Most readers will have guessed from my wanderings that I’m on the back nine of life. As I made the turn, I hoped to make more birdies on the way home than I did on the outward nine. It depends, of course, on who’s keeping score but on m my card I’m about even par with a few tough finishing holes ahead. Now you know something else about me. I’m very big on metaphors.
In the May 15 instalment, after testing my spindly little thesis against the wisdom of others whose lives have led deeper into theological thickets than I have dared to go, I offered some thoughts about the prospects for life after death and concluded that I needed some cramming before the final exam.
The keeper of the great Presbyterian Record gates thought that I made a valiant first attempt at grasping Surprised by Hope, (the book by Anglican Bishop N.T. Wright a minister friend had recommended to air my studies) but suggested I take a mulligan. Enough with the golf metaphors awready!
“You’ve chosen something but you’re not sure about it,” he added. Not sure about life after death? I guess so! Only one guy’s reported to have been there and come back, and even those accounts are disputed by some. The rest of us, since our ancestors first stood on two legs and stared at the stars, have wondered what awaits us, but because I started down this path lets explore a little further. I might even – good grief! – learn something.
I should approach this in three parts. First, to my suggestion that much of the Biblical drama is metaphor, my respected minister friend maintains that the disciples weren’t bright enough to dream up a fictitious resurrection and referred me to John Updike’s poem in which he pleads “let us not mock God with metaphor.”
Perhaps we should not, but myth, metaphor, legend, art and even ritual can often more tellingly capture truth than reason and journalistic reportage. For example, fictional figures from Don Quixote to Hamlet to David Copperfield to Clint Eastwood’s Walt Kowalski in Gran Torino – “Get off my lawn.” – tell us more about our human hopes, fears and dreams than any history book or newspaper. In fact, they’re more real than some real people I know.
Contemporary journalism has given up as impossible the attempt to be objective. Biochemistry can objectively explain the life cycle of a rose and neurologists can see brain segments lit up by emotion, but only poetry can capture what the heart knows beyond words.
”Oh my luve is like a red, red rose,
That’s newly sprung in June.”
The early books of the Old Testament are clearly legendary oral tales handed down through generations until somebody scratched them on papyrus. Does it matter if, say, Job actually lived? It is the revelation of the New Testament that probably creates the widest chasms between the camp defending metaphor and those who claim historical realism. My reverend friend might want to go 10 theological rounds with Bishop Wright on his quote: “It is, of course, only through imagery, through metaphor and symbol, that we can imagine the new world that God intends to make.” I’d pay to see that.
My problem with the metaphorical-versus-literal interpretations is that I have difficulty in believing that it especially matters in our search for the God of extravagant grace and love Christians have sought through the centuries since that grim day on Calvary. This God touches my heart and my spirit. I know He is there, but I can’t prove it. Maybe I am among those Bishop Wright characterizes as “muddled and misguided” or maybe I just don’t have the secret theological decoder ring but if I choose the literal route I face questions I cannot answer. What exactly is this eternal life, this rebirth that enthrals Paul? Only spiritual? Or long-buried or cremated bodies reassembled? Why did God choose this tiny planet orbiting a sun among millions in our galaxy, itself one of billions in the universe He created? Some can take the answers on faith but that has proven to be a leap too far for me.
Next time I tee it up I’ll take a swing at the resurrection hope expressed by Bishop Wright and try, as the university profs say, to compare and contrast his answers with those of another Anglican bishop who causes nervous palpitations among many men of the cloth, John Shelby Spong.
