen Armstrong, The Case for God, Chapter 1

A couple weeks ago a commenter to one of my FB posts derided Theology as nothing because it never did anything for humanity, unlike science which has given us solutions to illnesses in the form of vaccines. Yeah, it is true that Science is good for things like medicine and vaccines and doing orbital mechanics, and religion or theology is not good for understanding Mathematics or Cosmology or even selective breeding practices used by sheep herders in the ancient Middle East. But is it really an either/or proposition? Isn’t the notion that these are two competing domains only because Fundamentalists and Materialists want to say that their chosen side is the only True side? 

Both sides want to claim that they have determined the absolute final truth on existence. Or at the least they would claim that their chosen domain is the only way know the absolute final truth. But my experience has been that the more that I learn the more I realize that there is so much that I don’t know. And I find that people on both sides, who claim to have definitive knowledge, are making a huge assumption that the things that they know are more essential than the things that they don’t know. 

Maybe we need a little more humility when it comes to these conversations. Maybe Materialists would be less dour or less prone to despair because their mechanisms cannot help them find meaning to their lives and the Fundamentalists begin to understand that they are putting everyone at risk when they try to practice medicine based on their holy books. Maybe Spirituality isn’t a cop-out but an acknowledgment that we have a long way to go and that we should be amazed at what the Ancients accomplished despite their lack of technology. 

mythology
mythology

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