Evelyn Way Myth Became Fact

"Would not conversation be much more rational than dancing? said Jane Austin's Miss Bingley. 'Much more rational' replied Mr.Bingley, 'but much less like a ball."
C.S. Lewis relates this to his arguement that Christianity is mythical and the only vital nurishing element of the whole thing. Myth's do not move away from time, it has outlived the thoughts of all it's defenders and all of its adversaries. "It is the myth that gives life. Those elements even in modernist Christiantiy which Cornieus reagrds as vestigal, are the substance: what he takes for the 'real modern belief' is the shadow."
I too often would stand on the side of the argument that there was no such way religion, Christianity in particular, could be a myth. To me myth was associated with things that aren't real. Fairy tales of jack and the beanstalk, the little mermaid, these stories which bear good moral teachings but held no reality. To me, Christianity was everything but a fairy tale, it held truth, it was real! Was I missing something? Was my perceptions of Christianity not fully acurate?
Lewis challenges this less than attractive stand I took by stating that by myth we are nearest to experiencing as a concrete what can otherwise be understood only as an abstraction. Then he throws in the kicker: "What flows into you from the myth is not truth but reality (truth is always about something, but reality is that about which truth is), and, therefore, every myth becomes the father of innumerable truths on the abstract level." WOW! Check and mate, well done Lewis. This whole time I was so caught up in "myths" being something that aren't "real" but what i didn't understand was that reality is always about something which truth is. It is possible to reconcile myth and religion. Infact to do so, makes the whole experience that much greater. Your eyes are opened to bigger things, God all of the sudden is outside of this box that so many Christian's don't even realize they had put him in. I am guilty of being one of those Christian's at one point in my life. How deeply sorry I am that I was missing out on the glory of God's creation and his absolute reality in my own life. I hope that you too can come to discover this for yourself and come to live a life fuller than before.