Christianity the Foundational Myth of Western civilization

You can certainly leave Christianity but it does not leave you. Your liberation from it is delusion. Christ is the way. You can certainly run away, but then you are no longer on the way. – Carl Jung (Red Book)

Christianity is the foundational myth of Western civilization. Myth is what provides context and perspective to our lives. They create the interpretation of consensus reality we live in. Christianity is the myth we are given.

The Bible is, with its many myths, the foundational document of western civilization. “For a while,” notes one psychologist, “literally, there was only one book and that book was the Bible.” But the Bible and its story formed the lexicon out of which all others books emerged.

The Bible was the fundamental text, for upon it most other texts were dependent. The psychologist cited the work of William Shakespeare as one of several “texts that influenced more other texts” before identifying the Bible as the ultimate source of all “linguistic production.”

Unfortunately, being the foundational text does not mean that it is true. The Bible is not literally true. Rather, the Bible and its myths form the vocabulary and frame of references out of which we, Western civilization, weave meaning and purpose.

This is why Carl Jung believed that liberation from Christianity is delusion. It is the best map of reality we have. We need to reengage it as myth, and not make the mistake of fundamentalists. Christianity is true as myth, it is just not literal history.