Myths and Fables

Every civilization has produced fanciful, epic tales about how the world was created, about what causes thunder and lightning, and about powerful beings who struggle for control of the heavens above and the underworld below. These are myths, and most were created to explain the existence of the world around us and various natural phenomena. Tales of the exploits of gods and goddesses from Apollo to Zeus and from Thor to Athena: These stories, although believed by the ancients, have long been universally recognized as stories that, although clearly untrue, were man's attempts to understand and explain what is true.

Fables, on the other hand, are quaint little tales written for children, often featuring animal characters that speak and who exhibit both good and bad human traits, and are designed to teach a moral lesson. "The Tortoise and the Hare." "The Boy Who Cried Wolf." "The Fox and the Grapes." Most people are familiar with these and other endearing stories that teach us about human foibles and the benefits of conscientious, morally upright behavior.

I've been spending a lot of time on YouTube lately, only this time I wasn't wrangling with preterists or post-tribbers, as I have in the past. This time I took part in a lively online debate with a hardcore atheist, and during the course of the discussion the concept of myths and fables came into play. Also coming into play was Satan's strategy to undermine people's belief in the inspiration, inerrancy, and sufficiency of Scripture, not to mention his efforts to tear down and destroy people's faith and thwart believers' efforts to share the gospel and to communicate God's truth to others.

The CON game

The individual in question (whom I will refer to as "CON" for the remainder of this article) seemed to be an intelligent, articulate, well-educated person. CON was an avowed atheist, although he seemed surprisingly familiar with the Bible and with many philosophical and religious topics. I say "seemed" familiar because although he could speak knowledgeably about these things to a moderate degree, he understood nothing about what the Bible actually teaches and was so thoroughly steeped in worldly wisdom and hardened unbelief that spiritual matters were so much nonsense to him. For CON, it was all about philosophical conundrums and paradoxes to be discussed and proved or disproved through reason and logic.

And clearly born-again Christians are so sorely lacking in these attributes that they should be issued tinfoil hats and relegated to the loony bin.

As an atheist, CON believed that God is a dangerous myth that needs to be eradicated once and for all for the good of humanity.

Jesus either never existed and was actually a pastiche of other mythical figures, or else He was just a great moral teacher whose overly zealous disciples got carried away and started spinning spurious tales in an effort to elevate Him to messianic status.

The Bible? Myths and fables, pure and simple, and not a single one of its alleged "prophecies" can be confirmed with any degree of confidence (so quit yammering about how God "confirms" His Word through the fulfillment of these so-called prophecies).

The Gospel accounts of Jesus' birth, life, ministry, miracles, death, resurrection, and ascension are fiction contrived by unknown individuals, none of whom was an eyewitness to the Crucifixion (which probably never happened anyway) and thus are unreliable hearsay.

And so-called "born-again believers"? Poor, deluded simpletons who cling to absurd myths and fables in a desperate attempt to give their empty, pathetic lives a certain pseudo-spiritual gravitas. Clearly, they do this to compensate for the fact that they can't reason their way out of a wet paper sacrament, and are to be pitied and patiently educated rather than scorned (but it's still tons of fun to rip on 'em because they're such morons).

A couple of other born-again believers were already involved in the discussion, so I sort of snuck in the back door while things were in full swing. CON was taking them to task, slapping people around and arrogantly demanding they provide tangible, rational proof that God existed, that the Bible was true, and that Jesus really was who He said He was—proof that would satisfy his rigorous intellectual standards, that is. The believers in the discussion presented CON with some very reasonable, logical, scripturally sound, and historically accurate arguments to that end. (I contributed a few minor comments of my own, some of which will be excerpted below with some minor editing.)

Of course, CON would have none of it.

At one point, as he did with everyone else, CON challenged me to offer "proof" to support my belief in God, as if without tangible, rational proof there was no reason he or anyone else should listen to anything I had to say. In my initial response, I expressed the fact that I had a dim view of such arguments, because I know from experience that they invariably go nowhere:

CON, I have learned from experience that it's pointlessly self-defeating to get sucked into these types of inane arguments, so I won't. Of course you want proof. Of course you want evidence. Of course you want man-made logic and human wisdom. That's what the world always wants. That's what they wanted from the apostle Paul two thousand years ago:

The point is that the things of the Spirit are and will remain foolishness to you...unless and until you respond to the conviction that tugs at your heart and you humble yourself before God and seek Him.

Until you do, nobody will ever be able to "prove" anything to you.

After you do, nobody will need to.

CON was quick to attack my response, insisting I had no answers, no reason, no logic, no proof, no nothing. I said something to the effect that it's not about who's right, it's about who's redeemed. Although CON appeared to be somewhat knowledgeable about basic Christian doctrine, he acted as if he had no idea what I was talking about, so I took the plunge:

CON, I am genuinely saddened by the fact that you seem to be an intelligent individual who is genuinely searching for the truth and for answers, but are utterly blind to the truth that is staring you in the face and deaf to the answers that are screaming to get your attention. This may not help you, but it might help someone else reading this.

You asked me what "redeemed" meant. OK, no problem. It means "saved." Born again. Born of the Spirit. It means that a person has heard the gospel and has been convicted of their sin by the work of the Holy Spirit, and has responded to the resulting godly sorrow and has realized that they are in fact sinners who are separated from God. They realize at that moment they are lost and unable to do anything to make themselves more acceptable to a holy God that loves them more than they will ever know. They simply ask God to forgive them, and God gives them the gift of faith to believe that Jesus' death and resurrection paid the penalty for their sin on their behalf.

At that moment, their sins—past, present, and future—are cast as far as the east is from the west, and the Holy Spirit is sealed within them and will never leave them. They are spiritually reconciled to God, who imputes His Son's perfect righteousness to them, and they are adopted into God's family for eternity. They have been "redeemed."

All they have to do is believe—God even supplies the faith.

I hope that answers your question, because it's about the best I can do.

You also say we have no answers. Not so. The Bible does have the answers—they're just not the answers the world wants to hear. They anger and offend the world. They are a stumbling block, and provoke haughty, impassioned appeals to human intellect and reason. They are foolishness to them, and here's why:

You say we "resort" to quoting Scripture. Well, duh...

The Word of God is the single most powerful weapon we have—which explains why Satan tries so hard to impugn its veracity and cast shadows of doubt on its inspiration. And to a large extent, Satan has succeeded.

It has reached the point where seminaries today churn out legions of highly educated but scripturally illiterate and spiritually bankrupt psychological counselors and Christianized motivational speakers instead of preachers of the gospel of Jesus Christ. The Bible's simple message has been attacked and denigrated from every side, but its message hasn't changed and it never will:

I pray that these few words might give the Holy Spirit an opportunity to pierce the heart of someone out there reading this. The sun is going down, prophetically speaking, but there is still time.

CON was quick to respond with sarcasm and contempt—something about the sun going down on my pathetic life or whatever. No surprise there—it was pretty much what I had come to expect from CON.

As I continued to follow the discussion, however, it became clear to me that CON had a two-pronged strategy:

Such are the first words out of Satan's mouth recorded in Scripture in Genesis 3:1 ("Has God really said...?"). The number one weapon in CON's arsenal was to try to kick his opponent's number one weapon out of his hand. CON would simply deny that God's Word carried any weight in the discussion because, as all rational, well-educated people know, the Bible is merely a collection of myths and fables that has no place in a serious philosophical discussion. CON demanded verifiable facts and data, and blithely assumed there was none of that to be found in the Bible.

This attack also had a dampening effect on the others, as CON's opponents in the discussion were made to feel that if they had to "resort" to quoting the Bible, that automatically meant their arguments were inherently weak and without substance, and lacked any force of reason or intellect. In other words, the message was clear:

If you quote the Bible, you're an idiot.

And you lose. This is actually an excellent strategy because if it works, no other tactics are even necessary. As soon as we abandon God's Word, our battle is lost because we have cut ourselves off from the greatest source of wisdom and truth there is. We're on our own, playing the enemy's game on the enemy's terms in the enemy's territory using the enemy's weapons. We're fighting flesh with flesh, and the world will win that one every time.

But we don't have any business doing that, because...

Q. What kind of soldier allows his enemy to talk him into putting down his sword in the middle of the battle?

A. A foolish soldier who is inviting defeat.

CON would sometimes just state something as if it were a fact that had been proven. For example, at one point CON confidently asserted that not one of the four Gospels was written by their titular authors (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John). Not only that, but whoever these mystery writers were, it's clear that nary a one of them was an eyewitness to the Crucifixion (assuming it was even a real event).

Oh, really? Says who? We know John was there, because Jesus spoke to him from the cross. But CON simply made the statement and moved on as if it had been established by reliable scholarly research—scholarly research that only an uneducated dolt would refuse to wholeheartedly accept.

While Jesus was on the cross, He looked down and spotted John standing beside His mother Mary:

Bible scholars have long acknowledged that "the disciple whom Jesus loved" is a figure of speech John uses repeatedly throughout his Gospel to refer to himself. In other words, he was there.

Now, in reality, I know that there have been secular scholars who have written the kinds of things CON accepts without question. There is no shortage of atheist scholars who have done their utmost to destroy the Bible's credibility and have made much of apparent contradictions in the Gospel accounts that can be readily explained by employing a little unbiased detective work and common sense.

Obviously, details differ among the Gospels. No semi-literate believer disputes that. One writer mentions something the others omit. One writer omits something the others mention. One writer describes something a little differently than the others. But what people like CON fail to grasp is that this does far more to confirm the authenticity of the Gospel accounts than it does to call their authenticity into question.

Consider: If these alleged ghostwriters of the Gospels had attempted to make up a story that was intended to persuade thousands of people in the Jerusalem area who had firsthand knowledge of the (purported) events in question that this (possibly non-existent) character named Jesus was the prophesied Jewish Messiah, don't you think they would have made a bit more of an effort to get their stories straight?

Do you think they would have carelessly allowed apparent contradictions to appear in their fanciful accounts that would have influenced legions of people with knowledge of the actual events to publicly challenge them as fiction (which never happened, for some inexplicable reason)? Not in a thousand years.

Why? Because they would have been laughed out of town, if not roasted alive! That's the point. Everyone knew their accounts were essentially accurate. Otherwise, Christianity would have died on the vine. It would have dried up and blown away like so many leaves.

Two millennia? It would have been dead and gone in two decades, and consigned to the scrap heap of history.

But that's not what happened, is it? The actual events that occurred in the lives of the disciples after the Resurrection thunderingly validate everything Jesus said and did. Of the original 12 disciples, 10 spent the rest of their lives spreading the gospel and died as martyrs rather than recant their claims. Judas hung himself and John lived to be a very old man, but the point is this:

Few die for the truth. Who dies for a lie?

For crying out loud, the Gospel writers have women reporting the empty tomb. Women. The testimony of a woman in those days was considered about as trustworthy as that of the village idiot. Do you think they would have had unreliable witnesses reporting the most important event in biblical history? Not in a million years.

Why on earth would they have done that? There is only one answer, and it's the one answer the world does not want to hear. It's the one answer that has them howling and wailing and gnashing their teeth in rage:

The Gospel writers were telling the truth.

If the Gospels were fiction contrived to con people into believing that a man named Jesus was the prophesied Messiah who rose from the dead, surely their accounts would agree on virtually every detail. There would be a high degree of consistency between them. The Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John would be in lockstep with each other (no matter who wrote them.)

But is that what we see? Not exactly. Well, what do we see? We see four different accounts that sound very much as if they were written by four individuals who didn't all experience the exact same things, and who are relating their own personal experiences and memories and widely known, commonly accepted facts in their own words. In other words, the Gospel accounts don't sound like fiction, and the reason is simple: They're not.

I actually took time to read some of the arguments that secular scholars offer in an attempt to explain away this glaring fact, and I found them to be fairly strained and implausible. Color me surprised.

As a matter of fact, there are legions of equally competent scholars who have done a superb job of establishing the Bible's authenticity and have convincingly shown that the original texts are accurate and reliable. But what does CON do? He simply proceeds as if no such defense of the accuracy of the Bible existed.

And I know why: He has no choice. If CON were to acknowledge such scholarly research, he would be forced to refute it, which he would do by asserting that since those who believe in God are deluded simpletons, their "scholarship" can hardly be considered reliable or trustworthy. They have an agenda. (Unlike atheists, who are devoted to the noble, altruistic pursuit of reason and logic untainted by myths and fables, right?)

CON didn't say it in so many words, but I could detect the distinct odor of circular reasoning:

1. Since the Bible is fiction, all people who believe it is true are fools.

2. Fools are obviously incapable of carrying out reliable scholarly research.

3. All scholarly research that attempts to establish the truth of the Bible is carried out by people who believe the Bible is true.

4. Therefore all scholarly research that attempts to establish the truth of the Bible is unreliable, and so the Bible must be fiction.

Pretty slick, huh?

The cure for Epicurus

No doubt the grandest philosophical argument against the existence of God that CON enjoyed brandishing like a little tin sword was something known as the Epicurean Paradox. He bragged about how it had tested the finest philosophical minds in history, and no "religionist" had ever been able to satisfactorily respond to it. He even claimed it had made some of the greatest theologians in history (gasp) doubt their faith! (Oh, help me Jesus! I'm so scared!)

Posed in the third century BC by Greek philosopher Epicurus (341–270 BC), it goes by different names such as the Problem of Evil, the Riddle of Epicurus, etc., and is often stated as follows:

As it turns out, this little paradox has kept philosophers and theologians busy for over two thousand years, and countless dusty library shelves creak under the weight of efforts to satisfactorily resolve it. Naturally, CON assumed he had all of us thumb-sucking Bible thumpers stumped with this gnarly little conundrum. Here is a portion of my response:

Speaking of paradoxes...I've got one for you, CON. A man invents a time machine, goes back in time and shoots his grandfather. Thus he is never born and thus never invents a time machine. But if he is never born and never invents a time machine, his grandfather lives, thus the man is born and voilà—he goes on to invent that time machine, goes back in time and shoots his grandfather, and round and round we go.

This paradox, the Epicurean Paradox, as well as most other paradoxes typically have one thing in common: Most are based on a (usually subtle) flawed assumption. The shoot-your-grandfather paradox rests on a (not all that subtle) flawed assumption that is stated in the first six words: "A man invents a time machine..." Well, good luck with that. Sadly, we apparently inhabit a physical universe in which we cannot travel back in time and change things. This stubborn fact reduces the apparent paradox to a foolish word game.

Speaking of foolish word games, that brings us to the Epicurean Paradox, which is also based on a flawed assumption (admittedly far more subtle than the first). It makes an assumption about God's character that is inaccurate and simplistic when examined in the light of what God reveals to us about His character in His Word.

The assumption is that if God were both willing and able to prevent evil, He would do so immediately and rectify things—He'd square things away, by gosh. After all, God doesn't like evil, right? But this is not an accurate image of the God of the Bible! This is a two-dimensional cardboard cut-out image of God created by people who don't even believe He exists, much less know Him. It turns God into a kindergarten teacher suffering from PMS: If He were willing and able to make the kids sit down and shut up, He certainly wouldn't hesitate to do so—and get some peace and quiet.

Remember: God gave us free will, and by our free-will choices evil entered the world. WE did that, not God. But the questions at hand are these:

Q. Is God willing to prevent evil?

A: Oh yeah, big time.

Q. Is God able to prevent evil?

A: Oh yeah, big time.

Q. Then why is there evil?

A: You ain't seen nothin' yet.

I think I'm gonna call this the Epicurean Smackdown. I'm sorry, did I say prevent evil? He's willing and able to utterly destroy every trace of evil forever—but I'm getting ahead of myself. God does things in His own time, and does an exceedingly thorough job. For millennia, God has been demonstrating that there are no conditions under which man in his sinful state can live in peace with Him, and He's been doing it step by step—or maybe I should say dispensation by dispensation:

1. The Age of Innocence (which ended with Adam and Eve being kicked out of the Garden of Eden).

2. The Age of Conscience (which ended with the Flood of Noah).

3. The Age of Human Government (which ended with the confusion of languages as rebellious man attempted to build the Tower of Babel).

4. The Age of Promise (which ended with the Jews enslaved in Egypt).

5. The Age of Law (which ended with the Crucifixion and Resurrection, and shortly thereafter the temple was destroyed and the Jews were scattered all over the world).

6. The Age of Grace (which concludes at the Rapture, and is followed by the judgments of the Tribulation).

7. The Millennial Kingdom (which will be 1,000 years under perfect conditions, but will end with natural man's final rebellion against God).

God continues to deal with mankind in different ways to demonstrate that sinful men cannot live in peace with Him. Period.

The current Age of Grace ends at the Rapture, after which the judgments of the Tribulation will fall. Then Christ will return to establish the Millennial Kingdom on earth. But since natural-bodied believers with sin natures will be ushered into it, sin will still exist, and they will have children who will grow up and have to choose to believe and accept God's offer of grace just like those who came before them.

Some will, some won't.

This final dispensation will show that even under the direct physical rule of Jesus Christ Himself in a virtual heaven on earth and with Satan bound for the duration, the sin and evil that still exist in the hearts of men will lead to one final rebellion against God, which He will crush once and for all.

After these dispensations have run their course, God will have proved beyond the shadow of a doubt that there are no conditions whatsoever under which sinful men can live in peace with Him, and He will finally judge and destroy all evil and all evildoers.

God is going to great lengths to get through to us that there is only one way for us to live in peace with Him, and that is by our belief in faith in His Son's atonement for our sin. Without that, our sin keeps us alienated from Him. With that, He sees us as being as righteous as His Son and we are reconciled to Him.

Beyond hope

One of the born-again believers who really put forth an admirable effort to deal with CON's arguments about the truth of the Bible was a gentleman I will refer to as PRO. He was biblically knowledgeable and went all out to patiently reason with CON, and in the process he made a strong and sincere effort to share the gospel with him.

For that reason, after I had already posted a couple of rather lengthy comments, I decided to try to remain in the background in the discussion because I didn't want to unnecessarily antagonize CON in refuting some of his arguments, and also because I didn't want to get in PRO's way as he tried to deal with CON on a personal basis about spiritual matters.

Sadly, it seemed that PRO got nowhere with CON as far as the gospel is concerned. CON had no use for anything PRO had to say, as he mocked his beliefs and belittled his efforts. It reached the point where I felt a little bit bad for PRO, because it was becoming obvious to me that CON would never listen to him and that nothing any of us said would ever change CON's mind.

At one point, after CON had yet again arrogantly insisted that PRO had no "resources" and no "research" to back his statements, part of me wanted to warn PRO about getting too involved with people who absolutely reject the gospel in every conceivable way, and tear everything you say to pieces as they take a page from Satan's playbook and try to pry you away from the Word of God so they can get you to play by their fleshly rules.

I actually posted the following remarks, but shortly after I did so, I went back and read some of PRO's most recent comments in their entirety and realized that he was in the middle of really dealing with CON on a personal, spiritual basis. I was afraid I might interfere with his efforts, and so I deleted the following comment shortly after posting it. In spite of opting to quickly delete the following post, however, I still stand by what I wrote:

PRO, I took the liberty of doing a little "research" of my own on behalf of our friend CON, since he seems so eager to be persuaded by facts and reason. But first, a word from the apostle Paul:

As you know, what Paul is basically saying in Romans 1 is that God has plainly revealed His existence through Creation itself, so much so that the only ones who do not see it are those who simply refuse to see it. He goes on to describe what God does to those who stubbornly and steadfastly refuse to even acknowledge His existence as Creator: He ultimately gives them over to a "reprobate mind."

That sounds bad, but what does it mean, exactly? The word Paul uses that is translated "reprobate" is a form of the Greek word adokimos. The adjective adokimos is properly used in reference to such things as coins and metals, and means failing to pass the test; unapproved; counterfeit; and by implication rejected or worthless, both in a literal and a figurative or moral sense. The modern English definition goes something like this:

reprobate (adj.) — 1 Morally depraved; wicked. 2 Being beyond hope of salvation.

The words that caught my attention are beyond hope of salvation. Don't miss what Paul is saying to us through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit:

We know that the Holy Spirit calls all men to repentance and draws them to Christ. But what Paul is saying here is that when people stubbornly refuse to even so much as acknowledge the fact that God exists as Creator and continue in their hardened, arrogant refusal to acknowledge such for a long enough period of time, God finally gives them over to a reprobate mind—and at that point they are literally beyond hope of salvation.

Take that in for a moment, because it is a sobering thought indeed. If someone has willfully placed themselves "beyond hope of salvation," it can only mean one thing:

The Holy Spirit is no longer able to convict them of sin.

God gave us free will, and He ultimately gives us what we choose, be it salvation or condemnation. They have chosen an eternity without God by virtue of their steadfast refusal to acknowledge the most thunderingly obvious proof of His existence in the form of His handiwork that surrounds us all (much less the truth of the gospel), and they are without excuse.

So, has our friend CON been given over to a "reprobate mind"? Not necessarily, but I don't know...it's not my call, nor is it anyone else's. Only God looks upon the heart.

Sometimes, however, we reach the point in our arguments with certain people that we need to take care. We need to realize that some people will never accept anything we say under any circumstances. They will arrogantly reject out of hand and rip to pieces anything we say, no matter how well documented or historically accurate it may be in reality. No matter what we say, jerk goes the knee and we are accused of having no "proof" or of having done no "research," etc. And for some the cycle will never end, because they really have been given over to a reprobate mind.

We have to take care to not allow such people (for whom Christ died) to drag us into fleshly arguments (I don't mean you've done that, because you haven't...I'm just saying). And I've been guiltier of this than most because I have a sarcastic streak a mile wide, and the Holy Spirit has had to take me out to the woodshed more than once for getting overly snarky with certain people. I'm getting better, though.

But most importantly, we cannot allow them to lull us into putting down for even one second the sharpest tool in existence: the Word of God. That's been Satan's go-to tactic from the beginning, and that's because it works. That's why they expend so much effort—so much mockery and bluster—into tearing it to shreds and attempting to cast doubt on it. Satan may be evil, but he's not stupid. It's a smart move: He knows that without God's Word, we've lost the battle before it begins.

So, yes, in accordance with Jude 1:3, we should "earnestly contend" for the faith, which means to struggle with skill and commitment in opposing whatever is contrary to it...which is just what you are doing.

But then again, there's this:

I know this "pearls before swine" idea gets tossed out in a fairly snarky, indiscriminate manner at times, and that is unfortunate. But the fact remains—it means exactly what it says:

Do not persist in the futility of offering what is pure or holy to those who have no appreciation for it and stubbornly continue to reject it, because your words will be treated with contempt and you will likely be viciously attacked on account of them.

At some point, we have to come to grips with the fact that there may be nothing left for us to do except pray for such individuals. OK, so they won't listen to us. Fine. Then pray that God will send someone or something in their paths that will get their attention and allow His Spirit to penetrate their hardened hearts.

Fortunately, the Holy Spirit has powers of persuasion that far exceed ours.

Anyway, may God bless you for your continued efforts.

Not long after I decided to delete this last post, I politely ducked out of the discussion while others remained. I had already said everything I felt compelled to say, and saw nothing to be gained by continuing. CON wasn't going to listen, and nothing I said was going to change his mind.

Myths and fables 2.0

What strikes me about people like CON, however, is that every time they arrogantly dismiss the Bible as myths and fables and wield their man-made philosophies and human wisdom in order to viciously tear down other people's faith in it, they are unwittingly confirming its prophetic integrity:

Well, "the time" has come, and "they" includes people like our friend CON.

The word translated "fables" here is the Greek word mythos, which is where we get the English word "myth." English translations of the Bible are split down the middle in their rendering of the word as either "myths" or "fables." The meaning, however, carries slightly more sinister overtones than the modern usage. A mythos is a false account, but one posing as the truth; a falsehood intended to subvert what is known to be true. In other words, Paul is not just talking about fanciful stories—he's talking about lies.

(What lies, you ask? Well, just start with the theory of evolution and work your way down.)

The thought I want to leave you with is that the world is full of unregenerate men with reprobate minds who flaunt their carnal philosophies and haughtily dismiss the Bible as being nothing more than myths and fables. Lies and legends. Folk tales and foolishness. But God makes it clear: The real myths and fables are whatever opposes His Word and the truth of the gospel.

So, you can leave "The Tortoise and the Hare" in the dust, and say adios to Apollo and Zeus. Today we have:

The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins.
The Jesus Myth by Andrew M. Greeley.
Nonsense from the Bible by Brian Baker.

...and the hits just keep on coming.

Myths and fables 2.0, now available at bookstores everywhere.

Not to mention seminaries.

Greg Lauer — OCT '14

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