The Force of Language

Recently I was discussing what mythological archetypes mean in regard to how we behave and believe. Joseph Campbell in the Power of Myth states that there are two main type of myth. these are sociological myth and archetypal myths. Archetypal myths tell stories that are true for all and sociological myths are those which form a bounded group, you and your family my country and clan. He gives the Biblical mythological story of the giving of the laws as an example of the bounded myth the sociological myth. In one chapter it states "Thou shalt not kill" the next chapter says "Go into Canaan and kill every one in it." They the Canaanites are outside the group and thus fair game. In the church where I sing we have a new priest a nice guy. Many people complained that he had changed a lot of things. He gave a sermon on how he had not changed anything. Unfortunately he was wrong. He changed the approach to the language of the mythology in the church. Since he came into the church everything sounds explicit and literal. Unfortunately it is not supposed to be taken that way and that church community had never approached the Spirit in that manner. As a result people knew he had changed things but were unable to explain what. It took me a long time to realize what had been changed and that mostly because I looked in from the outside and had a good view. The tendency of most Christians is to make 'God' a concept. This removes the transcendent and unknowable nature from what can not be known.
This is what was happening within that community and as a result the true spiritual path was changing. Language has real power and force. Unfortunately when trying to speak about the transcendent nature of the Creator we are stuck with a limited imprecise tool called language. And we use this tool to try to explain what we know and feel about something we, in our limited capacity, cannot understand.
It was the intangibility of the change, a change in language and seeming meaning that was making people uncomfortable.