Myth and Metaphor

 Recently, I was watching a debate on-line between Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks and Richard Dawkins.   Sacks is the former Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth. Dawkins, an evolutionary biologist, is what I would describe as the chief atheist and apologist.  The debate was a typical one on the topic science versus religion and does religion have any significance in the modern world – at least that is how I would sum up the focus of the debate.

One point in the discussion summed up for me the reductionist approach that Dawkins and other scientists of his ilk have in their approach to the world and their dismissal of many things religious.  Dawkins pressed Sacks on the story of the intention of Abraham to follow YHWH – God’s order to sacrifice his son, Isaac.  Dawkins pressed Sacks as to his belief on the literal nature of the story i.e. was there actually a person named Abraham who had the intention to sacrifice his son in response to the command.  For Dawkins, there had to be a concrete basis for the story for it to be meaningful.  Sacks responded that it was representative of the movement of the Israelite people away for the practice of child sacrifice which was common to the people in that part of the world at that time. 

There seemed to be a complete misunderstanding by Dawkins of the importance of story as metaphor for people throughout history and the importance of it today.  Theologian and author Marcus Borg notes in his book, The God We Never Knew, that all images of God are metaphors.  Though metaphors, he states:

are not literally true, they can nevertheless be true…Metaphors are evocative. Suggestive of more than one meaning, they are resonant; they have multiple associations and cannot be translated into a single equivalent literal statement.

Metaphors cannot be weighed or put under a microscope and viewed in a telescope but they are true nonetheless.  That is something that Dawkins apparently does not seem to comprehend.  Myths can be understood in the same light as metaphors - actually, myths might be seen as extended metaphors and have a Truth that has resonated with people throughout the ages when you understand them metaphorically. 

To elaborate on the distinction between the approach of Dawkins and that of Sacks, it is helpful to look at the distinction between a sign versus a symbol as denoted by Carl Jung – the founder of Jungian psychology.  Jung notes in Man and His Symbols, that signs, “do no more than denote the objects to which they are attached.”  In effect, they have a one-to-one correspondence i.e., a stop sign on the side of a road means that traffic on that side of the road should stop.   

A symbol, as Jung declares, “is a term, a name, or even a picture that may be familiar in daily life, yet that possesses specific connotations in addition to its conventional and obvious meaning.”  Jung continues to elaborate, “It implies something vague, unknown, or hidden from us.” 

Religion, in its essence, is an attempt to understand the ineffable of life which cannot be reduced to a sign.  It is the undiscovered country which people are attempting to discover as best we can by exploring that which is hidden in an effort to see its truth.

May you be blessed to explore those hidden things which are revealed on your journey.

 

What is Biblical Truth

Yesterday I was strolling around the internet and came upon an interview with Richard Dawkins.  For those of you who don’t know Dawkins, he is a big name in the religion debunking business and what I could call the cult of atheism in popular social media today.  The title of the interview, which says a lot about Dawkins, is Outgrowing God: Richard Dawkins in Conversation and can be found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9Sf2eNVWVs.

Now from my observation of Dawkins, his approach is to set up straw dogs of fundamentalist religious beliefs so that he can make a splash of knocking them down.  In this case, Dawkins was describing a discussion two people were having about the creation story in Genesis and disagreeing about whether Adam and Eve were tempted by an apple or a fig.  Dawkins dismissed this out of hand and stated his concern was that the Garden of Eden story never happened implying that the details of the story didn’t matter.

As it happened, this was a great example of what I was preaching about yesterday at St. Alban’s Anglican Church in Souris PEI.  Dawkins uses the facts of the biblical account as a straw dog to try and destroy people’s belief in God.  The Gospel Reading for the day was the account in Mark of Jesus feeding 4000 men with a few loaves of bread and a few small fish.  I believe that when dealing with miracle accounts in the bible, it is not constructive to engage in issues of facts i.e., did the events in the biblical account happen the way they are recorded.  Rather, I think that we can find common ground in why these accounts - these stories are part of our scriptural heritage.  In other words, what is the message in these stories that are important and necessary for our understanding of who Jesus is and how God works in the lives of the people in the bible and in our lives today.

St. Paul addresses in 1 Corinthians this way of understanding those things which God gives us including an approach to scripture, “Those who are unspiritual do not receive the gifts of God’s Spirit, for they are foolishness to them, and they are unable to understand them because they are discerned spiritually.”  If we approach the accounts of miracles spiritually – as a gift of God’s Spirit we can begin to understand what these miracle stories mean for us.

With that let us see what the spiritual message is for us in this account of the feeding of the multitude.  The account tells us that Jesus began with seven loaves of bread and a few small fish.  There is not a lot to work with in in terms of food for such a large number of people.  However, with this beginning, they are fed – we can assume they were filled to the point of their appetites were probably more than satisfied.   In fact, there was more than what they had to start with.  From seven loaves and a few fish they ended up with seven baskets of leftovers – I wonder who got to take some of that home?  We can look at the number seven and if we investigate this, we find that seven is a number which signifies perfection or completion.  There is the seven days of creation and the seven seals in the book of Revelation for example.  We could say from this that the followers of Jesus were completely fed with spiritual food.  Those followers and by implication, we are offered by Jesus, food for our souls which will completely satisfy us.

This is reminiscent of the account in the Gospel of John in which Jesus meets the Samaritan woman at the well:

Jesus said to her, ‘Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.’ The woman said to him, ‘Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.’

Jesus gives to that Samaritan woman and to the four thousand people gathered to hear him the bread of life and the water of life.  If we eat that bread and drink that water we will be fed spiritually.  Our spirit will never again be thirsty in a dry and barren land and will never be spiritually hungry.  Therefore, let us follow Jesus for he offers us the bread of life to eat and he offers us the water of eternal life to drink.

May you be blessed to receive the bread of life to eat and he offers us the water of eternal life to drink on your journey.

The Dignity of Difference

 

My self-appointed personal research assistant – my son Matthew - brought to my attention an episode of the wonderful CBC program Tapestry hosted by Mary Hines.  Tapestry is one of my go–to programs to listen to.  This was a rebroadcast of favourites celebrating Tapestry’s 25^th anniversary.  The program was an interview with Johnathan Sacks who is the former chief rabbi of England.  I have been a fan of Rabbi Sacks for many years and particularly appreciate his book, The Dignity of Difference which I have written about fairly recently in this space.  The interview can be found at https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-59-tapestry and I would highly recommend it for its ability to enlighten as well as entertain.

Sacks’ great concern is that if humanity is to survive, we need to look beyond our differences to truly see and appreciate the humanity of others.  It is impossible to summarize the ground covered in this interview in the self-limits that I give this forum.  I want to give you a taste of Sacks’ erudition and the depth of knowledge he draws upon which forms what I might call his theology of the human spirit. 

“The great choice of the twenty-first century; will religion harm or heal?”  

“The cause of violence is not religion.  The cause is the human heart.” 

“Complements are fine as long as you don’t inhale.”

About the head of the Catholic Church in England, “He took God so seriously that he didn’t have to take himself seriously.”

God gave human beings the ability to transcend nature.  God gave us free will.  Sacks quotes Isaac Bashevis Singer, “We have to be free; we have no choice!”

Johnathan Swift, “We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.”

I will give you a summary of a response Sacks gave to a question posed by Mary Hines, “Do you encounter the other when you debate a Richard Dawkins?  Do you look at atheism as the other?”   This response for me showed to wisdom that Sacks brings to the seemingly insoluble situation in the world where people seem to be building higher and higher walls instead of wider and stronger bridges.

In response, Dawkins recounted how the BBC had asked him to have a ‘conversation’ with Dawkins for a program.  He agreed to do it on one condition – that he could invite Dawkins and his wife to have dinner with him and his wife.  He did this to see if they could get on as human beings.  Sacks describes Dawkins as the Voltaire of our times – he is outrageous to provoke a reaction in people.  Sacks notes that he has great respect for Dawkins but deep down he likes him and, on that basis, he agreed to the conversation.  Two people that respect each other can meet together.

It does little or no good and probably does harm when people talk at each other and try to convince the other that they are wrong and you are right.  We need to be able to meet not with ‘the other’ but with an ‘other’ – person to person to understand and yes even love not despite who they are but because of who they are.  This may seem impossible but with the love of God all things are possible.

Blessings on your journey.