“Those old Greek gods are not just poetry and legend. In them the Ancients personified living realities—intelligence, beauty, love, or lust, which are still at work in our hearts, and which fashion our person. The language they speak is that of image and myth, which touches the person much more directly than the explicit language of science and the intellectual dialectic of the modern world. It is also the language of the Bible, of the parables of Christ, which the rationalist of today finds it so difficult to understand, of the Word of God which demands of us not a discussion but a personal decision.”
— Paul Tournier (1898-1986), “The Meaning of Persons,” New York: Harper, 1957, p. 132.
This is one of the reasons why C. S. Lewis recognized that if you cannot appreciate the value of myth in general, then you aren’t going to appreciate Christianity. Countless conservative fans of Lewis have failed to even pay attention to this point that he made, much less heed it.
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