Here was me thinking I would just do a quick search on the subject of metaphor and its uses (mainly because I heard Noel Gallagher talking about metaphor in song writing on the radio this morning). I know we all enjoy a good metaphor. I know we all often employ metaphors, including the famous “sick as a parrot” overused by football reporters. How little I knew. Metaphors, and the discussion of them, are a seething ocean…. See what I mean?
The ubiquity of metaphors in language leads neatly to the notion that metaphor is somehow basic to how we think. Indeed, in what is considered by some to be a classic, paradigm-shaping book published in 1980, “Metaphors we live by”, Lakoff and Johnson claimed exactly that. Metaphors are not just features of language, ways we seek to communicate with each other. They are rooted in basic biology and baked into the way we think, allowing us make sense of the world around us. Indeed, there is empirical evidence that they might do more than this. Thibodeau and Boroditsky (2011) showed that by exposing participants to particular metaphors, it was possible to influence how they thought about particular scenarios. So, comparing a “crime wave” to either a “wild animal preying on” or “a virus infecting” a community, altered their views about how to deal with crime. It’s a short step from this to the idea of using metaphors as “dog whistles” in political discourse (another metaphor). Usually this a charge made against political opponents. But the politicians have worked out that using metaphors in this particular way provides the kind of plausible deniability that they can deploy against their opponents while stirring up (there I go again) their political base. It turns out that this is all hotly contested stuff.
But back to the business of sensible communication. In part, metaphors are useful because they can helpfully illuminate (like good prose), while having a degree of flexibility (they lack the precision of propositions). They can also be used to encapsulate something complex in relatively few words (usually by alluding to an image) and are therefore an economical means of communication. And they can help us grapple with things that are so complex that we cannot understand everything about them, while highlighting what we can understand. And they necessarily engage the imagination in a way other types of language often do not. When you get to thinking about it, Christians (or perhaps even religious-minded people in general) should be at home with them.
The Bible is replete with metaphors, and the reason for at least some of them isn’t too hard to fathom. If the Bible is the primary means of revelation by which a transcendent God, who is a completely different form of being from you and me, makes Himself known to us, then it is hardly a surprise that metaphor is to the fore (as it were). In fact most of our language about God must be metaphorical. Some metaphors are in the form of straightforward anthropomorphisms – Scripture speaks of God’s hands and eyes even although as a being who is spirit He does not literally possess hands and eyes. Others find their meaning within Scripture itself.
In the Old Testament history of Israel, we find the basis of many significant New Testament metaphors. For example, in order to be safe from the punishment that was to fall on Egypt as the climax to a series of plagues, the enslaved Israelites had to take a lamb and sacrifice it. The blood of this lamb, when applied to the doorways of their houses would protect them from what was to happen. This deliverance formed the basis of the Passover feast which was to serve as a reminder of, and pointer to, this great event in their deliverance.
When Jesus appears near the Jordan thousands of years later, John points at Him and calls Him the Lamb of God (John 1:29). In a sense that’s all he has to say. A whole host of images and associations immediately come flooding to those familiar with such language. But they are not looking a young sheep of course. As they look to where John is pointing they find themselves looking at a man. The power of metaphor. And even although this is early in Jesus’ public ministry, there is perhaps an even earlier allusion that employs this same metaphor. It is one that I had entirely missed.
It’s nearly
Christmas, and all this week at Bridge we’ve been presenting “the Christmas
Journey” to school children – basically a presentation of the Christmas story.
I know that it’s only the first week in December, but to be fair we’ve been enduring
Christmas movie channels since September. It has always struck me as odd that an
angel tells a bunch of shepherds that a baby wrapped in “swaddling cloths” is a
sign (Luke 2:12). I suppose it could simply have been that this is how they would know the
baby in question was “the” baby as opposed to “a” baby (although presumably
the fact that said baby would also be in a feeding trough would also be a bit of
a giveaway). But someone pointed out to me this week that it has been suggested
that the shepherds weren’t just any old shepherds; they were “Levitical”
shepherds. And they were specifically tasked with raising lambs for sacrifice up at the
temple in Jerusalem, lambs that had to be perfect. These were not strictly speaking
Passover lambs for the most part, but that’s where the flexibility of a good
metaphor is useful. To increase the shepherds' chances of producing quality
lambs (i.e. without “spot of blemish) and decrease their losses, lambs
would often be birthed in special shepherds' caves in the vicinity of
Bethlehem, and then bound in cloths (swaddling cloths) to prevent cuts, bruises
and other damage. This, in effect, identified them as sacrificial lambs. So,
now the direction to go and look at a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths takes on
a whole new significance. These particular shepherds looking at that particular
baby, triggers all those metaphorical associations that John would highlight
about thirty years later.
We don’t know
if the shepherds made all of these connections. Nor do we know when Jesus first disciples managed to get their heads around what John said. But this particular metaphor is
worth bearing in mind for the next few weeks.
