C. S. Lewis once wrote a short essay responding to a man who complained that Christianity ought to cut itself off from the old myths that weigh it down. In his response, published as “Myth Became Fact” in the essay collection God in the Dock, Lewis admits that Christianity is tied to old myths, but adds that those myths are not false or pretend. Myths are, in Lewis’s explanation, experienced transcendent realities. That's a fancy way of saying that a myth is truth told without words. Or, if you prefer, a myth is truth told in living, three-dimensional words—the kind of words galaxies are made of.
One of the most well-known myths in the Western world is the story of Cinderella. A pure young woman, abused by her wicked step-mother and step-sisters, is magically given the chance to attend a royal ball, where the prince falls in love with her. At the stroke of midnight, her magic garments turn back into rags and she flees, but the prince searches until he finds her, using as proof of her identity a shoe that she left behind.
Most of us, reading that story, think of the Disney version, but there are, in fact, hundreds of variations. All of them follow the same basic story pattern: a poor, virtuous girl marries a prince with the help of some magic.
You can use the story to illustrate a point (like “goodness will be rewarded”), but the story is more than an illustration. To watch Disney's Cinderella is more than to see goodness being rewarded. It is to experience goodness being rewarded. You don't have to explain it to get it. That's the power of a myth.
In the same way, the Bible is full of myths. What does the story of Jonah mean? Lots of things. It points to the death and resurrection of Christ. It illustrates the futility of trying to escape from God. It demonstrates God’s mercy to those who repent. But it’s also a story about all prophets and all ships and all fish and all cities and all plants and all worms and all animals. From the story of Jonah you could build an entire philosophy of life.
Of course, this is equally true of the Iliad and The Epic of Gilgamesh. Some stories are so all-encompassing that entire civilizations can ride on their backs. The difference between those myths and the story of Jonah is that the story of Jonah actually happened.
If the story of Jonah is a myth and it actually happened, that means that every time a man is thrown overboard, he is a kind of Jonah. Every time a fish swallows something whole, it is a kind of the fish in the story. Every time a worm eats a plant, it is a kind of that most famous of worms that made the grumpy prophet finally lose his cool.
The book of Genesis is the foundation of all myths, of course. God did not create the world in six days because Mesopotamians liked the number seven. They liked the number seven because they remembered the story of creation. Men climb mountains to meet God not because the air is thin up there but because they remember their forefather Adam walking with God in the mountain-garden in the cool of the day. Whether they know it or not, men everywhere and at all times live out the stories God told in the first chapters of the Bible.
We want Little Word books to help Christians get those stories into their bloodstreams so that they experience God's truth in every detail of their lives. Every time they wash their hands, we want them to think of the tabernacle. Every time they hear a trumpet, we want them to think of Mount Sinai. Every loaf of bread and glass of wine should remind them of the Last Supper. Every time they gather together with the saints on the Lord's Day, we want the myths of Revelation rolling through their minds.