O Mighty Metaphor: Models and Beyond

Oh, the wisdom of Veggie Tales. A generation was shaped by those adorable talking produce items and I’m pretty sure the parents who had plugged the VHS videocassette in were occasionally struck by the humor-wrapped life lessons—at least the first few times through. For my parenting part, a less noticed Veggie Tale episode became a classic: the story of St. Patrick. I was always interested in Patrick’s transformation of Ireland and had watched every Liam Neeson narrated documentary out there, but then decided that the Veggie Tales 8 ½ minute summary of the historical Patrick was basically, as David Letterman used to say, “all you need to know”! Talk about postmodern blurring of genres—there ya go—stunning truth from animated produce! (And, like all good things, it’s now on YouTube if you are interested.)

While there are many profound things to be said about Patrick’s story that apply to us all, the treasure I took away from that video—lateral thinker that I am—was a truth about humanity that really had nothing to do with him. Veggie Tales had introduced the pre-Christian pagan religion of the Irish people via a scene in which their leader held up a tree branch while the cartoon characters gathered round chanting, “Oh mighty twig.” When Patrick famously used the shamrock to teach the Irish people about the Trinity—you remember: 3 leaves = Father, Son and Holy Spirit—those same cartooned Irish switch to, “O mighty shamrock.” (It was the Veggie Tales comment on the challenges of cross-cultural missions!) Patrick quickly counters with the correction: NO! It’s a metaphor! And then comes the treasure: the worshipping Irish are definitely not yet reached and respond with, “O mighty metaphor!!!!” I don’t care who you are—that’s funny---and genius!

We are worshipping creatures but we are also what I call, “rapid-attachers”! We are so desperate for understanding that we latch on instantly to explanations, steps, procedures, metaphors and MODELS that seem to promise us control of those things in life we can’t see and touch! Models of the unseen—metaphors and beyond—are incredibly useful—until they’re not! They are, after all, just models. They point to broader realities to aid us in the unseen dance with Truth! But they are NOT actually the reality! If we start to simply “work the model,” we have lost the point entirely—and our dance becomes drudgery indeed. We are far too “sticky” when it comes to reasonable explanations and we pay a heart-price for it!

There are amazing laws and principles surrounding the topic of faith and many of them are grounded in Scripture—and helpful. Steps like “believe you receive” and then “rejoice before you see it” are part of a model that swept through the Christian consciousness in the 70’s so thoroughly that the medical community noticed the benefits of positive affirmation and “faith-based” support. There is nothing wrong with having steps and principles. There is everything wrong with letting it end there—worshipping the model so much so that you forget the broader picture of reality to which it was pointing! Principles of faith are so profoundly much more than “name it; claim it”—they are mere portals into a veritable world of available possibilities—almost the least of which is actually receiving the goal on earth! We were meant to live in a realm of “more than meets the eye,” and the meeting of our needs is the doorway into far more provision than the narrow peephole that got us in! The swirling kaleidoscope of God-stuff in dynamic, exciting motion is where we are meant to live! The model is not the point—it is merely the point of departure! We can enjoy the instruction, but we need not get stuck at, “O mighty model.”

Consider the atom. In school, we learned a model of these smallest (well sort of smallest—there are smaller, it turns out) building blocks of matter. The simple circle with protons and neutrons in the middle and electrons orbiting in perfectly concentric energy levels around is beautiful—and comforting—and seems controllable and completely explanatory. If you took college chemistry you will know that this simple model was vital to understanding what elements would do in a chemical reaction. It gave you an A in the course if you could translate that model into action on the test and in the lab. However, if you took college chemistry, you also had to learn what that simple model couldn’t do!

It turns out that electrons and protons seem to have a whole other life that the model was hiding: they exist more as probabilities than “particles” as we know them, and manifest as energy waves more than discrete points in space! In fact, as Dr. Heisenberg helped us understand, we lose a portion of what we get to know about a particle when we try to pin it down! The more “accurate” model of the atom which is taught in high school now features electrons not as “dots” but “probability clouds”---regions where it is likely that a concentration of energy we know as an electron might occur—hazy clouds of minute and fleeting pixilation rather than the neatly orbiting black sphere! The quantum message seems to be that the atomic truth is accessed by simple models but not at all defined by them!

And isn’t that just like life? When we were younger in our faith and our journeying, we got excited about the ability to understand and work the principles! Our models of reality gave us hope, as well they should! Whatever had come into your heart and inspired you did its work well if you marched forward with a God-induced smile on your face and a confidence about your role in the world! But, when the “dots” on your diagram seem more like “clouds,” you will then be called to temporarily—like Abraham with Isaac—lay your model on the altar for the receiving of a larger AND LESS TIDY grasp of reality! At that moment, we discover whether or not we have begun to say, “O mighty model”!

God is never against simplification. He gives models so we can relate to unseen realities. But He might be against that which is simplistic! Our need to control and over-define hurts others and ourselves. Our narrow definitions of success and acceptability spawn legalism and judgment that do not belong in the kingdom of this particular benevolent King!

Jesus was the Master Communicator. He told stories (that we call parables) to invite people into His the heavenly vision of unseen reality. Stories are living models. They are truths with people-handles on them. Jesus’ stories prevented His truth from becoming sterile or clinical by earthing it in gritty real-time experience, closing the gap between a far away heaven and a messed up earth. One of the most “model-like” stories Jesus told was the parable of the seed and the soil. Four kinds of soil each receive the seed of the word of God differently, and therefore yield vastly different results. (And people have taught that throughout the centuries with the numbers 1, 2, 3, and 4 attached—bullet points long before there were PowerPoint slides.) But, the whole point of that parable—the whole key to the model—is a quality of HEART—which everyone knows is more a “cloud” than a “dot”! There is no literal chemical analysis of the soil that receives the seed—no machine that will give you a printout of the technical condition of the heart! Instead, while showing us there are reasons for things, Jesus points us back to the openness and trust that makes the dance with the Unseen work in the first place! Take heed to the condition of your heart and you’ve got the point of the metaphor! You won’t be saying, “O mighty metaphor” but, “O mighty Truth”!

Renee Magritte, the Belgian surrealist painter, was not all that surreal in his thinking. His painting, The Treachery of Images features a very real image of a pipe with a phrase in French underneath that translates to, “This is not a pipe.” Was he being cute or ironical? No—he was making a statement that the image of the object is NOT the actual object! He proposed that if, while looking at this painting, you believed it was a pipe and tried to stuff if with tobacco, you would be immediately educated: This is not a pipe. If you like pipes, look at it, but please don’t attempt lighting it: you will only have a canvas on fire! The treachery of images is that they won’t “smoke” in real life! If a pipe is your real desire, let the image—or the model—point you to action and go find the real thing!

Faith is a big reality. We need models. They work like magic to inspire us. But let us guard against our tendency to camp out on them and fight for their universality. They are PORTALS INTO BROADER EXPERIENCE, which is the whole point in the first place. Faith is an experience that is meant to “melt into wonder” daily as we dance with it. When we remember that the models are only necessary wardrobes into the Narnia beyond, we will be able to keep our experience fresh and flowing, children of a good, giving God who cooperate with spiritual realities in open-hearted adventurous expectation. I’ll stop here before I sound completely like the Message Bible reworded! After all, even this article is just pointing to something far beyond: Go out in search of THAT!