[Oe List ...] 12/10/09, Spong: The Origins of the New Testament, Part VI...

[KarenBueno at aol.com]

Great essay, John Montgomery!  Thank you!  I was especially  struck by your 
"re-demythologizing", and your description of it as "second  naivete".  I 
have been delighting in sharing the Christmas nativity myth,  using nativity 
scenes, with my grandchildren, ages 7 and 4, who are unchurched,  sorry to 
say.  (These are Sarah Wright Thompson's kids, if any of you  oldies remember 
that red-headed two year old in 1971.)  Harris, the 4 year  old, had to be 
told the name of the baby, but Hannah, age 7,  knew the name  Jesus.  When 
we were looking at a book with a picture of the angels  revealing the birth 
to the shepherd, Harris asked about the picture, "Where is  God?"  I said the 
standard, God is a spirit, and no one knows what God  looks like.  But 
Hannah said that she knew!  She had seen the DVD  Hercules, and Hercules was 
God!  She knew what God looked like!  I  didn't attempt to correct her.  After 
all, Michelangelo painted a picture  of God!  (And, by the way, these kids 
daddy is a Catholic who also calls  Spong a heretic, for his slams at the 
Roman Catholic church.)
 
Well, anyway, I don't feel at all badly about sharing the Christmas  
nativity myth as if it were real with my progeny.  I find I can sing with  the 
chancel choir and proclaim all of the miracles of the gospels, and yet at  the 
same time hold all of my study of the historical criticism and know that it  
is a glorious myth which needs to be de-mythologizing.  I don't think I am  
putting my studies in a "box" in my mind.  I can truly rejoice that we have 
 that delightful story still in history to share with out kids and let them 
 struggle through for meaning.  It is some sort of "secondary naivete" 
which  allows me to revel in the myth and its meaning for today.
 
And last night I saw parts of the "American Family" cartoon-style tv show,  
on a tv set that was not turned up for volume.  I could tell that they were 
 parodying the rapture myth, but I couldn't hear the dialog.  My stepson  
said he loved to laugh at the show, but my daughter-in-law, his wife, said 
she  hated it, presumably because it went to far in treating religion as a  
joke.
 
We live in an age where all will need to deal with those ancient stories,  
and with the science of our times, and discern the meaning that Christianity 
 holds for the future, as well as whatever is the descendent of what we 
know now  as Christianity.
 
Karen Bueno
 
 
In a message dated 12/14/2009 5:36:49 A.M. Mountain Standard Time,  
monkeyltd at comcast.net writes:

"second naivete"

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