Jesus, the hero of the Christian story, is considered the physical, earthly manifestation of the cosmic Christ \u2013 one-third of the eternal trinitarian Godhead (Father, Son, and Holy Spirt) that Christians link back to Elohim \u2013 the creator God of Genesis (and later Yahweh). Jesus is ultimate divinity wrapped in humanity \u2013 tabernacled in human flesh \u2013 both fully human and fully divine. He left direct union with the Father and came into the physical world (Departure)<\/strong>. While on earth, he shared in the solidarity of human suffering facing the trials of life, temptation, slander, and death (Initiation). <\/strong>He was imbued with magical powers that aided him in his quest to reveal what God\u2019s Kingdom (Edenic Ideal) was actually like. He submitted himself to sacrificial death, and crossing that threshold defeated death. He descended into the underworld and returned the keys to Eden, and the gift of the Spirit to the rest of humanity (boone). This transformed the human condition from separation into one of direct access to his Source and authority. He ascended into heaven to return to Union with the Father, praying for and aiding the rest of God\u2019s children to do the same. (Return)<\/strong><\/p>\n The hero journey of Jesus is told within the backdrop of Christianity\u2019s (Judeo-Christian) larger, cosmic myth. The Epic encompasses the story of humanity through a narrative arc of creation, fall, and redemption. We see a creator God – Elohim (plural ) breathing life into dust and forming humans as part of the created order, made in the creator God\u2019s own image. The humans are unified with their God in Edenic paradise. Here, God bestows upon them the authority to bless, nurture, grow, and multiply the paradise into the rest of the world. This is their sacred purpose. Humanity gives way to the temptation of autonomy \u2013 to pursue purpose dis-integrated from divine union. From this short beginning, the rest of the story unfolds across the span of human history as man becomes tribe and tribe becomes nation attempting, for multiple millennia, unsuccessfully, to make its way back to Edenic unity. A hero comes to show the way back to God through the archetypal rhythm of LIFE, DEATH, and RESURRECTION. The hero\u2019s life is defined by love, his death is sacrificial, and his resurrection is inevitable transfiguration into the fullness of human\/divine existence. This becomes known as The Way for humanity to restore themselves through the same journey. This process of human restoration releases the spiritual energy into the rest of the created order allowing humanity to return to its purpose of expanding the dwelling place of God into all the Earth.<\/p>\n This story is epic! I follow this myth as my worldview. Why? Because it is changing me into the person I want to become. A person defined by love. Joseph Campbell defines myth as \u201cthe secret opening through which the inexhaustible energies of the cosmos pour into the human cultural manifestation.\u201d That inexhaustible energy is love. Campbell shows us how necessary it is to have myth in our reality. Myth does not mean fantasy. Myth is not untrue. It is through myth that we encounter truth. The great danger is a society or culture’s absence of myth. With no communal symbols, frameworks, or pathways to navigate the mystery, calling, suffering, and transformation of life, we are left alone and guideless to the strange pantheon of our psyche. (5) I\u2019m talking about the weird or perverse stuff my morality attempts to suppress. \u201cThe unconscious or resisted psychological powers that I have not thought or dared to integrate into my life.\u201d The stuff of dreams.<\/p>\n It’s interesting to note that most of the myth stories, including that of Jesus, spend the majority of their time in the initiation phase of the journey. This is the main material of any good story. This is where the suffering happens. If I could realize that the suffering I face \u2013 like when my car breaks down, or I don\u2019t get the job, or I have to leave the country I love, or I am slandered against \u2013 if I could just realize that suffering is the raw material of redeeming ecstasy and the means by which transformation happens, maybe I could see suffering the ways saints and mystics from Paul to Julian of Norwich did.<\/p>\n \u201cI want to know\u00a0Christ\u2014yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings,\u00a0becoming like him in his death,\u00a0and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection\u00a0from the dead.<\/p>\n \u201cI desired to suffer with him; for it seemed to me that if I could suffer with him, I would be more truly purified, and made more like him.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Maybe then I could accept the Buddha\u2019s first noble truth, that all of life is suffering, and walk full-hearted with desire towards it knowing its transforming effect to raise me from the death I don\u2019t want to die. I used to think that suffering was the cause of trauma, and certainly, that can be proven. AND, now I\u2019m curious if the lack of an initiation culture and solid mythology – that provides a framework for suffering – could be causing greater harm to the Western psyche.<\/p>\n While Christianity certainly has the framework to usher humans into \u201csalvation\u201d (read becoming fully human, defined by love, conduits of restoration, and in unitive awareness with the Divine), the hero\u2019s journey is not a lens through which most (in the southeast of the United States) are familiar.<\/p>\n I am hopeful for a progression in our Christian societies where \u201cOnce we have broken free from the prejudices of our own provincially limited ecclesiastical, tribal, or national rendition of the world archetypes, it becomes possible to understand that the\u2026Good News which the World Redeemer brings and which so many have been glad to hear, zealous to preach, but reluctant, apparently, to demonstrate is that God is love, that he can be, and is to be loved, and that all without exception are his children.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Bibliography<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Hero Jesus, the hero of the Christian story, is considered the physical, earthly manifestation of the cosmic Christ \u2013 one-third of the eternal trinitarian Godhead (Father, Son, and Holy Spirt) that Christians link back to Elohim \u2013 the creator God of Genesis (and later Yahweh). Jesus is ultimate divinity wrapped in humanity \u2013 tabernacled […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":216,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[789,3397,2119],"class_list":["post-40477","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-campbell","tag-dlgp04","tag-heros-journey","cohort-dlgp04"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40477","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/216"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40477"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40477\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40478,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40477\/revisions\/40478"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40477"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40477"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40477"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}The Myth<\/h2>\n
Suffering as Ecstasy?<\/h2>\n
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