God as a metaphor

Well, I’m a fellow who simply delights in atheists and agnostics. I would rather be around a friendly atheist than a grumpy believer any day.

As would I, and technically treating God as a metaphor would be athiestic by many standards.

I am just trying to take this from a stance of comfort while participating in the church. Again, I find great meaning in myth and metaphor within the scriptures, and I often wonder if I took it to the next level and treated God as a metaphor, that may allow me to have a much more pleasurable experience within the church.

I often wonder if I took it to the next level and treated God as a metaphor, that may allow me to have a much more pleasurable experience within the church.

I imagine that would be true of any church, as well.

Agreed.

If I were to participate in any church, a metaphorical treatment of God would be most comfortable for me personally.

It gets complicated though when you become engaged in a theological discussion.

The God-concept is so over simplified in society that a statement of belief in God automatically produces unfounded conclusions in the listeners.

Explanation of belief becomes thorny, and prayers take the form of verbalization of hopes and appreciation instead of pleas for help and intercession.

Among the community here, you will find very little resistance (if any) against seeing God as a metaphor. In the mainstream Church experience, there are some (if not many) that would not “get it” or be comfortable. I think that situation is something we have to become comfortable with on some level. It’s not just our Church but any really. The majority of human adults in the world tend to create a faith image of God in terms of a reciprocal relationship or a personal relationship with a defined being (anthropomorphic to some extent or another). In Fowler terms, it will be something like this:

Stage 2 adults (reciprocal relation): Obey God, do good works, have faith, God will then do good things for them (protection, bless, etc.). Do bad and God will do mean things to them.

Stage 3: adults (personal relation): God loves us and is like a parent or friend. God is interested in our day-to-day affairs, helps us find car keys and solves problems for us. If we are bad, he might not love us.

Stage 4 adults (personal concrete definition): God must comply with our new internal truth detector, our expectations of logical and rational behavior.

Stage 5 adults (allow the metaphor to exist and speak its message to us): Not sure here so much, no exact definition anymore. Approach God via different symbolic experiences, both experiencing the transcendent nature and knowing that we are only reaching out through an approximation of the idea of God.

NONE of these is better than another. They are simply different faith images. Whatever functions for a person and brings them happiness and value, whatever works … it works.

I think you make some great points in your list of “pro” points. Paradoxes are much less troubling when we let of our expectation that God must fit into the logic of our personal understanding perfectly. God can be both perfect and progressing, for example, because we recognize that both are just a metaphorical idea or approximation. Both are interesting ideas to ponder, not an exact definition of a certain being. Disappointment (aka happiness) is closely tied to our cherished expectations. Letting go of expectations resolves a lot of inner turmoil and dissonance. I like this approach. It has given me a lot of peace. I just try to observe and ponder. I am ok no longer “knowing” for sure what God is exactly.

All viewpoints lead somewhere interesting IMO.

I huge part of being comfortable in Church, which seems like a major thrust of your OP, is being at peace with other people not seeing this broad perspective. Some people just aren’t there, and they may never be. Is that ok? I try to be ok with that. It’s easier said than done sometimes, but I think this is a “divine” characteristic, a characteristic of love and acceptance of others as they are.

Some names and images I like for God:

-The First Cause (in relationship to the natural world)

-The good

-That which encourages progress and evolution (both personal evolution and on the meta level of society and life)

-I also like to think of everyone as a splinter of the consciousness of God. We are God, in essence, experiencing a multitude of life.

I personally find that a metaphorical view of God resolves a lot of problems in scripture.

In response to your question ponder this: “Just” a metaphor? Could a “metaphor” become more powerful than you have ever imagined? Could the concept “grow” to something greater? (You can’t confine what you can’t completely define.)

Very true. “Just” may be an inappropriate term. If that metaphor is powerful enough to move and inspire in a positive direction, than it no longer is “just” a metaphor.

Metaphor doesn’t have to be divorced from the real.

Good point!

“something used to represent something else; emblem; symbol.”

Metaphors are used to represent something else, but the thing being represented by the metaphor often is “real”. Thus, I don’t see God as a metaphor; I see how we describe God as our best guess as to what God is like. Our descriptions, therefore, are emblematic and symbolic. They are metaphors.

If someone describes God as an authoritarian dictator who demands obedience and punishes every mistake, that description represents a desperate need for security and order. It is symbolic of what that person needs or wants most at that moment – or simply what that person was taught as a child and what was needed by the person who originally formulated that particular metaphor. Calvinism’s extremity God of hardcore predestination is that metaphor on steroids – as it posits God as the great puppeteer and barbecue master. Yes, it’s a metaphor (and, yes, I loathe that particular metaphor) – but it’s grounded in Calvin’s perception of reality.

If there really is a God, or if there really is godhood, or if there really is some type of higher consciousness and never-ending existence, the metaphors we use to talk of God are based in reality to some degree. The only way that our metaphors are not “real” in some extra-worldly way is if our existence ends when we die as mortals. That simply doesn’t resonate with me AT ALL, so I choose to believe that our metaphors of God (the ways we construct our descriptions of the divine) are based on reality – even if they are drawn while looking through a glass, darkly.

I understand, SofD. (Seemed better than SOD ) I chose to look at one side in the way I answered; you are looking at the other side. The core conclusion, however, is the same.