Metaphor vs. Cliche

So, I recently had a five hour layover in Dallas. For some reason I started thinking about how much I can't stand it when Christians (including myself) speaking in cliches. I guess long layovers in airports are good for random thoughts. Long layovers in airports are also good for writing those random thoughts down. These thoughts might be good. They might be bad. Sitting in a coffee shop in an airport, they seemed brilliant - but probably the same type of brilliance that every college student enjoys while writing a research paper at three in the morning only to wake up the next day and realize that there's a reason why papers shouldn't be written at three in the morning. Regardless, I thought I'd share. (I've not edited for typos or anything, so...be nice.)

Easy clichés are utterly useless as a strategy for effectively communicating anything. Standing opposite of clichés are metaphors. Metaphors are expansive in their meaning. A good metaphor put into effective use can open up an exciting realm of possible meanings. Simply say that the Lord is a good Shepherd and our imaginations run wild with the implications. God is resolutely concerned for me and us – his sheep, his flock. And he puts that concern to work in manifold ways limited only by our imagination and time. This is the beauty of metaphor – to say so much with such an economy of words. Metaphor is absolutely necessary for communication. That is, if a person desires to communicate anything of substance, of meaning, of mystery. Those unhappy souls who insist on strict literalism or who remain blindly skeptical of anything that lies beyond pure scientific “fact” have doomed themselves to a life free from the painful joys of love, the mysterious attraction that exists between men and great bodies of water, or even the happy nostalgia that accompanies a night at the ballpark. Abandon metaphor and God won’t be far behind. Metaphors acknowledge our limitations, our humanness – that there are certain things that go beyond our ability to neatly or literally try to explain them. Certainly this must be true about a sovereign God. To say that we can only approach God through the veil of metaphor is not to say that God somehow doesn’t exist in reality – as if empiricism can tell us more than a fraction about reality. It is also not to say that God has not acted historically in a meaningful way, specifically through his Son. No, it is an acknowledgment that our understanding of God must always be imaginative. We cannot domesticate God with lazy literalism or stale systems of theology. Even the historical actions of God are understood through pictures and metaphors. You need to look no further than the cup of the Eucharist for proof. This is certainly why music and lyrics have always been an important part of religious expression – especially in the Judeo-Christian heritage – a heritage that insists on both the otherness and the nearness of God.


But clichés. If metaphors are expansive in meaning, clichés constrict meaning. Clichés actually manage to say less than their literal meaning. Both clichés and metaphor are succinct, but their effect is completely different. Metaphors advance conversation. Metaphors can successfully remain relevant and meaningful across the centuries and across the spectrum of cultures. Think about the number of cultures around the world from mountain villages in northern Europe to rice plantations in the Philippines who have had their imaginations captured by the notion that their sins may be made white as snow. Clichés are just as succinct, but rather than inspiring imaginative conversation they actually suffocate conversation. Rather than being disclosing truth, clichés actually obscure it.

Maybe an illustration will help. Clichés are the trade language of professional athletes and coaches everywhere. I often wonder if somewhere in the class schedule of the average division one athlete there is a course labeled: LA 110 – Sport Speak: A course offered specifically for the current or aspiring athlete. This course will instruct students in all of the latest techniques and approaches to speaking the language of sport. Upon the completion of this course, the student will be equipped to speak while saying absolutely nothing of substance. Final exams will consist in a press conference in front of real, professional journalists. If you are a sports fan, you have at some point been frustrated by the uselessness of the sports cliché. A critical game has just concluded. Your appetite for the game isn’t satisfied by the game alone. You want to know more. You want a behind-the-scenes explanation of exactly what went right or (what is most often the case for my teams) wrong. A reporter in the front row asks what sounds to you like a very good question – a question that you might have asked. “What exactly happened at the end of the third quarter that allowed you to start working your way back from that 10-point deficit? Was it a change in the defense or was it something that you saw the other team doing?” This is the point where all the hours in Sports Speak training pay off – and if it is a professional athlete they are almost admirably fluent in the language. (Perhaps the only profession more accomplished in the art of the cliché is the professional politician.) The original question is lost in an avalanche of sports cliché. All Sports Speak will hit on one or usually a combination of these themes: 1) a reference to something that their coach said to them which is supposed to sound inspiring but to those of us at home sounds incredibly obvious, 2) some sort of reference to the need for perseverance using vaguely militaristic terms like fighting or battling, 3) a mention of the importance of teamwork, 4) a compliment to the other team for their effort using some of the same terms from number 2 above – a compliment that usually manages to sound both empty and patronizing at the same time, 5) finally, we may be treated to the observation that this was in fact just one game in the midst of a season full of games that can only be played one at a time. Usually, this is preceded by the reminder that such a wise observation can only be properly made “at the end of the day.”

Maybe it is because the athlete wants to protect his team’s secrets. Maybe it is because he doesn’t want to sound ungracious in victory or defeat. Or maybe (more likely) he’s just being lazy and doesn’t feel like offering a thoughtful response. Regardless of the reason, the desired effect is almost always achieved unless the reporters that day happen to be unusually aggressive or ornery. The cliché has effectively killed the conversation. The cliché leaves no room for further imagination or explanation. Everything has been said. And nothing has been said. A cliché is a linguistic mirage. It appears at first to offer something of substance and meaning, but upon closer examination it is empty and frustrating. And often misleading.

Unfortunately too many of us have turned into that professional athlete/politician who is only capable or desirous to speak in clichéd sound bites when it comes to God. Rather than capturing the imagination or inspiring conversation we stifle both with cheap religious sounding clichés.

Christian cliché runs the spectrum from 1) the ridiculous and cheesy – pretty much every Christian t-shirt or church sign you’ve ever seen. Seriously, how does it help anyone to point out that there is “no stop, drop, or roll in Hell.” Has this ever worked as an evangelistic strategy? 2) the question-begging – “The Bible says it. I believe it. That settles it.” “Whenever God shuts a door, He opens a window.” Or my personal favorite – “It’s not a religion. It’s a relationship.” If you’ve been around Christians for very long at all you have heard one or all of these types of statements. They are intended to be declarative, “clinching” statements, but they are actually very misleading in their supposed simplicity. 3) the out-of-context” – Who hasn’t heard a Christian turn verses like Philippians 4:13 or Matthew 18:20 or Proverbs 22:6 into cheap clichés by taking them out of context and using them for his own immediate needs?

When I speak as a Christian, I will have to learn to speak in the language of metaphor if I am going to speak rightly of God (or of Jesus, the Holy Spirit, eschatology, salvation, etc.) – admittedly not an easy language to learn, and, like any language, is spoken better by some than others. Some metaphors are silly. Some are misleading or easily misunderstood. Many are not even biblical in their allusion and reflect more our contemporary desires for God than the biblical testimony of God. Nevertheless, we must learn to employ metaphor and well if we desire to speak of God (or to God for that matter).

Kant and Enlightenment Hermeneutics

For Kant practical reason provided the framework of categories for theology and also for christology. Anything "which is of no practical use" does not concern us. "Scripture texts which contain certain theoretical doctrines stated to be sacred, but surpassing every conception of reason (even of moral reason) may be expounded for the benefit of the practical reason, while those which conflict with practical reason must be so expounded." The doctrine of the Trinity "offers absolutely nothing of practical us...And the same is true of the doctrine of the incarnation of one divine person." Something similar can be said of the stories of the resurrection and the ascension. For "articles of faith do not mean what ought to be believed...but what for practical (moral) purposes it is practical and useful to accept, even though it may not be possible to prove it, but only to believe it." Thus the revelation of God can only be what is in agreement with what reason understands to be "appropriate to God." "In this way all expositions of scripture, in so far as they concern religion, must be made in accordance with the principle of morality intended in revelation, and without this are either in practice empty or even hindrances to good." For we understand only him who speaks with us through our own understanding and our own reason. Therefore "the God in us", i.e. the free conscience, is "himself the interpreter."

In Moltmann, The Crucified God (New York: Harper and Row, 1973), 93-94.