The True Myth Journal
Weekly updates on exploring how Jesus Christ is the best possible hero.
The Week of 12/28/2025–01/03/2026
December was a blur of structural work. We (Matt and Josh) finished the comprehensive outline for our book, tentatively titled Between the Whip and the Cheek.
Now we have a skeleton; we need to put meat on the bones.
To do that, we have started a heavy blogging cycle. The volume of output has spiked, so notifying you about every individual post felt excessive. We are switching to a weekly update format instead. Below is the status of the book and the research notes we filed this week.
Book Progress: Between the Whip and the Cheek
Current Focus: Research for Chapter 1: Two Pictures, One Person?
Words Written This Week: 0 (Drafting has not started).
Total Manuscript Word Count: 0
Current Status: Excavation & Research.
New in the Library
We added 5 new research notes to the Digital Garden this week. These are the raw materials building the world of Between the Whip and the Cheek.
1. The Scent of Decay by Joshua Buzzard
“If we want the sacred to be alive again, we won't find it by sniffing the decaying wood of the past. We have to bring it down to the rubber mats, right in the middle of the mess.”
Joshua conducts a forensic analysis of the "war of smells" inside a cathedral-turned-pub. He reveals a theological paradox: the pleasant "old book smell" we associate with holiness is actually the chemical decay of lignin, while the foul odor of the bar is the byproduct of biological life. This post challenges the church to abandon the "chemically stable" faith of a museum and embrace the messy reality of the "rubber mats."
2. The Church Was Lying Before the Beer Arrived by Joshua Buzzard
“To build a High Altar for a theology that doesn't believe in the Sacrifice is, architecturally speaking, a lie.”
Investigating the Pitcher & Piano (a High Gothic cathedral turned cocktail bar), Joshua argues that the true desecration occurred long before the beer taps arrived. He traces the congregation’s drift from the "Heavy Thing" of deep conviction to a "weightless" Rationalism. They committed "Architectural Falsehood" by maintaining a High Altar for a theology that no longer believed in the Sacrifice.
3. “Rage Bait” is the Liturgy of Hell by Joshua Buzzard
“If brain rot indicates passive decay through the overconsumption of the internet, then rage bait feels more like the weaponization of that overconsumption. We’ve gone from being zombies to being berserkers.”
In this cultural diagnosis, Joshua argues that "rage bait" is not a digital annoyance; it is a "Liturgy of Hell" that automates the ancient vice of wrath. Drawing on the Desert Fathers and Augustine, this post challenges readers to recognize how we have become "willing accomplices" to an algorithm that destroys the "silence of the soul" and hallucinates monsters out of our neighbors.
4. The Myth of Myth by Dr. Matthew J. Coombe
“In the classical and anthropological sense, myth is closer to a society’s deep grammar: the narrative structure that tells a people what the world is, what went wrong, what matters most, and what salvation would even look like. Myth is not opposed to truth; it is often the vessel a culture uses to carry what it believes is most true.”
Dr. Coombe dismantles the modern assumption that "myth" is a synonym for "falsehood." He argues instead that myths are the "meaning-bearing structures" upon which we stake our lives. By outlining the four essential features of creation myths (Pathos, Logos, Ethos, and Mythos), this post provides a field guide for reading modern culture and understanding why Christianity stands as the pinnacle of reality.
5. The Jesus of the Whip, Part 1 by Joshua Buzzard
“The cleansing was neither a riot nor a temper tantrum nor a politically centered protest, but instead it was a calculated, formal Prosecutorial Action initiated by the Suzerain against a Vassal priesthood that had fundamentally breached the stipulations of their treaty.”
Joshua confronts the "stumbling block" of the "Jesus of the Whip." He pushes back against the modern tendency to reduce the Temple Cleansing to a mere temper tantrum. By analyzing the historical horror of the Roman flagrum (a tool designed to expose bone and bowels), this post argues that Jesus’s use of the whip was not a loss of control; it was a terrifying assertion of state-level authority. This is Part 1 in a series outlining how the original readers would have understood John 2:15.
Looking Ahead
We are continuing our research for Chapter 1 of Between the Whip and the Cheek. As we flesh out these concepts, we plan to launch a podcast where we discuss the research in real time. Keep an eye out for that in the weeks ahead.
Until then, Matthew J Coombe & Joshua Buzzard