This is # 15 in the Crossing the Threshold series.

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Myth

If you were to ask most people in the postmodern world; what is myth? The answer coming back from both the sacred and secular arenas would surprisingly be the same: a false or untrue story. Differing on just about everything else these two opposing factions find common ground by dismissing myth as fable at best or worse an entrenched lie. Wheaton College Professor Emeritus Rolland Hein says this low meaning of myth; a discredited popular belief is the complete degeneration of its high meaning. It is essential in our examination of the Hero’s Journey to regain the true high meaning of myth.

For Hein myths are “first of all stories; stories which confront us with something transcendent….the eternal expressing itself in time”. Clyde Kilby former President of Wheaton says “myth is the name for a way of seeing, a way of knowing.” For these men and many others including the great Christian mythmakers C.S. Lewis, and J.R.R. Tolkien, myth is the only way certain transcendent truth can be expressed in a comprehensible form. Far from being entrenched lies myths are stories that help people see and experience the transcendent in ways the rational never can.

This is #14 in the Crossing the Threshold series.

                                                         The Monomyth

This is the Hero’s Journey, the world’s most basic story. It exists in all cultures at all times. It is a three act story that transcends cultural boundaries, time, language, gender, politics and religion, and resonates in the heart of every person in every time and every place.

Where did it come from? Who is its author? Certainly not Joseph Campbell, he just made the observation that the world had a Hero Myth. Nor did it originate with Mr. Vogler or any of the other authors who have devoted study and scholarship to writing on The Hero’s Journey. They all acknowledge the origin of the Monomyth to be in the primordial waters of the time before history…..the time they call Myth

This is #13 in the Crossing the Threshold series.

                                                       The Characters

Since The Hero’s Journey is a basic foundational story, there are some basic characters better known as archetypes that are associated with it.

Hero

First and foremost of course is the hero, the central protagonist in the story. We may be tempted to think of heroes as being strong and courageous however these are really secondary qualities. Mr. Vogler says “the word hero is a  Greek word, from the root that means ‘to protect and to serve’…a hero is someone who is willing to sacrifice his own needs on behalf of others, like a shepherd who will sacrifice to protect and serve his flock.”. The true mark of a hero then is a willingness to sacrifice. To surrender something of value, perhaps even their very life on behalf of another person, group, or cause.

 Heroes also show us how to face the ultimate fear by facing death and doing it well. Some may lay down their life like William Wallace in Braveheart, others may die symbolically like Chuck Noland in Cast Away, while others simply face the possibility of death like Harry Potter in The Deathly Hallows. Whatever the outcome is, a hero is someone who does not give death a victory. They transcend it.

Mentor

Mentors are wise old men and women who come along side the hero to teach, guide, and protect them. Often they are former heroes, ones who have survived the tests, trials, and ordeals and grown to an old age full of wisdom. They are willing to impart to their young protégés all that experience has taught them.

A mentor will often speak as “the voice of God” and serve as the source of divine wisdom in the story. Along with life saving advice they may give magic gifts like magical weapons. They help the hero to overcome his fears and impart a code of virtue that all heroes are required to have.

Merlin, Gandalf, Dumbledore, Yoda, are all classic examples of a hero’s mentor.

Threshold Guardians

One of my favorite visual scenes in Peter Jackson’s Fellowship of the Ring comes toward the end when the small band leaves the Woods of Lothlorien and paddle up the river on their quest to reach Mordor. They come to these immense stone figures …The Argonath, The Pillars of the King; here is how Tolkien himself describes them:

“As Frodo was borne towards them the great pillars rose like towers to meet him. Giants they seemed to him, vast grey figures silent but threatening….Upon great pedestals founded deep in the waters stood two great kings of stone: still with blurred eyes and crannied brows they frowned upon the North. The left hand of each was raised palm outwards in gestures of warning; in each right hand there was an axe; upon each head there was a crumbling helm and crown. Great power and majesty they still wore, the silent wardens of a long vanished kingdom. Awe and fear fell upon Frodo, and he cowered down, shutting his eyes and not daring to look up as the boat drew near.” (The Lord of the Rings) These are perfect images for the archetype known as Threshold Guardians.

Threshold Guardians stand at the threshold of new worlds to keep out those they deem unworthy. They maybe a boss, a watchman, a sentinel, a guard, or anyone whose job it is to block the way of the hero.

Herald

A herald is a forerunner used to introduce or give tidings, to make proclamations or announcements of significant change. They can be as small as the robot R2D2 in George Lucas’ Star Wars or as large as Hagrid the giant in Harry Potter and the Scorer’s Stone. They are used to present the challenge and get the adventure going.

Shapeshifter

A shapeshifter is exactly what the word implies; a figure who changes shapes at least from the hero’s perspective. Are they friend or foe? Loyal or traitor? Honest or Dishonest? They are not the villain but they may be used by him and they always keep the hero guessing.

Shadow

The Shadow of course represents the darkside. They are the forces of evil that are dedicated to the hero’s destruction. They can be outright villains who want the hero’s death, or they may be antagonists, those who are after the same goal but do not like the hero’s way of achieving it.

Ally

The hero usually has a few close allies who make at least part of the journey by his side. They serve different functions; messengers, sparring partners, figures who fight along side in battle, loyal servants, and companions. It would be hard to imagine Frodo without the Fellowship, Arthur without his Knights, or Robin Hood without his Merry Men.

This is post #12 in Crossing the Threshold series.

Act Three: Return

The Road Back

The hero is not safe yet nor is the journey over by any means. The enemy usually comes back with great vengeance. Commodus unleashes his fury after his humiliation in the arena and all of Rome feels the brunt of it. The Road Back is leading in one direction; to the final and ultimate confrontation.

The Resurrection

If the Ordeal is the crisis of the story then the Resurrection is the climax. This is the final clash between life and death and usually includes a sacrifice. Something must be given up, surrendered in order to “sanctify” the story. This is Harry Potter’s walk ‘Into the Forest Again,’ it is Chuck Noland’s loss of Wilson the volleyball, and it is Jack and Rose’s final descent into the waters in Titanic. From this last most dangerous meeting with death the hero will emerge transformed.

Return with the Elixir

The journey is now over and the hero returns to the Ordinary World having been transformed by the experience and brings with him the elixir. The elixir can be a treasure, a lesson learned, love, and friendship. Whatever it is the hero will be forever different and will enter into a new life.

Not only does change come to the hero but the elixir he returns with can change the Ordinary World.  “The whole world is altered and the consequences spread far. There is a beautiful image for this in Excalibur. When Percival brings the grail back to the ailing Arthur, the King revives and rides out with his knights again. They are so filled with new life that the flowers burst into bloom at their passing. They are a living elixir, whose mere presence renews nature.”(The Writer’s Journey)

This is # 11 in the Crossing the Threshold series.

Act Two: Descent and Initiation

Crossing the Threshold

The first four stages of the Hero’s Journey comprise Act One in the story and they are about separation. Now the moment comes when the hero must actually Cross the Threshold from the Ordinary World and go into the Special World. There is always some sort of a boundary that separates these two worlds. It may appear as a door, a bridge, a wilderness, an ocean, a forest, a river, it can be almost anything. However it appears it is the demarcation between two worlds. Harry Potter runs into a brick wall at Platform 9 ¾, Rapunzel leaves a stone and mortar tower and touches  grass, Mattie and Rooster Cogburn ford a river into Indian Territory, Moses crosses a desert and leaves Egypt, Hero Boy steps onto the Polar Express. Sometimes the boundary crossing results in a crash. Chuck Noland’s plane crashes in the ocean, and Balian’s ship to the Holy Land is crushed by waves, both men wash up on distant shores in new worlds. Whatever the threshold is there is no doubt that the hero is out of his mundane world and has entered a new one.

Tests, Allies, Enemies

The Special World is very different from the Ordinary World. Think of Dorothy waking up in Oz or Jake Sulley landing on Pandora in the movie Avatar. Both characters arrive in worlds that are radically different from the ones they left behind. The new environment of the special world forces the hero into a series of tests that actually serve as training for what lies ahead. He will also be forced to make new allies while being confronted with powerful enemies for the special world is not a safe place. This stage can go on for some time but it is always going in one direction…downward. If Act One is separation, Act Two begins with a descent.

Approach to Inmost Cave

The hero is pressing into the very heart of the new world where as Mr. Vogler writes “the greatest treasures are guarded by the greatest fears.” This is a dangerous journey that often goes underground to where the object of the quest is hidden. It can even be a descent into hell itself.

The Ordeal

The Ordeal is where the hero hits bottom. It is the crisis of the heart; the facing of the greatest fear which usually is a death of sorts. It can be facing a failure, a death of a relationship, or an inner struggle. Whatever it is it becomes the turning point of the story.

My favorite Ordeal scene is the unmasking of the gladiator in Ridley Scott’s movie Gladiator. After winning ‘The Battle of Carthage’ in the arena Maximus is ordered to remove his helmet and reveal his identity to the emperor. When he does he comes face to face with Commodus the man who murdered his wife, son and the true emperor Marcus Aurelius. This is a life and death moment, for Commodus now has the power to execute Maximus on the spot.

Reward

Having survived the Ordeal the hero takes possession of the treasure. For Maximus it is the crowd’s approval. Proximo his mentor  told him “win the crowd and you’ll win your freedom”. This special weapon (love) is one that Commodus is powerless before. As the whole arena erupts in chants of live, live, live, Commodus has no choice but to demur to the crowd’s demands and give Maximus the thumb’s up sign. Great jubilee breaks over the arena as Maximus marches off triumphantly. Celebration is typical for the ending of the Reward stage. Act Two is now complete and the final act begins with a turn toward home.

This is # 10 in the Crossing the Threshold series.

The Hero’s Journey

Act One: Separation

Ordinary World

The Hero is first introduced in a very Ordinary World. There is nothing special or remarkable about the hero at this point and certainly not his world. All is not well though, as a problem or challenge is presented to the hero. Think of Chuck Noland the Tom Hanks character in the movie Cast Away. He is just a regular guy in a FedEx world who doesn’t have time for anything, not even a trip to the dentist. Or consider Balian the common blacksmith in Ridley Scott’s Kingdom of Heaven. It is winter in 12th c. France; Balian’s young wife has committed suicide after the death of their infant son leaving him in state of shocked numbness. For a heroine take Rapunzel in Disney’s new animated movie Tangled. She is confined to her tower doing her everyday chores wondering and singing “when will my life begin”. The story starts in the mundane world and zeros in on one character and then something happens.

The Call to Adventure

The hero receives a Call to Adventure which requires him to make a choice: stay in the Ordinary World or step into the adventure. For Chuck Noland the call comes through his pager on Christmas Eve, responding to it puts him on that ill fated flight over the ocean. Balian’s call comes through his real father who suddenly appears and identifies himself and offers Balian a new life in the Holy Land. Adventure beckons to Rapunzel yearly on her birthday when mysterious floating lights appear in the sky speaking to her in a special way. However the Call to Adventure may come the hero will be faced with a choice to make, and a risk to take.

Refusal of the Call

Usually the Call to Adventure is at first refused. Why? Because of fear. Fear of the unknown is very powerful and that is why there is so much risk involved. Will the hero overcome the very first obstacle; the initial fear of leaving what is known. Will Frodo leave the safety of the Shire and step out onto The Road?

Meeting with the Mentor

At this point a wise man or woman may show up to help the hero. Cinderella is in the Ordinary World of her Stepmother’s house when an invitation to the King’s Ball arrives. The shredding of her hand me down dress by the ugly step sisters forces Cinderella to refuse the call. Now the fairy godmother appears with exactly what she will need for her adventure. A mentor may supply special gifts like the godmother does to help the hero overcome fear. Old Ben Kenobi gives Luke Skywalker his father’s light saber and invites him into the world of the Jedi; but he can only take him so far. There comes a point where the hero must continue on his own.

This is #9 in the series Crossing the Threshold.

                               The Hero With A Thousand Faces

In 1949 a book by Joseph Campbell entitled The Hero With A Thousand Faces was published. This may not seem like a very momentous occasion especially if you have never heard of the man or his book. However, on a time line for Western Civilization that lists great events for each year beginning with 2000BC and ending with 1990AD; the year 1949 has only four entries and Joseph Campbell’s book is one of them (Passions of the Western Mind). What was so important about this book that it would be given such acclaimed status?

Joseph Campbell spent a lifetime studying cultures all over the world, and he became a keen student of their stories, legends, myths, and oral traditions. He observed that all these vastly different cultures shared one universal story about a hero who went on a journey. The heroes may have had different names but the story followed the same basic pattern. He recorded his discovery in The Hero With A Thousand Faces.

Since the publication of his book many people have studied Campbell’s work and developed variations of what is now commonly referred to as The Hero’s Journey or The Monomyth. There is one version that I have found to be most helpful in understanding this foundational story; it is contained in Christopher Vogler’s book The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers.  Mr. Vogler confesses that there is nothing new in his book; the ideas are “older than the pyramids, Stonehenge, and the earliest cave paintings….the theme of the hero myth is universal occurring in every culture in every time.”

So let’s embark on the Hero’s Journey using the twelve stages Mr. Vogler has identified as the basic pattern. After we become familiar with each stage we will introduce the characters or archetypes that inhabit the story.

This is #8 in Crossing the Threshold series.

                                                Story

In the beginning…..Once upon a time…..A long time ago in a galaxy far far away, these are words that capture our heart because they take us into the world of story. Story is important; it is far more than mere entertainment. Story is a way of seeing, a way of understanding, and a way of knowing. Take your own personal life; without your family story how would you know who you are? Indeed people who have been separated early in life from their family story often struggle with identity until they find a new family story to inhabit. Story helps you find your place in the universe. It brings order to your life; it pushes back the chaos by placing you in time and giving your life a framework.

Story also helps you remember. The world is extremely complex, so full of facts and information. Story helps you take all that data and place it into “story files”; giving you the ability to remember people, places and events by the context of story.

Story is a language, a mother tongue. As a baby you learned to communicate with words like Mama, Dada, and baby. These weren’t just first words, they were placing you as a character into an already ongoing narrative. This most basic orientation to life came through story.

Everyone deep down intuits this; they know they are a character in a story. They may not like the part they have been cast into but they sense they were meant to be part of a story. That is the appeal and the power of movies and novels. Most people want out of their own ordinary story even if but for a few hours; so they escape into a fictitious story one that promises more. There is one story above all others that appeals to this “more” and resonates with in the heart. It is the heroic adventure*. Think of the movies you love: Braveheart, Titanic, Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, Avatar, Gladiator, Harry Potter, Lion King, Robin Hood, Polar Express, Indiana Jones, Finding Nemo, ET, The Wizard of Oz, all of these and so many more have one thing in common. They all are about a hero who steps out of the ordinary world and into an epic adventure.

This is #7 in Crossing the Threshold series.

                                                   Journey

We live in a divided world. The sacred secular split goes deeper than just dividing what is sacred from what is secular. The split has divided heaven from earth, time from eternity, body from soul, and Christ from His church. God never intended for his world to be bifurcated (that means forked like a serpent’s tongue) that came from another source.

The end result is that the secular world lost the truth. They lost the one true God and his large story. Interestingly enough they retained a love for story, for narrative, the language of the heart. Look where everyone wants to go these days….the movies. If they cannot afford to actually go to the movies they will buy a large screen television and bring the movies home. Why? For most it is their moment of transcendence. For a couple of hours they can be caught up in something larger than themselves. Having lost God’s metanarrative there is little hope for something epic to be a part of. Movies will have to suffice and very subtlety becomes a form of worship.

The Church retained the truth but lost the story. Having confined the beauty, intimacy, and adventure with God to the past or future they have nothing to capture their hearts in the present. Reading the Bible like a scientific text book filled with doctrinal truth and biblical principles does nothing to quench the emptiness of the heart. Like the secular world they too live in a small story albeit a religious one, and they often watch the movies the secular world produces to give themselves a fleeting moment of transcendence. Indeed both sides want out of the mundane ordinary world because in their heart they know they were created for more.

In order to find this “more” we must go on a journey. First we need to enter the secular realm and dive into the story that captures everyone’s heart and imagination. When we have a good grasp of that story we will step over into the sacred realm and discover perhaps for the first time what God’s real intention was for his people. Finally we will weave the two realms back together. Our diagram of history (it was headless after the split) will finally be complete because it will at last have its Head.

So let’s begin where all stories do …..”Once upon a time there was a hero”

This is #6 in the Crossing the Threshold series.

                                                     The Church

How did the church come through this great rift? Unscathed? Did any of the Titanic survivors come through the sinking uninjured? Hardly! They bore the scars for the rest of their lives. Once again the church was divided, this time between Catholic and Protestant, a division which just seems to keep multiplying (think: Mainline, Fundamental, Evangelical, Pentecostal, Charismatic, Seeker etc.) There are volumes written by learned scholars on the impact of man’s reorientation from being one who worships a god to one who thinks he is a god. For our purposes we need to understand three major changes that occurred. There was a shift from the corporate to the individual, from the heart to the head, and from the objective to the subjective.

This great divide brought about a radical shift in allegiance from the corporate church to the individual. The Reformation led the way with Martin Luther’s “priesthood of all believers”. This was both a natural response against the abuses and corruption of the medieval church and a scriptural one. However, the ideas that glorified man coming out of the Renaissance and the movements that followed fed what was to be corrective in nature into something more far reaching. Very subtlety a reorientation was taking place that would lead people away from the corporate body to a more privatized and individualized faith. Not only did this affect their understanding of what it meant to be part of the Body of Christ, it also resulted in a diminishment of the Gospel.

Today the Gospel is often presented as the means by which an individual gets “saved” so they can go to heaven when they die. It is rather like a glorified life insurance policy sold by energetic salesmen, and it is all about you. It is all about what happens when you die and where you go when you die and that Christ died for your sins. A gospel that emphasizes death more than life and sin more than godliness, Dallas Willard calls it a “gospel of sin management”. There may be elements of truth in such a gospel but the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the “good news” is about a whole lot more than you. As N.T. Wright says the good news was news about an event that actually happened, an event that changed time and eternity forever. The Resurrection from the dead of Israel’s Messiah Jesus of Nazareth meant that God’s project for renewing and restoring His entire creation was now going forth. The life of the age to come had now entered time and was being made available to all. The invitation was and still is you can be part of God’s new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17) by receiving Jesus the Christ (the King) and in so doing you become part of his corporate body the church. You enter a fellowship, a “royal priesthood” where sacrificial love replaces ego driven spirituality.

Not only did the great rift divide the church, it also divided human beings. In the 17^th century the great head heart split occurred when Dr. William Harvey dissected a human body and held up the heart as a pumping machine. The mass of tissue, blood and muscle became part of the evolutionary process and design while the Biblical heart, the seat of wisdom and the wellspring of life (Proverbs 4:23) was lost. If the heart retained any mystique, it simply became the seat of emotion. The human mind, the storehouse of empirical knowledge and scientific fact now became preeminent.

 This shift from heart to head infiltrated the church. Knowing God in the Biblical sense of intimacy (Adam knew Eve and she conceived) was replaced with knowing about God intellectually. This radical intellectualism led down a slippery slope to a modern day form of Gnosticism. Your spiritual life is now confined to your mind/spirit, which is “good”. Your physical body is only matter and is part of the fallen world; therefore what you do with is inconsequential. One day your spirit will leave it behind and you will depart this evil world for a disembodied existence in the heavenly realm. This is not orthodox Christian belief, but it is the mindset of many professing modern day Christians. 

The third shift I have suggested is from the objective to the subjective, and it is more difficult to define. Perhaps an illustration will suffice. When the elderly Rose comes to the end of her story about her time on the Titanic in the James Cameron film, she says of her lover and savior.” Now you know there was a man named Jack Dawson and that he saved me in every way a person can be saved. I don’t even have a picture of him. He exists only in my memory.” Jack has gone from being an objective real person to being a subjective memory in Rose’s imagination. And so has Jesus to much of the world. The transition from the Middle Ages to the Modern World kept moving God out of this world. Like Jack slipping out of sight in the dark waters of the Atlantic, or a helium balloon floating away into the upper atmosphere, God was gradually being removed. He went from being a real presence here on earth, one that could be known through the sixth sense of the heart as the Comforter, Teacher, Advocate, Holy Spirit (which Jesus himself said was better than his actual physical presence …), to being by the 18^th century a remote god out in heaven, one that got the whole thing going by an act of creation but really was not interested or involved, to the god of today, who now exists only in the mind of the believer.

Most people can “see” Jesus in his first coming walking the roads of first century Palestine or hanging on the cross. They may be able to picture his second coming by envisioning him coming in clouds of glory. But where is he today? Right now? Well for most people the answer sounds much like Rose’s “there really was a person Jesus Christ (they think it is his last name) but now he exists only in my mind. The objective, real, present God who created the universe has now been reduced to a subjective experience that exists only in our imagination. How tragic. How fatal!