A fantastic quote from CS Lewis:
I suggest two rules for exegetics: (1) Never take the images literally. (2) When the purport of the images--what they say to our fear and hope and will and affections--seems to conflict with the theological abstractions, trust the purport of the image every time. For our abstract thinking is itself a tissue of analogies: a continual modelling of spiritual reality in legal or chemical or mechanical terms. Are these likely to be more adequate than the sensuous, organic, and personal images of Scripture--light and darkness, river and well, seed and harvest, master and servant, hen and chickens, father and child? The footprints of the Divine are more visible in that rich soil than across rocks or slag-heaps. Hence what they now call "demythologising" Christianity can easily be "re-mythologising" it--and substituting a poorer mythology for a richer.--Letters to Malcolm, Chiefly on Prayer
This lands right on the "Mythic" of "Mythic Reality," my friends.
First some terms...
Exegetics: the interpretation of scripture. Sounds to me like he's referring those who would try to interpret scripture for us, rather than the activity itself.
Purport: the meaning or sense of a thing.
Examples of "legal or chemical or mechanical terms": Forgiveness, judgment, debt, reconciliation, punishment, condemnation, regeneration, sanctification, purity.
Examples of sensuous, organic, and personal images: light, darkness, rivers, wells, seeds, harvest, master, servant, hens and chicks, fathers and children, compasses, trees, flowers, back porches, mothers, moonshine, wrinkles, etc. On and on the list goes.
This is what we spend our time doing here. Adding to the list of sensual, organic and personal images that Lewis names in his own list--the list God started long, long ago. Funny, but He's been using this imagery since He imagined and then spoke light into existence.
These kinds of images are all around us, and, I believe God is still speaking to us through them today.
I heard a quote by an African leader this week that struck me in the terms he used to express his thought. Here's what he said, "...some people...are content to curse the darkness, while making absolutely no effort to light the candle!" He could have chosen to explain himself in political terms, but he chose (like many from African cultures tend to do) a picture, an analogy, to do his explaining.
Exactly like Jesus did. Exactly like Jehovah did...
This is the word that came to Jeremiah from the LORD: "Go down to the potter's house, and there I will give you my message." So I went down to the potter's house, and I saw him working at the wheel...This is still happening, my friends.
May we learn again to speak to one another in this language of the heart. May we remember that the Truth is alive.
