Metaphor.

[American Christians] are not merely dividing but becoming incomprehensible to one another.

~ Timothy Dalrymple, president and CEO of Christianity Today

All language about God is necessarily symbolic and figurative. Actually all language is metaphorical. Words are never the thing itself; they can only point toward the thing, which is exactly why “The Word became flesh” (John 1:14).

~ Richard Rohr

As you know, one of our greatest struggles right now, both in the church and in society at large, is the depth and breadth of division. No matter our position on anything, we simply can’t fathom any rational, good-hearted person taking a stand on the other side. Whether it’s immigration or sexual identity or abortion or the next presidential candidate, we are irreconcilably at odds with one another. And while I imagine that folks on both sides lament the polarization (and perhaps I’m being generous here), we simply can’t seem to make much progress in narrowing the gap to even engage in civil conversation with one another.

How this must grieve the heart of our mutual Savior. But what to do?

I’ve been thinking about a couple things, and the first comes from last week’s post on not squeezing the cactus. Humility, one of Jesus’ most vital entreatments, calls each of us to hold even our dearest positions lightly. We tend to take ourselves and our theologies and our politics far too seriously rather than recognize that literally millions of rational, good-hearted people see things differently than we do. They’re not trying to destroy modern civilization any more than we are. To have thoughful, Spirit-led convictions is a virtue; using those convictions to attack our brothers and sisters is not.

Which gives me an irresistible opportunity to step on one of my favorite soapboxes: the media. While I’m grateful for the journalistic freedoms we have in our country, please understand that the media is not your friend. By and large, they cherry-pick and commoditize those bits of information that serve their purposes (on both sides of the political spectrum) and then weaponize that information into inflammatory sound bites… to make a buck. Billions of bucks actually. And we are the saps who give it to them. We sit for hours watching content skillfully designed to trigger two emotions: fear and anger. Talk about squeezing the cactus! I’m not saying to stick your head in the sand, but when it comes to the “news,” let’s choose less-heated voices and for much smaller amounts of time. Seriously, save your soul from this rot.

The big idea I’d like to introduce today is that most of our alienation from one another comes not from competing values as much as from competing metaphors. Most of our values lie closer together than we think: No one wants violence or injustice in our world, and everyone wants peace and prosperity in our world. Those are some pretty sweeping and inclusive values. We simply see different paths to get there, and these paths get identified with a set of metaphors that we then attach our very identities to. Unnecessarily and unhelpfully. We all do this at some level.

So what kind of metaphors are we talking about. Let’s start with the theologies held most dearly by conservatives and progressives: the central nature of God and humans and the way we relate to one another. And of course the way we read the Bible. Theologians come up with clumsy but utilitarian words like atonement, depravity, divinization, transcendence, infallibility, etc to serve as repositories for collections of ideas. Christians have literally killed one another over a single letter in the Greek between homoousion and homoiousion as it relates to the nature of the Trinity. So let’s get one thing straight…

All spiritual language is metaphor. This truth has the power to fundamentally change how we hold our perspectives and how we relate to one another.

Let’s take the idea of the atonement—the way in which God comes into redemptive relationship with humans through Christ. There are at least seven historical theories of the way in which the death and resurrection of Jesus affects us. Seven metaphors. Here, at least, theologians are honest about not really knowing the answer. They collect all the prophetic allusions, the Old Testament foreshadowings like Passover and the sacrificial system, and the New Testament perspectives of the apostles, and then they create various constructs that might possibly represent the mystical reality that is, ultimately, unnameable. This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to name it; it just means we have to hold our ideas loosely. The metaphors are meaningful; they just aren’t worth breaking fellowship. They aren’t worth social media wars and excommunications and church splits. And they aren’t worth creating 33,000 denominations for crying out loud (according to the World Christian Encyclopedia).

The same is true in the political realm. The terms Republican and Democrat, conservative and liberal and progressive: all metaphors. What about fiscal responsibility or small government or equal access to healthcare? These are ideas, concepts, and aspirations which people define in a thousand different ways… which invites either a thousand different ways to disagree or, imagine, a thousand different conversations we can have respectfully and charitably to improve our entire society.

Let’s take it a step further: words themselves are metaphors. The word “tree” is a not a tree; it is a symbol by which we try to convey—very roughly—the esperience and wonder of a tree. The word “sovereignty,” in either a political or theological context, is also a symbol, an approximation. All our words are metaphors, and even though they are powerful enough to send countries to war against one another, we need to learn to hold them more gracefully. We should give people more benefit of the doubt when it comes to opposing metaphors. In a word, we must be more loving with our metaphors.

I am, of course, challenging myself as well as you with this because it’s not easy to detach ourselves from the metaphors that circumscribe our tribes. I feel either aversion or affection with some of these charged metaphors, and I find myself subconsciously villainizing others and distancing myself emotionally… when the truer me, the Christ-in-me, instead moves toward them to embrace our common humanity, our common values, and our common union in Christ. That’s where I want to land, and that’s who I want to be. How about you?

growing the soul

How does it feel to think about your theological and political convictions as metaphors, as images to help us wrap our heads around really big concepts? As ways to explore our values and understandings without the need to die for our metaphors?

serving the world

Can you even imagine what our world would look like—from the war in Ukraine to the national conventions of the Republicans and Democrats to the conflict between the UMC and GMC denominations—if we could hold our metaphors a little more graciously?

takeaway

Gently does it.