Over the centuries an idea keeps popping back up to convince us that Jesus was just like any other teacher, that he was not divine, not supernatural, and that this myth is like any other old myth. It’s just the “dominant narrative,” so we are told, because it served the power structures of the West. But that tale doesn’t tell us much, because if it were only a story, then why didn’t any of the other myths come to “dominate” the landscape? After all, it’s just a story…right?
There was a famous book that killed the faith of many called The Golden Bough, which is a study on ancient religious rituals. C.S. Lewis writes about the impact it had on his dive into atheism in his own re-conversion story called Surprised by Joy.
Lewis’s atheism gained intellectual grounding when, at age 16, he came under the influence of a private tutor, W.T. Kirkpatrick, who was much enamored of a new work by Sir James Frazer called The Golden Bough.
The Golden Bough was the product of Frazer’s monumental survey of all the world religions and mythologies he could lay his hands on. In general, Frazer regarded religion as a human effort to make sense of the frightening and incomprehensible: thunder, pestilence, famine, death, and so on. In particular, Frazer found in human cultures a recurring story of a dying and resurrected god. This god usually was associated with agriculture and fertility—just as in the cycle of nature the plant is broken, the seed enters the ground, and life springs up, so is the god broken, buried, and restored. (From The Spiritual Odyssey of C.S. Lewis)
If there is one takeaway from Frazer’s Golden Bough book on ancient grain gods, it’s that he’s right: all religions are the same. Except for one. Just as C.S. Lewis discovered, there is one single religion that doesn’t fit the mold. Yes, they are all the same, except for the one, because there is only one true God. There are many grains of truth in most religions, but they all have a fatal flaw (or two, or five). Christ is the polar opposite of every other kingly sacrifice or grain sacrifice in human history.
If I may, briefly, take a short aside: The Golden Bough is a book that influenced many flatteners of faith, and it takes the “all religions are the same” approach to history and culture. And it’s very interesting to read. But the centerpiece of James C. Frazer’s myth argument is wrong. He is selling the very same story as the succession myth of Baal or Zeus, where the old god is slain by the new god. But if you attempt to throw Christianity into this melting pot, Jesus just climbs back out of the pot. He’s nothing like the rest of the religions, whether they are from ancient times or from our own modern cults that we pretend are not religious.
In The Golden Bough, there is a myth called “The King of the Grove” (or Rex Nemorensis) which is about a king who must be ever vigilant in fear of losing his power, because he will be killed. Someday, someone will come to the grove and take his power and his life. This should pique your interest, because national politics or office politics is the exact same thing as this ancient king of the grove, without the sword. The ruler of the coffee pot or refrigerator is the same as the ruler of a nation, just on a smaller scale. Winners must maintain a grip on power, or someone else will take it. And of course, no matter how long you hold onto power over the coffee pot or fridge, memento mori - “remember one day you will die” - and a new power will arise. Thus, to protect power beyond your own lifespan, you need more money, land, influence, supporters, cheerleaders, bullets, etc. In other words, you need to take and keep possession, and possession is the meaning of name Cain.
A few decades ago, after watching Apocalypse Now, I spent some days thinking about the myth that the movie is based on, which ties into Frazer’s myth around the king of the grove. The movie plays on this myth, even panning over a stack of books in one scene to shows what Colonel Kurtz has been reading, which contains The Golden Bough.
Now, when a movie shows a book in the background, it is a signal to watchers, with giant red flashing lights, to inform us, “This movie is somehow related to the themes of the book you see that is not so subtly displaying in the background.” There are no accidents in Hollywood. Apocalypse Now was based on Joseph Conrad’s novel Heart of Darkness, but also on Frazer and the King of the Grove myth.
Ancient kings were also priests, so the words go together in this context, because in the pagan world, religion and power go together. They still do, we just pretend we don’t have religion today. And Jesus came to shatter that illusion. Even the Israelites found out how lust for power plays out when there is an attempt to make it a religion.
The king of the grove holds power only because he has killed the prior king. This took a bit to wrap my head around at first, but here’s the verse from the myth that I sums up the problem of worldly kingship and possession of power:
Those trees in whose dim shadow
The ghastly priest doth reign
The priest who slew the slayer,
And shall himself be slain.
Who does this sound like in the Bible? It sounds like Cain, or Lamech. It does not sound like Seth, who invokes the name of God. It does not sound like the Suffering Servant of Isaiah, who bore our infirmities. It does not sound like Jesus, who died on the Cross, conquered death, defeated the devil, and transformed our suffering. The last will be first. Jesus possessed nothing, and gave everything. He is a king unlike any other that has ever been conceived in myth.
Let’s break this apart. The priest-king of the grove who rules, is the murderer of the former king. In taking the grove, he had to kill the former priest-king, and now he is a “ghastly” murderer. And, this current ghastly priest-king will be killed by the next priest-king. In other words, it’s a vicious circle. When I was growing up, the “rat race” referred to people who were racing up the corporate ladder. You can see this same “king of the grove” or “king of the hill” in those pursuing the position of vice president at a company, or control of the local youth baseball board. But really, if you back up enough, this is pro wrestling in a nutshell. But it is also the story of politics, over and over and over, around the world, since Cain and his line to Lamech to Caesar to Trump and Biden.
The King of the Grove is much like King Woods of pro wrestling, and like King Woods, he was the ruler of a pathetic little fiefdom. (Interesting that “Woods” and “Grove” are kind of the same thing. Surely just a lucky coincidence.)
King Woods, the wrestler, did not need to murder to become the championship belt holder in wrestling, so he is less ghastly than the King of the Grove. However, in most wrestling matches there is some kind of cheating, so reaching the top and gaining power almost always requires moral flexibility. This is true in business, where a “being a good businessman” does not necessarily mean he is without mortal sin or good in any other way; it just means he’s good at chasing mammon. In most cases, gaining worldly power requires bending of the rules, or, in other words selling your soul. This is precisely what Jesus meant when he said, “What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul?” (Mt 16:26)
Why is the King of the Grove “ghastly”? It’s because he has lost his soul in gaining the grove. The base word of ghastly, appropriately, is ghost, and ghost means spirit. The bad spirit has taken over the soul of this murderer who won the grove. Those who seek and wield power in this world paint themselves into a corner. And unless those souls experience the metanoia of turning to Christ, they are lost forever. Metanoia means “beyond the mind” or “change of mind.” To escape the pursuit of power, you have to see the world differently, and to see it differently you have to put on the mind of Christ, as St. Paul says.
Whether your power is in the WWE title belt, the NBA Finals, the United States of America, the TV remote control, or a clump of trees, the game is the same. The king of the grove has killed the prior king, and the king himself will be overthrown, unless he can slay all comers. But truly, even if he keeps his grip on the grove or the title belt, eventually a new king will slay him.
This is the world of power that strives to reach the top. But getting to the top brings immense fear, unless abandonment to God is made and that power is offered up to the Creator. For the king who says, “Come at me, bro,” he has gained the whole world but lost his soul. The ghastly king can never stop striving. Even moreso, those in power must seek and sniff out enemies constantly rather than wait for them to come, because being king gives an acute sense of smell for anything that threatens the power over the grove. (If you don’t see this in America, then you need to ask yourself why do we have a massive standing army at the ready at all times, if not to maintain worldly power. Our grove is just larger, “from sea to shining sea.” We even have many songs about our grove and rules and movies and titles and flags, and ultimately we have a king, a kind of spirit, which we call a Republic, of which the current president embodies before passing it on to the next King of the Grove.)
Jesus is not this kind of king. He’s the opposite kind of king, because he is the Creator of all things. He warns us, “Those who live by the sword will die by the sword.” But we don’t listen. We want power over others, over nature, over God, and the addiction to fear grabs us by the chest like a monster.
Jesus is the king who simply allowed the enemies all to come, all at once, to slay him, but much to everyone’s surprise, the slayer did not become king. In fact, the slayers were all defeated. In Apocalypse Now, the dead Colonel Kurtz does not rise after death. He wasn’t a savior. He was just the current King of the Grove, or the King Woods of the WWE.
But Jesus does rise. This makes all the difference. This is the difference between him and all other religions. Yet, wait, there is one more utterly important step in understanding why he is different than all other power plays.
Jesus doesn’t “slay the slayer.”
He forgives the slayer.
He forgives his enemies.
And when the slayer comes again and attempts to kill Jesus, he rises and forgives again. And again. Every generation, the enemy whispers evil into the hearts of men, and they try to slay Jesus, the one true Priest-King, yet he cannot die. The slayers keep coming, but the true God, the living God, is never replaced. There is no succession myth. All of the kings who claim succession, or pretend at it, all of the gods of old, and all of the ideologies of today that claim to have killed god, are false. So yes indeed, all religions are the same, except for one.
They are fooling themselves. Thus, the selling must go on, the crafting of stories must happen, because God is not dead. If you want followers of your power, you need to tell people constantly in overt and subtle ways that God is dead, in ever-new messaging. Because if you stop convincing or coercing people for but a moment, they will instead listen to the law and love in their heart, and they will know that Christ is King and he is risen. Then they will follow Him instead of some Caesar.
Ok - let me leave that aside now. But my point is this: Jesus doesn’t play power games like the King of the Grove myth. He’s the anti-myth because he’s real, he lived, and he is risen.
So for our lives here in this world, where we are given a chance to re-unite with God, where we can purge our sins and pray for illumination with the light of faith, there is a greater concern than politics. There is a greater plan in the works.
So to tie this back to the goose on the side of the highway. What is out of place, and in disharmony, in the world is the difference between the brothers Cain and Seth. Cain strives to shape nature into his image, and Seth lives humbly, invoking the name of the Lord. We live in a world of Cain’s values, not Seth’s. As we have all been pulled into cities, and live in nations with weapons aimed at one another, in constant fear, we are living in a world made by Cain and his progeny. We live in the City of Man, not the City of God, which St. Augustine spent a thousand pages describing.
The difference is striking, as the goose family lives like Adam and Eve did before the Fall. The reason animals are not fallen, even if they are living in what Thomas Hobbes would call a world that is “red in tooth and claw,” the animals fulfill their duties of raising a family and seeking their daily bread (or bug). They do not have an intellect and will that lead to murder over envy and pride, as Cain did. They do not build weapons. They do not build highways and overpasses and retention ponds.
Seth seems to live like the goose. He prays, and presumably, works. Cain shows no sign of kneeling. In fact, when Jesus says “the ruler of this world” is coming, he’s referring to the devil, but he also means the Roman guards who will arrest and kill him. And the Romans, just like Americans today, truly have a lot more in common with Cain than they do with Seth. The leaders and business people and celebrities that we admire have more in common with “the ruler of this world” than with Jesus.
Which brings up perhaps the greatest question in Genesis 4, of why God protected Cain with the “mark” after he had committed murder. But the answer, I believe is simple, and it’s that God still loves Cain because he is worth saving. Cain has also created his own hell in separation from God, because he is a wanderer, an exile, and God’s protection is a penance. Furthermore, to show how God differs from much of our honor/shame ideas of justice, not only does he protect Cain, but he clearly uses him for a greater plan, as cities and technology come from Cain’s family. The punishment of being exiled to wander ruined Cain’s livelihood of farming, making it a lifelong punishment. His punishment is fitting and clearly agonizing to Cain, as he is terrorized by fear and stripped of his occupation. Most importantly, when reading Genesis there is an unfolding of events, an order, and people often look at Christ and say, “Why didn’t God act like Jesus in the Old Testament?” We’ll talk about this folding and unfolding in the next post.
