The Power of a Changed Perspective
Well-crafted metaphors contain transformative potential. Language communicates information, but metaphors engage the whole person, inviting us to alter the way we perceive the world. We rely on metaphors even when we don’t realize it. Our language is unavoidably metaphorical. Rarely does a sentence leave our mouths that doesn’t reference one thing to help us make sense of another.
For example, Joy Marie Clarkson articulates the dominance of the machine metaphor in everyday conversation: “We describe ourselves processing something like a hard drive whirring away. . . we need to update each other about life events like new software. We adjust to new circumstances like a car whose tires need to be rotated; people push our buttons; we need to power down so we can recharge. When we don’t understand something, we might say it does not compute. When someone has been influenced to think or behave in a certain way, we say that they were programmed to trust authority. We might describe ourselves as a slow processor. This metaphor can even be a compliment: of someone who is particularly productive we often say they are a machine.”
Good metaphors can help us; bad ones may harm us. Rather than opening up life’s full potential, the wrong metaphor may instead zap life of its meaning and satisfaction.
The Bible provides us with many life-giving metaphors to live by. We are branches on the vine of Christ. Life is a war, a race, and a journey. We exist as members of the body of Christ, called to serve as salt and light in the world. We must remember that our citizenship is in heaven, not on earth. Metaphorical living isn’t optional; faithfulness depends on connecting our imaginations to the right ones.
Recently, I realized that three metaphors have shaped me profoundly at various times in my life. As I meditated on the meaning of each one, I further realized that all three use different images to communicate nearly identical concepts.
In university studies, I first encountered the allegory of Plato’s cave. The philosopher Plato described men chained within a cave, facing a wall and unable to turn their heads to see behind them. However, behind them real people exist in front of a fire, projecting shadows onto the wall. Only able to see shadows, the chained prisoners adapt their perception of reality to what they can see, attributing the sounds they hear to the shadows on the wall. They live in a world of shadows, cut off from the real world outside the cave.
Sometime later I read C. S. Lewis’s “The Weight of Glory” sermon where he described human beings as “half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea.” In Lewis’s analogy, the child settles for the amusements of slum life because he’s unaware of anything better.
Finally, the late novelist David Foster Wallace once began a college commencement address with the following thought experiment: “There are these two young fish swimming along, and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, ‘Morning, boys, how’s the water?’ And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks at the other and goes, ‘What the hell is water?’” Fish, confined to the ocean, can’t imagine anything existing outside of it. In fact, devoid of contrast, they don’t notice the water that makes their lives possible.
These three metaphors have stuck with me because they each powerfully open the possibility of a better future. In Plato’s case, he wanted to inspire his readers to look beyond the forms of appearances into deeper realities often obscured by what our eyes see. Lewis believed that we often settle for less because we can’t imagine the full extent of pleasure God invites his creatures to enjoy in Christ. He believed we are “far too easily pleased.” Wallace wanted to wake graduating students up to reality beyond the assumptions of their culture. What we notice doesn’t exhaust what’s there. The world of our conception often limits us from seeing the greater potential within the world.
What about you? Do you ever feel stuck? Does life sometimes seem like an enclosed system devoid of meaning and significance? Do you feel like you exist in a world of shadows? Have you settled for slum life when God invites you to vacation on the coast? Are you so accustomed to the closed system of the ocean that you can’t imagine anything outside it?
We often respond to these feelings by attempting to escape. We falsely believe that changing our circumstances will fill the meaning void. However, without a more substantive internal change, we will carry the same assumptions into our new circumstances. What if, instead of escaping, we determined to see what’s right in front of us with new eyes? What if we asked God to help us see the same old realities with new assumptions? What if you’re not stuck in your marriage, your job, or your life? What if Christ would rather change your perspective than your circumstances?
“So we do not focus on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal” (2 Cor 4:18).