[A Christian] does not think God will love us because we are good, but that God will make us good because He loves us; just as the roof of a greenhouse does not attract the sun because it is bright, but becomes bright because the sun shines on it.                                         -C. S. Lewis

I read C. S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity today for the first time.  Besides the Chronicles of Narnia, I must admit this was the first of his writings I have read.  Some probably consider it blasphemy to have called oneself a Christian for so long without knowing his work through and through.  It’s just that I get suspicious of authors who acquire the sort of universal admiration that he has acquired.  Something about it seems squirrely.  The thing about Lewis, though, is that he actually deserves it.  I discovered I had been missing out on an extraordinary writer – the way he turns the most difficult notions into seemingly obvious matters of fact is the stuff that makes my skin tingle.

His real gift is the ability to craft compelling images to explain complex ideas.  One might call these…”metaphors.”  Every time I thought his magical bag of metaphors must be nearly empty, he would whip out a “Human instincts are the piano keys to our sheet music of moral laws” or “Man’s conception of time is a line on the sheet of paper of God’s time” (paraphrased).  Considering that Narnia is just one giant ball of symbolism, I guess it makes sense that Mere Christianity would rely heavily on metaphors.

I envy him, too.  Because me trying to write powerful metaphors is like a one-legged ferret trying to juggle knives.

He is not, by any means, the first to do this.  Every religion uses metaphors when talking about God.  I think we do it for one of two reasons.  Either (1) the idea that the metaphor represents is difficult to put into words or (2) the idea that the metaphor represents is impossible to put into words.  The first is a standard literary use of metaphors.  The second is a theological statement.

What I am talking about is the concept of “ineffability.”  I first encountered this word in the context of mystical experiences, which are usually some sort of alleged direct contact or union with God by an individual.  Clearly, no matter how articulate one is, it would be impossible to fully describe this type of experience.  It is, in a word, ineffable.

In mainstream circles, most leaders of the monotheistic religions affirm that God is ineffable.  We attach all sorts of names to God – “Creator,” “Lord,” “King of Kings,” “Father,” “Light from Light,” – but they are only ways of describing different characteristics we think we know about God.  God is a “Creator,” but when we try to picture what that means…we have to resort to more metaphors (e.g. “Potter”).  God is “Lord” or “King,” but these are just the closest human terms our ancestors could think of to depict God’s total authority.  God is like a “Father,” but God is also like a woman in labor (Isaiah 42:14), a mother suckling her children (Numbers 11:12), or like a woman searching for a lost coin (Luke 15:8-10).  God is like “Light,” but there is also a deep darkness to God.

My point is this.  Metaphors are useful, but only to a point.  Even Lewis recognizes the limitations of his images:  “But, of course, none of these illustrations really works perfectly. In the long run God is no one but Himself.”  As the pastor at my current Presbyterian church said yesterday, “If we choose just one of these images, God becomes ‘less than.'”  Less than indescribable.  Less than ineffable.  Less than…God.

On a practical level, also, I think we need to be careful about the images we use to describe God.  God may be like a king in the sense that all authority ultimately rests in God, but kings also tend to rule by force.  Does this metaphor now give us the right to become soldiers for our metaphorical king and use force to convert others?  That’s what the Crusaders thought.

God may be like a father in the sense that we come from God, God loves us, and God cares deeply about what happens to us.  Does that, in turn, mean that fathers are more like God than mothers?  That they are made more in the image of God than women?  This is precisely the hierarchical organization of gender that churches are only now beginning to overcome.  Also, what if your only experience with fathers has been just rotten?  Is that the kind of father God is?

I don’t want to take away our metaphors.  They are good, useful images for understanding something that we can only catch a glimpse of as It passes us by.  We just need to check ourselves when we start to take them too literally.  It risks turning God into nothing but a mere metaphor.