Illusions Of Inerrancy
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I often wonder why it is that so many religious Christians have such trouble understanding
metaphor. Didn't anyone ever read them fairy tales, or tell them traditional children's stories
when they were kids? Don't they do these things for their own children?

Is it so difficult to understand that though there never really was an actual "Little Engine That
Could": a steam locomotive with a human persona, the lesson about persistence that the story
conveys, metaphorically, is still true? Is it so hard to continue to accept and believe in the spirit
of giving as an expression of love even after we discover that there never really was a Santa
Claus?

The human experience is full of commonalties of ideal that can't be related in object form. Love
does not have a specific object form, yet we certainly do all have some sort of experience of it.
How could we communicate these common subjective experiences to each other without
metaphors? All metaphors really are is a way of saying "it's like ...." when we have no way to say
"it is ....". Love is not a bicycle. We can point to the bicycle and say, "this is what I am referring
to by using the word 'bicycle". But in the case of an ideal, or any other subjective experience,
we have no object to refer our listener to. So we must use a metaphor to convey our experience;
"love is like riding a bicycle ...".

And some of the subjective experiences that we have are complicated. The concept of "salvation",
for example, is not a simple concept to convey. It involves change, and to convey change means
we have to convey that there was a before, during and after as part of the idea. Also, it usually
involves the intervention of some outside influence, and this too must be conveyed. I personally
have experienced "salvation" to a degree that I would equate to being "born again" (also a metaphor)
yet I can think of no way to convey this astonishing experience without the use of metaphor.
And most of the spiritual experiences that we have are this way.

The interesting thing about those folks who so abhor metaphor, is that they use them all the
time. They have to. Yet they try to insist that they aren't metaphors, but are reality. This seems
very bizarre to me. It's as if they can't believe in the concept or experience of persistence
unless there really is a "Little Engine That Could", or that giving gifts as an expression of love and
appreciation is not a valid experience unless there really is a Santa Claus. How can a person have so
little faith in their own experience of reality that they have to have their experiences ratified by
"divine magic" before they will accept them as real?

To me, the "Little Engine That Could" doesn't even make any sense as a story without the ideal of
persistence being real in our experience. Without the ideal, the story becomes whimsical
nonsense. The same with Santa Claus, and many other myths, parables, fairy tales, and
stories. Even Shakespeare's stories would have little impact were they not metaphors for our
own real experiences of human interactions. Do we dismiss our own experiences of life that
mirror those of Shakespeare's characters just because his characters never really existed?

To say that Jesus has to have actually died and then come back to life three days later or the
whole concept of our spiritual salvation and redemption is meaningless, is to miss the whole point
of the story of Jesus' death and resurrection. Just as to say that if there was never a "Little
Engine That Could", then the concept of persistence is a untrue. It's the experiential value of
persistence that is the reality, and the metaphorical story about the Little Engine that conveys
this concept that is the device, not the other way round. And the same is true of the story of
Jesus' death and resurrection. The concept of our spiritual salvation and redemption is the
reality, and the story that conveys that concept from one person to another is the device.
Not the other way round. It's salvation and redemption that is the truth. It's this that has the
meaning, value and connection to us. The story that conveys this truth may or may not have
actually happened, but that isn't what matters because the story is only a device through which
the true experience of spiritual salvation is conveyed.

To worship the conveyance device as if it were itself truth or salvation is to make a false idol of
it, to misrepresent it, and to obscure the truth that the device was intended to convey in the
first place. Just as to present the "Little Engine That Could" as actual reality is to misrepresent
it (to lie) and in so doing we obscure the truth about persistence that the story was meant to
convey. When we do this with children, it's because the truth the story intends to convey to
them is something they have not yet experienced or articulated in their minds, and because
children's minds do not yet understand what a metaphor is. But for adults to promote and
persist in this sort of confusion between metaphor and reality is very unhealthy.

One can only wonder as to what internal purpose this behavior could serve. Intentionally
confusing metaphor with reality is a way of denying the validity of reality, I suppose, and in turn
a way of denying the truth. If this is so, and God is at least represented by truth if not being
truth itself, then we could also say it's a way of denying God. Yet so much of our religion has
turned to such imposed confusion, perpetually treating people as if they are ignorant children,
even insisting that they remain confused about what is real and what is not and calling this
confusion "faith". "Believe on Jesus and the bible or burn in hell!" i.e.. believe that the metaphorical
conveyance IS both God and salvation, or be damned. The bible is not God, nor are the stories in
it our salvation. It and they are merely a form of conveyance. To not believe the stories as if
they were actual history does not condemn anyone.  To imply this is certainly unhealthy, and
I believe it's also ungodly. Spiritual salvation and redemption are real experiences that people
have, the bible and religion are merely a way for us to convey those experiences to each other.
To purposely confuse these things is to purposely attempt to deny ourselves and each other
the experience.

Peace,
Dave