What Myths are Made of

This note is for the Men -

Men build other men.

This is a pillar of real manhood and the men at Kingship will continue to put into practice each week. Our Men's group life maintains the habit of gathering at McMenamins Roadhouse on Tuesdays at 7:30pm. It is a small portion of what this pillar calls for but is vitle.

The building of other men is not discourse or lively conversation... it is the willingness of real men to sharpen another for the sake of the other's soul.

Deep in the pubs of England in 1929 two famous men engaged in such sharpening. One a devout believer and the other, in his own words, “the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England”.

C.S. Lewis and J.R.R Tolkien spent many of nights with friends discussing essential subjects of life, faith, and God. It was the subject of myth that eventually chiseled away at Lewis' stone heart. There discussion lingered with Lewis as a month later he wrote a friend his transformed thoughts:

"Now what Dyson and Tolkien showed me was this: that if I met the idea of sacrifice in a Pagan story I didn’t mind it at all: again, that if I met the idea of a god sacrificing himself to himself... I liked it very much and was mysteriously moved by it: again, that the idea of the dying and reviving god similarly moved me provided I met it anywhere except in the Gospels. The reason was that in Pagan stories I was prepared to feel the myth as profound and suggestive of meanings beyond my grasp even tho’ I could not say in cold prose ‘what it meant’.

Now the story of Christ is simply a true myth: a myth working on us in the same way as the others, but with this tremendous difference that it really happened."

C.S. Lewis was forever reformed because, as he puts it, God was closing in on him, through the use of his friends.

Tolkien along with Dyson were willing men; men willing to build up Lewis for the sake of Lewis.

Every man needs "Iron sharpens Iron". It cannot be stressed enough. We implore you. Be encouraged you to make the time for the sake of your family, your kids, yourself, and the friends God is closing in on.

Each day is a day of preparation because tomorrow is given to us, by God, for the purpose of sharpening. As men, God appoints us with this mission and purpose but also the dillegence to protect it and nurture it in ourselves, in our families, and others. The strength we lead in is a strength of encouragement and hope; to be prepared to give an answer for the hope we have.

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