By JJT (written for ThinkChristian.net)

The X-Files believes there must be something “out there” that will help us make sense of what is happening “down here.”

In the ancient world humans concocted elaborate myths, often in an attempt to explain the unexplainable or to galvanize a certain tribe around a shared fear of the unknown. Storytelling helped people understand everything from natural phenomena to human behavior. C.S. Lewis held a strong belief in the power of myth, which he shared with friends J.R.R. Tolkien, Owen Barfield, Charles Williams and others. Christianity, he claimed, was simply the myth that was true.

I would love to be able to hear what Lewis and the other Inklings would have thought of The X-Files, both the original series from the 1990s and the six-episode mini-series that premiered this week. The show is rooted in modern myths about the supernatural, the extra-terrestrial or simply the machinations of cloaked billionaire puppet masters. (Sometimes these myths involved the insidious confluence of all three.) Our age may have witnessed the mapping of the human genome, yet even that has been unable to explain the otherworldly strangeness of the human experience. It’s no wonder some look to little green men for answers. There must be something “out there” that will help us make sense of what is happening “down here.”

I remember scanning short-wave radio in the ’90s to listen to the conspiracy theorists and alien seekers who were way too wacko for normal radio. Then The X-Files turned the crazy theories that had previously been the domain of the fringe into compelling mainstream entertainment. FBI agent Fox Mulder (David Duchovny), the true believer in search of information related to the disappearance of his sister, was partnered with Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson), the scientifically educated skeptic who, despite hard evidence, never seemed able to dismiss Mulder’s beliefs in the oddest of possibilities.

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