On metaphors, analogies, and rigid thinking

Three recent conversations reminded me of the importance of moving away from ways of thinking that lead us toward “naïve understanding” and of the necessity of working toward a more critical way of thinking about matters of importance. In one instance, a person seemed to have gotten stuck in a loop she could not get out of in dealing with an issue because she could not move beyond saying, “But the Bible says…” In another, a minister was trying to explain the need to address certain dynamics by using the analogy of a bus. Specifically, he tried to explain the necessity of getting the right dynamic on the right seat on the bus—in this case, “in the driver’s seat.” The third conversation was with a layperson that is having a difficult time with a congregational crisis. She would say over and again, “We’re supposed to be a family. How people act this way?”

Metaphors can be powerful conceptual tools, and at times, may be necessary to help us conceptualize and understand concepts, which are abstract. But I find irksome the current (at least, it appears to me to be current) trend in the over-use of metaphor. Witness the annoying penchant for it that creeps into the language of many current books on church and congregations (“aqua-church”, “tsunami”, “future-church”, “breakout,” “deliberate,” “emergent,” etc., etc., ad nausea).

The reason this matters is that when trying to UNDERSTAND a concept at the level of “deep understanding,” one needs to avoid three things: anthropomorphic explanations, ontological explanations, and normative explanations. Additionally, one needs to distinguish between REASON (the “reasons” people come up with for why something is so, usually, these are ascribed and subjective) and CAUSE. In other words, the reasons people ascribe as to WHY something is often is disconnected from the actual CAUSE of why something comes about. Hence, people try to address the wrong issue, solve the wrong problem, and ascribe influence or causality to the wrong thing.

Metaphors serve as a good first step to “getting it,” by bridging the unfamiliar-abstract with the familiar-concrete, but you can’t leave people there. If you do, you breed and perpetuate misunderstandings (A church is not a family. The Bible does not “say” anything) . You have to work at getting them to achieve “deep understanding,” and at a certain point, that requires that you leave the metaphors behind. All metaphors break down at some point, and some, sooner than later. In the case of the minister trying to explain forces by saying it was “in the front seat of the bus,” he was ascribing will, consciousness, and agency to a “force”. But that’s just not TRUE of forces.

Metaphorical thinking is only ONE way of conceptualizing. It’s a helpful one, but not for ALL kinds of conceptualizations. Some ways of thinking require that one access the abstract concepts directly, think more critically, and be more rigid in the use of language.

“If at first you don’t succeed, skydiving is not for you.”