The Mythos of Peace

According to the text of Luke’s gospel, when the angels appeared to the shepherds in the fields outside Bethlehem, that celestial chorus proclaimed, “Peace on earth and good will to men.” Peace on earth … Those words have such a hopeful sound, but, in the face of the reality of how the world is and has always been, it seems that peace on earth is mythic, at best.

Consider the evidence. On this Christmas Day, 2007, as people around the world celebrate the birth of the one Christians call “The Prince of Peace,” there are wars and rumors of war, as there always has. Turkey has sent troops and has bombed numerous sites in northern Iraq in search of Kurdish rebels. Suicide bombers in Iraq have killed scores, including children. The government of Israel has announced that they will add to the settlements in disputed territories despite the impact this decision may have on projected peace talks with the Palestinians. In Gaza, there are reports of Christians, squeezed between the Hamas authority and the Israeli sanctions, are fleeing, with no thought of ever returning to their homes. This litany of conflict does not address those areas of the world where people are being killed and the world does not really notice – like Afghanistan and Darfur.

In The Battle For God: A History of Fundamentalism written by Karen Armstrong, which I am reading, she distinguishes between mythos and logos as two competing ways of thinking, speaking, and acquiring knowledge. We are well familiar with logos, that rational, pragmatic, and scientific thought – centered on facts – that helps people function in the day to day world.

It is mythos, though, that may be more valuable to human kind. Myth focuses on what is timeless, on what provides significance for life, and on what gave meaning to the internal life. Without myth, we are, of all people, without hope. So, the proclamation of peace on earth by the angels in that familiar story was an announcement of the mythos of faith of what could be, if only humanity could appropriate a spark of the transcendent. Would that this would happen.