We do seem to be captive to “the myth.” There are so many things that we want to believe, or that we accept unconditionally and without examination. I believe that the myths we embrace are like hugs. They make us feel safe and secure. But not one myth should live on without some examination. When I turned 50 (some years back), I started challenging the myths in my life. To my surprise, most do not remain.
The first myth I began to challenge was the concept of “American Exceptionalism.” I have been very interested in the public conversations surrounding our “great country.” It is perhaps quite obvious that most folks who live anywhere in the world probably feel like their country is “great.” (With the exception of those individuals who are forced to run from their country because of political unrest, terrorism, jihadism, or catastrophic reasons….) All my life, I have been raised with the idea that we (Americans) belong to the greatest country in the world. We learn it in school, if not be exact phrase, by the tenor of our lessons.
History is an interesting subject. It is most often written in the voice of those who have “won.” We tend to know about the Middle Ages taught through the experience of kings and feudal lords, reigning monarchs, and the people at the top of the political spectrum. We know about the Enlightenment because of the people who lit the world on fire with new knowledge and opened up the horizons beyond local geography by going beyond where the “little people” lived. We know about the Revolutionary War through the eyes of…well, us. We won! We separated ourselves from powerful England, later got the best of the French, the Spaniards and their settlements out West…
We also know some history through the skewed lens of “myth.” The cowboy and Native American era wasn’t about John Wayne, Gary Cooper and all those who played our “heroes” growing up. It was about Manifest Destiny and the white immigrants desire to plow across North America and possess it all. We literally obliterated an entire race (except for those we tidily put away on “reservations”) as we “won the Wild West.” Hardly anything to feel proud of. A LOT OF INNOCENT PEOPLE were slaughtered in that fight stretch to the Pacific Ocean.
We are taught some things about our American Civil War, but again, it tends to be through the lens of those who “won”… The Union. There are some folks today who know about the other end of things…because their families belonged to the Confederacy. Only recently have we done a better job at revealing experiences of the Confederate patriots, their families, etc.
The American problem of slavery is often glossed over from both points of view. There were Africans who literally sold other Africans for the price of the profit. There where whites who ran the ships and dumped off “these heathen” in the Caribbean islands and at the port cities of America. But we cannot forget the thousands upon thousand early slaves…who were not black-skinned at all. Indentured servants from Europe were the first slaves here in the New World. And ships full of Irish “slaves” who had been sold and counted as worthless also came to America. Some of the captains dumped those white slaves overboard when supplies got low! For the sake of convenience and profit, all races have sold their brothers and sisters for the chance at profit.
And, of course, when one considers the myth of American exceptionalism, one must come to grips with the years between “freeing the slaves” after the Civil War and the actual Civil Rights Act of 1965. It took almost one hundred years to make it right…and we’re still struggling with racial issues. Haven’t gotten it right yet. And with the advent of the first black president, racial tensions and economic tensions have risen as folks on all “sides” seem to feel disenfranchised, left behind, or worse yet, forgotten altogether.
We also have to come to grips with the continuing struggles of women in the United States. All is not equal yet. We women are not protected from religions that would subjugate us (and the Christian Church still has its own issues, so don’t immediately think I’m thinking about Islam). We still see polygamy, misogyny…everything from giving our daughters away at altars in marriage to mutilating their genitals to expecting them to cover themselves and calling it “modesty.” (That actually hails from another era when women, who remain property in some cultures, were expected to keep covered to protect others from “wanting them.”) Women remain hyper-sexualized in our media, used as products to sell all sorts of things. We still don’t have equal pay, equal employment, equal opportunity, etc. We still have a long way to go.
Part of the sticky wicket for me is how intertwined our country and the Church have become. It is very disturbing to me every time I hear some TV preacher say that America is the “New Israel…” America is a “Christian nation.” America is “chosen by God.” Oh, good grief! No IT IS NOT! We are no more “new” than any other nation that God may or may not choose to bless the world. We certainly don’t have that much to brag about. Even the good we’ve done politically in the last century is balanced with the “whatever” we can get out of it. (Case in point: We’ve not been real eager to help nations that have little to offer us. Think about the Congo, the Sudan, etc. in Africa. Not a lot of resources we’re going to get from helping them. Consequently, they languish.) We are not a “Christian” nation. We are, according to our Constitution, a nation that is not overtly tied to any religion and indeed, open to all who come to our shores. We do not discriminate because of religion. Yes, we have been blessed by any number of factors in our history, but so have countless other countries. We like to think God is blessing us more than others, but that in and of itself doesn’t make it true. However, that notion does sell nicely in our churches.
I know the lovely verse, “Blessed is the people whose God is the Lord.” I get that. But it doesn’t say, “The most blessed people in the world are those who just claim that God is their Lord.” We’ve used God’s name to justify some pretty horrific moments in our history. Let’s not be to uppity about being God’s favorite. That God Israel into all sorts of trouble time and again in their history.
The myth of our American exceptionalism died for me a few years ago. Are we a wonderful country? Yes, when we are at our best! Is it great to be an American? Yes, except as I watch this election cycle. I’m embarrassed and very worried! What a mess we’ve created for ourselves!
Another myth I have released is the myth of the Church being a safe and secure place to live and work and be. I even wrote a book where I fussed with that notion for 400plus pages. That’s another essay. (Or you can read my book, An Epilogue for Eleanor. Contact me here to purchase an autographed copy.) One of my personal myths that I also released was that I had to keep my bohemian side in check. I needed to “be good,” “do good,” and “think good,” in order to be acceptable. Nonsense. I finally learned to be the best me I can be and forget the rest. One can be totally strangled by trying to live by what one thinks everyone else thinks is “good,” including The Church. As I said, there’s another essay coming about that.
Myths without examination are just great stories we’ve embraced while we’ve checked our brains at the door. We need our brains. I believe we were created with them because there is an expectation that we will actually use them. We don’t have to accept every myth we’re taught just because everyone else is grabbing a hold of it. Research, conversation and honesty are great scales on which to weigh all those myths in your life. I know I’ve discovered a great freedom releasing the myths that were entrapping me. That freedom is…well…very freeing!