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Are myths a waste of time, or do they hold profound relevance in our modern world? Today, we explore this question with author John Hendrix as he reveals how J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis understood the enduring power of mythology in an age that prioritized reason and science.
Join us as we unpack how myths provide more than mere entertainment. They offer a portal to explore universal human experiences, our longing for the new heavens and earth, and our desire to be part of a greater narrative. In an era where modernity has "exhausted us," find out why mythical stories continue to resonate and provide a sense of belonging that transcends the limitations of a merely fact-based worldview.
You can learn more about John Hendrix and his writings at https://www.johnhendrix.com/.
Episode Transcription
Note: This transcription may vary from the words used in the original episode for better readability.
Marlin Detweiler:
Hello again, and welcome to Veritas Vox, the voice of classical Christian education. Today we have with us John Hendrix, who has written a book recently that we're going to tell you about. He's the author of a book called The Myth Makers. And John, I want to welcome you. Thanks for joining us.
John Hendrix:
Oh, glad to be here.
Marlin Detweiler:
Well, John, before we get started, we always like to learn a little bit about our guest. So tell us a little bit about your family, your education, your career.
John Hendrix:
Well, I grew up in Saint Louis. I went to undergrad at the University of Kansas, and from there moved to New York City to go to graduate school. I worked for three years at the New York Times as an art director. I got my MFA from the School of Visual Arts, and it was there that my wife and I, Andrea, met in high school, actually. We were pregnant with our first child, Jack, who we just took to college.
So, like, that's, you know, gives you a sense of the scale. We came back to Saint Louis, and I teach at Washington University in Saint Louis, often known as Washu. I'm the chair of the graduate program there, which I started, MFA Illustration and Visual Culture. Now I'm in my 19th year of teaching at Washu.
When I got here, I knew very little about anything, really, including teaching. So that's been a big part of my practice and my world. Alongside all that, I've been making books and graphic novels for young people.
Marlin Detweiler:
Yeah, well, you're a busy guy, and I've got to tell you, if you told me to guess how many years you've been teaching, based on your look, I would have guessed maybe 6 or 8. You would have studied at the age of 22.
John Hendrix:
Yeah. That's right.
Marlin Detweiler:
You look younger than you must be from the years that you've put in.
John Hendrix:
Thank you. Maybe I've drunk some kind of youth potion that Gandalf came up with.
Marlin Detweiler:
After this, I need to find out your secret, because I don't feel like I look any younger than my age! So The Myth Makers, the subtitle The Remarkable Fellowship of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. The authors have remained very popular even in contemporary culture. At least, movies have been made from their works that have kept them in the main, their writings, especially the trilogy from Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings, and of course, The Chronicles of Narnia.
There's a lot more to what they've written, but those two stand out. Tell us a little bit about why you wrote the book. What were you trying to accomplish, or what problem were you trying to solve with it?
John Hendrix:
Yeah, first of all, I made the book because I am a fan. I owe so much to their work. If you read it, you can tell that this is fan art on some level. Well, I mean, also, it's astonishing. We're coming up on the 70th anniversary of Fellowship coming out, and it is still a property, an idea, a story that is resonant and is being re-adapted.
If you've watched Rings of Power, there is so much potency to The Lord of the Rings and to Narnia. Greta Gerwig is adapting the Narnia tales for Netflix. Yes, you may know their story, or at least the top level of their story. Hey, these guys knew each other in Oxford. They were professors at the same time.
They were in this group called the Inklings. And yes, that is all true, but the real full story of their fellowship is much more interesting. The conclusion, the thesis of the book is that they would not have had the success that they came to know later in their life if they had not met the other person, and that their fellowship itself was the key in the lock that opened the door to the stories and the worlds that they built.
Marlin Detweiler:
Well, I want to help you sell books, but you've also got me curious. Maybe without blowing it with the punchline, and I realize that it's nonfiction, so it doesn't quite work that way, but I'm curious to learn more about that relationship that fed each other's imagination and helped produce books like the ones that we've grown to enjoy.
John Hendrix:
Yeah. They were essential to one another's story. The metaphor that works is, if you've read The Lord of the Rings, Galadriel gives the fellowship gifts for their journey. As you read the story, you realize that she gave them the perfect gift to help complete the tale.
For Lewis and Tolkien, that's exactly what they did. For Tolkien, he needed someone who was pure encouragement, who was a fan of his work because he was such a notorious reviser. He second-guessed himself; he noodled things to death.
Marlin Detweiler:
So Lewis said, “Leave it alone. You have it now!”
John Hendrix:
Yes, basically, Lewis said famously, “you could never purely influence Tolkien,” but what he was, was an encouragement. Tolkien talks about that in his letters. For Lewis, the thing that Lewis needed, because when he met Tolkien, he was an atheist and bitter and broken from World War I.
He was writing poetry about the despair of the world, because the things that he loved the most in his life, the things that brought him the most joy—that was the word he used—were the things that were imaginary. So imagine if everything that was real was grim and hopeless, and everything that was imaginary was full of hope.
And so what Tolkien gave him – Tolkien didn't convert Lewis, but Tolkien gave him again, just enough of a way to, as Allen Jacobs scholar Allen Jacobs says, to read the story the right way and that there was a single conversation that I talk about in the book on Addison's walk, in 1929, that many scholars believe is one of the most important single conversations to happen in the 20th century, where Tolkien basically convinces Lewis that myths are not lies, myths are more true than true because they point to something that can be said in no other way.
And that starts Lewis down this path where he never would have written any of his works without that moment and without his mentorship. Tolkien.
Marlin Detweiler:
Yeah. We find in some areas of Christendom today people that don't like myths because they're not true. And you're addressing that a little bit. Can you unpack that a little bit, as if you're talking to someone who has a negative sense of myths and mythology?
John Hendrix:
Yeah. Well, I go into this in the book a little bit. Tolkien and Lewis began their journey together. They meet when they have a shared love of Norse mythology. They both long for these stories, of Balder, of the sacrifice of myth and quest. And they begin reading them together in this reading group because Tolkien was always starting these, like, cute little groups with funny names.
So they had this group called the Coal Biters, and they read Norse myths together, often in Icelandic or other languages. And the love of myth in Tolkien's mind was like it was like a holy act to think about myth because of the way humanity has been telling the same stories to one another over and over and over.
And Campbell, Joseph Campbell talks about this in The Hero's Journey. I talk about that in the book where that comes from, like, union psychology talks about this, like, why do humans tell this particular story and the particular story that happens to have been embodied in the tale of Jesus Christ of Nazareth. Now, of course, if you are a skeptic, you would say, well, that is just another myth that has been told.
Marlin Detweiler:
Yeah, another telling of the same myth.
John Hendrix:
Yeah, yeah. But what Tolkien was saying is no, no, no, this was the myth that actually came true. Like it is God writing a myth that looks like our myths and this little fact is the thing that sent Lewis over the edge. Like he's like, you're right. If a myth was ever to become embodied in the human story, it would look something like the story of Jesus of Nazareth.
That was a thread that once Lewis began to pull on it, he couldn't put the sweater back together. If that's a terrible metaphor, but it sent him down. He became a theist. And then there's this great story that he talks about where he's on a motorcycle and he's riding with his brother to the Whipsnade Zoo.
And, he when he started the journey, he wasn't a believer in Christ. And then when he got to the zoo, he was. It was just a it was just like a he describes it as like a person who is asleep, realizing that they're now awake. It just it kind of happened to him.
So anyway, their shared journey together and how they encouraged one another along the path to make their works, is really beautiful and tragic too, because they eventually had a falling out.
Marlin Detweiler:
Was Tolkien raised in a believing home? How did he come to faith? You're talking about Lewis coming to faith later in life, and Tolkien was a believer. What's his background there?
John Hendrix:
Yeah. Lewis grew up in Ireland. And he was an Anglican and Tolkien was a Catholic. And so they had a very different worldview, and their understanding of Scripture was very different. But in many ways they shared so much. They both were orphans on some level. I mean, not I mean, Tolkien lost both of his parents, Lewis lost his mother and then was sent to England alone for school, away from his father.
So in many ways, they both felt the isolation of a young childhood away from their parents. And Tolkien himself was very – but it's funny, people tend to think like, oh, Lewis was the Christian, and Tolkien was just his friend who wrote these awesome stories that have nothing to do with the Bible. But I could make the argument that Lord of the Rings is much more infused with gospel ideas than even Narnia.
And so yes, they both shared a sort of love of scripture and the Bible, but came at it from very different theological viewpoints, which was part of what kind of seeded some of the tension that grew up later in their life.
Marlin Detweiler:
Yeah. But when I'm talking to an author about a book that just came out, I generally have two questions. One is, what would you do differently if you did it today? But today is only one day from yesterday when it came out. At this point, it's very fresh and then maybe you have some thoughts on that. But I'm curious, what were you trying to accomplish? What problem were you trying to solve in the writing? In the book?
John Hendrix:
Yeah, I mean, for me, the reason why the book exists is, why do myths exist? Like it is of course, about their friendship. It is. But I'm using their friendship as a lens to ask this larger question. In the book, I talk about where the fairy tales come from. But underneath that, why do fairy tales exist?
And so this idea of humanity telling itself stories over and over again, and these stories sort of existing in a space that is separate from the rest of our world and is like a portal that human beings can access, particularly for joy. I mean, there is a season of the year for me that like, the weather gets colder and like I want to go to Middle Earth, I want to start Fellowship of the Ring because I want to, you know, go back to that place. And so the stories have done that for thousands and thousands of years.
And like, what is that longing about? You know, Lewis, in some of his theological works, writes about the longing for longing, which he calls the German word sehnsucht, which is like that sense of, he says, like smelling a flower, the scent of a flower that you have never actually seen in person. And like there is this longing for what they would call the new creation.
You know, there is a longing for things to be made right once and for all that every human being shares. Tolkien essentially believed that is what fairy tales do. They allow us access to the shore beyond the shore, and that is their power. That is why you tell me this. That is why they ring true for humanity. And they both came to believe that deeply in their works.
Marlin Detweiler:
It's fascinating. Is it fair to say that in the 21st century, we have not appreciated the value of myth the way some of our forefathers did? What's your understanding of the development of thought like that?
John Hendrix:
So, okay, one of the reasons and arguments I make for why Tolkien and Lewis caught on when they did is basically, I think modernity has exhausted us. Modernity has given us very little to enjoy in the world. Post-enlightenment, the world is a collection of atoms and facts and random occurrence. What Tolkien and Lewis gave us in their stories is the idea of the miraculous being important.
And I think for people who are not even religious but who long to have a connection to the world that is supernatural, that gives them a way to place themselves in a larger story, is why people like reading Tolkien and Lewis. It allows them to see themselves inside this bigger story. It's why people in fandom today not just read stories but identify with them and even dress up as those characters because it is a kind of belonging and a bigger story that, frankly, I think we were all made to have.
Modernity has basically cut us off from that. Tolkien, along with Star Trek, introduced the concept of fan culture to us right at the moment, at the end of World War II, where suddenly the miraculous was extinguished. I think that's why these tales endure. That's why people still love them. And that's why I think they're valuable. Everyone should read them.
Marlin Detweiler:
Yeah. You chose to do it in the form of a graphic novel. Graphic novels have become very popular in the last few years. They've been around longer than most people realize. What was it about the graphic novel format that attracted you to this book? It seems a bit of a contraction of two things that don't always go together.
John Hendrix:
Yeah, well, I mean, the truth is that I make drawings. I think of myself as an artist before anything else, and so everything that I do has a visual form and usually starts in a visual form. For me, the choice is not what form I'm going to use necessarily to make this story work, but what kinds of ideas really lend themselves to a visual adaptation?
This story particularly needed a visual frame because you might be shocked to learn this, but a graphic novel about two guys that mostly sat around and talked their whole life is not super interesting. Two or three pages of that, of them at the Eagle and Child chatting, is kind of fun, and I give you that in the book a few times. But really, you can't have 300 pages of that.
Marlin Detweiler:
You can't.
John Hendrix:
No, the frame of that had to involve these two characters, Lion and Wizard, which act as avatars for Tolkien and Lewis. You can go on some of the adventures that Lewis and Tolkien are talking about with Lion and Wizard, and it just allows you a different way to process the story. I think a more effective way.
I read a lot of books for this, and they're dense. They take a long time to get through. What I want is a way for people to absorb this story and be kind of submerged in the visuality of it as much as the facts.
Marlin Detweiler:
Yeah. So how does the graphic element, along with what you've written, come together, and what do you hope would be a home run in terms of cultural impact as a result of the book?
John Hendrix:
I mean, honestly, not just like, hey, do people get the story? Do people learn a little bit more? Yes. But there's a moment in the book where Tolkien lands basically the thesis of the story, which is God writes myths, and we make myths because we were made by a mythmaker.
That was Tolkien's line. Then he tells Lewis, Christ is the myth that came true. Again, if someone can read this book who has hated religion and made the connection that Lewis himself made in his late 20s, of like, I love these stories. Why do these stories mean so much to me?
Is it possible that the greater, like capital S Story of the universe might involve me and might involve the incarnated God in a little town called Nazareth? To me, that is enough of a little flickering in someone's mind and heart that maybe those two things are connected. Honestly, Lewis's conversion story is crazy.
It's wild. If you heard it from a friend, if that happened to a friend of yours, you would tell people and be like, you will not believe the change that came over this person's life. I know that happens a lot in the world, and it's a thing people we don't really know of.
So it's not like it's rare, but in Lewis's case, it is so profound and interesting, and that's where the heart of the book came from.
Marlin Detweiler:
Well, I'm stuck on something here, being the good Presbyterian that I am, thinking in terms of propositional truths. You're talking about Christ as the greatest myth. Help me connect those ideas. Of myths becoming true and theology at its finest have propositional elements to it as well.
John Hendrix:
Yeah. Again, I think you have to release the idea of myth being a synonym for something that is made up. Right. We talk about the definition of myth in this book. Myths had a function in society, and most people knew when they were listening to them that the story was recounting something that was extremely valuable to them and represented something that was true and real.
And so when saying Christ is a myth, it's not saying that he was fake or fabricated. But that he represented a foundational idea inside of all human longing. Yeah. Want to be like one with our creator, to actually commune with something or someone that has perfection inside of them, right? Like, even in Lord of the Rings, the longing to speak to trees, right?
There are talking trees inside of Lord of the Rings that is pointing to, I think, a desire for us to be at home with our creation and to finally be in a place that is not tainted by division or separation. And so, again, all of these core ideas are embodied in the gospel story. And by saying that the gospel is a myth come true does not mean to say that it's fake or it's made up.
It's just pinging all of these deep human longings that go back inside of lots of the stories we tell over thousands of years.
Marlin Detweiler:
Is it fair to say that we've lost some of that appreciation and understanding? You identified me well, when you said, don't think of it as synonymous with something made up. Where did that loss first start to show its ugly head?
John Hendrix:
Yeah. I mean, I think we as probably Christians in the 20th century are just very overly worried about, you know, not saying things that are fully true or sliding into relevancy or, you know, all spokes go to the center of the wheel or things like, but these are basically worries that I think are not grounded in history.
And humanity has been telling so many stories for such a long time that I think you can't read the world's literature and not come away with certain conclusions about their core aims and the core desires. I mean, many people can critique the story of Christ as being much. And Lewis talks about this all the time as being like the Corn King myth, which we see occur in lots of local mythology.
Right. Which is like the sort of rising and dying god to come back, you know, and so, like resurrection as a theme. So one way you can look and see like, oh, well, all these cultures were telling stories about resurrection. Here's just another one, right? But of course, there's another way to see that, which is like, if you were God and you were trying to tell a story that resonated with every single person in the world, how might you tell that story to make the most impact?
Because God knows this. There is nothing on earth more powerful than a story. It's why Jesus told parables. It's why he did not lay out like, here are my three principles I'd like you to take away from this talk. It's why he told this narrative. Yeah, he told us a story because we are a story, right? And the stories get into us in a way that pure data or, you know, three takeaways from Jesus's sermon on the Mount just don't.
Marlin Detweiler:
Yeah. You have the pleasure of teaching at Washington University, which I understand to be a wonderful school. Tell me about the students that you have coming there. I'm sorry if this is a curveball question. I'm sure you can handle it. But it wasn't anything that I thought of before just now. But how do they come to you and how do they leave you?
John Hendrix:
Yeah, when they come to our graduate program. A lot of them are very talented. They're all makers. They are writers, and they are in sort of very different places when they come to graduate school, as you might imagine. And my goal as a faculty member is flourishing for them. I want them to flourish in their work, in their life, in who they are as a human being.
And so that's my goal for them. And I try to listen to them and help them get to the goals that they want. And usually that's about writing and learning to understand their voice. And then of course, the word and the image and we work with them on both of how they make their images and their words sort of answer those deepest questions and things they want to tell the world.
And you know, our aim of our program is illustration and visual culture. So it's about shaping culture. And we happen to do that through the things that we write and draw.
Marlin Detweiler:
Yeah. What's fascinating to me is, this is what I love about talking to people like you is not only are you an instructor in a category of influence, but you are a doer. You use the term maker. And I love that term. My best college professors were people who did what they were teaching. My business law course was a lawyer.
My first accounting course was a CPA. And it brought reality and significance to those disciplines. How do you think that's impacted you and your ability to help others grow in their appreciation of mythology, of illustration and writing connected with it?
John Hendrix:
Yeah. I mean, I bring a lot of skill sets to the classroom from different. I mean, I worked as an art director at the New York Times, I worked in design for a while. But again, all the things when I'm in the room with a student, I really have a mode of really trying to love them and love their work.
Listen to what they're saying to be a positive presence. And I think most teachers need to be different than art directors. Art directors are like, hey, this works. This doesn't work. Make this red, make that bigger. Whereas a teacher is trying to look at the things you make and not just see what you made but see what you are intending to make and sort of project what is the body of work you might make down the road and help the student try to see that as a real thing because most of the time they are stuck in the present form of the stuff that they have just made on that literal piece of paper.
And so giving them a lens to see the larger scope and body of their work, I think, is one of the great blessings a teacher can give a student because it's a kind of generosity to their future work that the artist may not have themselves for their own work. And so that is something I try to do when I'm meeting with young people.
Marlin Detweiler:
I'm curious. I don't know what your background is with regard to classical education, but it's been around long enough to where you would have certainly had students that came up in that revitalized transition. I'm curious if you found them to be of a particular ilk or do they present any particular advantages or disadvantages for you?
John Hendrix:
Yeah, I know a little bit about classical education. I've got a friend in North Carolina that works at a classical school, and I did not go to one, so I have admiration for it but not a lot of experience. So I think in general, the liberal arts as an idea is a really good thing.
And reading the classics, learning to read, learning to write, learning about language. I mean, Tolkien himself wrote all of Lord of the Rings because he basically wanted to have an in-universe explanation for the greeting a star shined on the hour of our meeting, right? He wanted that to make sense. He wrote a language to make that phrase make sense.
You know, the early forms of Elvish in his finery and script, the elves, that language that the elves speak needed a world to exist in. Right. So. And then he made the world around the language which he made around this desire to have this beautiful greeting make sense. Right? So all of that was logos. It was all derived from the word.
And you know, whereas Lewis, I talk about this in the book, he was all about mythos. He was all about story and the cloud of story. And so he did not construct his own work the same way. So again, all this is to say is that when we read, when we learn, we realize how different our brains are made and that the only way you can experience that stuff is to read a lot of different things and to learn a lot of different things that maybe don't seem real vocational.
And again, trying to encourage young people to not think about a job until the very end of their education is probably the best route for making sort of complete human beings.
Marlin Detweiler:
Yeah, that's a wonderful place to leave things because that's what we're trying to do. We're trying to help people realize their full potential. And you've done a wonderful job both illustrating that, writing about it and then teaching about it.
John Hendrix:
Thank you so much. Thank you. Glad to be here.
Marlin Detweiler:
Hopefully that motivated many of us to get ahold of the myth makers and learn more. That's been great. Thank you so much for joining us.
John Hendrix:
Glad to be here. Thank you.
Marlin Detweiler:
And folks, thank you again for joining us on another episode of Veritas Vox. We look forward to seeing you next time. Bye bye.
