Metaphors

The challenge for artists of faith is always how do we express the ineffable in tangible terms? How do we clothe the invisible with form that we may see and comprehend without doing damage to the truth we are seeking to convey? The way we express the ineffable through art is primarily by way of metaphor. Metaphors clothe the intangible with likenesses we can comprehend. Our metaphors hint at what God is like. They lead us in the direction of God though we must take the leap from the edge of our metaphor into the arms of reality on our own. 

The Bible is full of metaphors, types and symbols which serve to show us what God or heavenly realities are like. They allow us to see a shape or a form of one aspect of God or another. The Bible is full of beautiful stories and images of to inspire the artist's work. If we dig deep into every corner of scripture looking for inspiration we could never exhaust what the Bible offers. In many ways the symbols and language of scripture has served for centuries as a template for believing and non-believing artists alike. How many songs have been written about heaven? Or how many artists have painted their depictions of the angelic? 

The problem with this is that if we rely too heavily upon the provided symbology of the Bible without exploring new and innovative ways of expressing our faith, our symbols lose their meaning. Familiarity or overexposure to the same references deaden the symbol's ability to lead us past itself and into the reality it represents. 

Take for example the cross. This has become one of the primary symbols of the Christian faith. It has also been so inundated into our western cultures it rarely provokes its original meaning. Instead of conveying the depth of horror of what a Roman cross actually was used for or instead of conveying the revolutionary act of love Jesus reclaimed it to mean, the cross is often taken as a general symbol of religion or perhaps void to many as having any meaning at all. 

The solution is not to abandon the traditional symbols of the faith but to explore other metaphors and approaches to express spiritual truths. Symbols, like living things carry a mysterious life of their own. They are born, they grow and change as they interact with the changing world and eventually die. In the example of the cross, this has become a universal emblem and is unlikely to die or altogether lose its association with the Christian faith. But excluding the community of believers for whom the cross has eternal value and has become a universal emblem, it may evoke something entirely different or may simply be an ornament to dangle from necklaces and earrings.   

A symbol's life is carried by the power of its associations. If a symbol loses its connection to the origin of its meaning, it diverges in what it conveys and eventually loses the power of what it was intended to represent. Overexposure has a way of killing curiosity. Familiarity can give a sense of comfort and safety but can also dull the senses and keep us from exercising our will to explore new meanings and deeper understandings. 

Francis Bacon said, "Nature is God's second book". Or to use a scriptural reference, the apostle Paul says in Romans 1:20 that what may be known about God is made visible in the physical world. Psalm 19 likewise reminds us that the heavens declare the glory of God. The day and the night and all of creation speak to us about the attributes of God. A more obscure but powerful reference nonetheless is Job 12:7-10. Job tells his critics,

"But now ask the beasts, and they will teach you; and the birds of the air, and they will tell you; or speak to the earth, and it will teach you; and the fish of the sea will explain to you. Who among you does not know that the hand of the Lord has done this, in whose hand is the life of every living thing and the breath of all mankind?

If, as artists of faith, we limit ourselves to the immediate symbols found in the Bible we also limit the glory we give to God through our art for God is present and to be found in all things. In fact, it is a very scriptural premise that we look outside of the Bible itself to find creative and metaphorical ways of portraying God to the world. Let me give a few examples. 

God often spoke to Jeremiah in metaphors. "Jeremiah, what do you see?" "I see an almond tree." "I see a boiling pot." Each time, God would reveal what these non-scriptural symbols meant to him. The most pointed perhaps is when God told him to go and watch a potter working at his wheel.(Jer 18) As Jeremiah looked at the artist at work, God spoke to him and used the artist's process as a metaphor for how he would deal with his people. 

But it wasn't just Jeremiah God spoke to this way. This type of interaction is found all throughout the bible. With Hosea, God used a broken, adulterous relationship as a metaphor for his covenant. (Hosea 3:1) With Amos, it was a basket of summer fruit. (Amos 8:2) For Daniel, it was the esoteric language of dreams and riddles. 

In fact, Jesus himself, when revealing what the kingdom of heaven is like often pointed to nature and familiar situations within the culture of his day. He gave examples by telling his listeners to look at ravens, sparrows, fields of grass and lilies. (Luke 12:24-28) He spoke of fish, of bread, weddings, laborers, treasures and difficult human relationships. Jesus' imagination was free to draw all things together into the revealing of God's nature and truth. Therefore, if we limit ourselves to singing about the same light, dark, ocean and sun, breaking every chain metaphors we've sung about for years or if we continue to paint the same lion and lamb beneath the same cross on the same green hill, we are not employing the bible's own examples. Perhaps it's time to put our ears to the ground again and listen for the voice of the Lord saying, "Hey. What do you see?"