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.