Myths and Religious Leaders

The Book of Job, Oedipus Rex, the many stories involving the Norse god Loki, and Santa Claus.  These generation spanning myths are all traditional stories that contain supernatural claims, and are used to influence human behavior (Steadman and Palmer 2007).  The Book of Job encourages those that hear or read it to continue adhering to religious tradition regardless of how difficult life becomes.  Oedipus Rex teaches listeners, readers, and watchers that being a bad parent can lead to negative consequences that may not be obvious right away.  Stories including Loki almost always showcase the disastrous consequences of acting solely out of self-preservation.  Aside from the obvious influence the myth of Santa Claus has on the behavior of children, this myth also encourages parents to reward the good behavior of their offspring.

Myths like Santa Claus, the Book of Job, and others, have been continually expanding the sphere of influence of those ancestors that implemented them generations ago; encouraging social behavior and improving their descendant-leaving success.  But, as anyone that has played the game of telephone can tell you, messages can get lost in translation.  Enter religious leadership.

Religious leadership is, among many other things, tasked with keeping the focus of myths on positively influencing the behavior of co-descendants.  Religious leaders are religious specialists who claim or are claimed to have supernatural powers to whom others go to to be influenced supernaturally or naturally.  They are also claimed to have the ability to commune with the dead, ancestors, and/or other ethereal beings (Steadman and Palmer 2007).  You may not think it, but there are many people that fit this definition in your own backyard.

Perhaps the most obvious examples are religious specialists like spirit mediums, psychics, tarot card readers, and Reiki practitioners.  But, less obvious perhaps, yet matching the definition just as much, are the bishops at your local Latter-Day Saint (LDS) ward house, Catholic cardinals and the Pope, the street preacher in your city, etc.  The three previous examples all claim or are claimed to have the supernatural ability to commune with God, the ultimate ancestor, through prayer; satisfying two parts of the definition of religious leaders.

What sets them apart from others that commune with supernatural entities through prayer and have supernatural powers (even members of the LDS church as young as 12 years of age are claimed to have the supernatural ability to baptize the dead as a proxy), is the recognized position that they hold.  This position makes it their responsibility to influence those that come to them for natural (e.g. relationship advice) and supernatural (e.g. spiritual advice) influence.  One of the many other responsibilities religious leadership has as you will see in this chapter, is interpreting ancestral and traditional myth in light of current circumstances.  This makes for a boring game of telephone where nothing gets lost in translation, but it should also significantly improve the descendant-leaving success of those ancestors that implemented the role of religious leaders and masters of myth.