All Truth is true

All good stories reveal the Truth: we seek connection, restoration and reconciliation-- with the world, with those we love, and most importantly with ourselves.

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First Inklings

J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis were drinking buddies. Both were dons at Oxford, and their friendship was forged over a shared love of Icelandic sagas and Norse mythology.

Tolkien shared bits of his writing with Lewis— poems and invented languages which would later form the basis of The Silmarillion. It was largely Lewis’s encouragement, over the course of a decade, that kept Tolkien chipping away. He told biographer Walter Hooper, perhaps only half-jokingly, “I wrote The Lord of the Rings to make Lewis a story out of The Silmarillion.” It was said that the speech of the character TreeBeard was based on the “booming voice” of C.S. Lewis.

Treebeard, as imagined in Peter Jackson's "The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers".

Tolkien’s influence on Lewis was no less profound. When they first met Lewis’ faith had been shifting—he’d moved from being a professed agnostic to having a belief in some form of God—but he still rejected Christianity. One night, along with their friend Hugo Dyson, they got into a heavy discussion about the purpose and value of myth. Walking along the river after dinner, Lewis assured the other two that he shared their belief in the inherent power of myth, but insisted that myths were “lies and therefore worthless, even though breathed through silver.”

We seek wholeness, yet understand that life is paradox. Our own journeys always include triumph and surrender, bounty and loss, joy and sorrow, transcendence and degradation, punishment and mercy. And for the luckiest among us, a visceral realization that we are all made by Love, of Love, to Love. Every great myth is grounded in that simple Truth.

Tolkien immediately corrected him. “No. They are not lies.”

Lewis later described his ‘a-ha’ moment as, “a rush of wind that came so suddenly on the still, warm evening and sent so many leaves pattering down that we thought it was raining. We held our breath.” Then, according to biographer Joseph Pearce:

“Tolkien resumed, arguing that myths, far from being lies, were the best way of conveying truths which would otherwise be inexpressible. We have come from God, Tolkien argued, and inevitably the myths woven by us, though they contain error, reflect a splintered fragment of the true light, the eternal truth that is with God. Myths may be misguided, but they steer however shakily towards the true harbor, whereas materialistic ‘progress’ leads only to the abyss and the power of evil.”

Tolkien considered all myth to be God expressing Himself through the minds of poets, whereas he believed Jesus Christ was God writing His own myth in space and time. The men talked until 4 am. One assumes a few drinks were involved. This was Lewis’ conversion moment, and with works like Mere Christianity he would go on to become the most famous Christian apologist of the 20th Century.

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The Monomyth

Tolkien’s conception of God deeply informs my own faith— just as his mythic heroes Aragorn, Gandalf, and both of the famous Bagginses hold a near-sacred place in my heart. His is an extremely useful and provocative exegesis: All myth is true. Christ is God writing His own myth.

There are so many layers to this simple idea, so many ways it refracts the light of eternal Truth through the prism of the cross. One certainly need not be Christian to relish the spectrum of colors, although I hope my fellow followers of Christ will be open to the ideas it illuminates in all sorts of unexpected places.

Joseph Campbell wrote famously of the Monomyth, the “Hero’s Adventure” that forms the basis of every great story. This basic journey has been traveled by Jesus, Moses, Siddhartha Gautama, Odysseus, Dorothy Gale, Frodo Baggins, Lucy Pevensie, Rust Cohle, Jon Snow & Luke Skywalker— to name but a few.

These are fictional stories. Even the story of Jesus, for most of us, has become increasingly difficult to accept as truth in this modern age. Yet each is a crystalline example of what I call “Tall-T-Truth”. Because each contains universal Truth about life, and living, that would be otherwise inexpressible. Each reflects a splinter of the pure light that occasionally flashes briefly across even the darkest corners of our own hearts. To that extent, the literal (or “small-t”) truth of such stories is largely irrelevant—even when it comes to stories of Jesus Christ. And I say that as a believer.

Not all stories are true, but all good stories contain Truth. The real Truth. That we seek connection, restoration, and reconciliation; with the world, with those we love, and most importantly with ourselves. We seek wholeness, yet understand that life is paradox. Our own journeys always include triumph and surrender, bounty and loss, joy and sorrow, transcendence and degradation, punishment and mercy. And for the luckiest among us, a visceral realization that we are all made by Love, of Love, to Love. Every great myth is grounded in that simple Truth.

I love exploring these ideas, and synthesizing stories to reveal what I believe to be essential— even eternal— Truth. It’s not my goal to proselytize, or to slay any sacred cows (okay okay, it’s not my primary goal). I seek only connection, communion and transcendence. Perhaps together we will find new ways to see the world— not only as it as, but as we are.

There are so many great places to look; religion, science, philosophy, psychology, yoga, sports, politics, books, movies, Netflix. Those things that are factual and verifiable we will treat as such. The rest we will strive to encounter with what the Zen Buddhists call “Shosin”— a Beginner’s Mind. My request is that we spend as little time as possible worrying about actual truth, and focus squarely on what is True. Together, let’s explore and test this simple theory:

All Truth is true.