New metaphors needed

Results of a recent survey aired by the CBC in mid-February show that among Middle and Eastern Europeans, including Russians, 75 to 85 per cent believe in God, while only 53 per cent believe in an afterlife. How to understand the seeming paradox?

I suggest the key may be found in the unconvincing metaphors traditionally used to refer to the afterlife. Our Christian liturgy in the Mass for the Deceased and the burial ritual have canonized the metaphor "eternal rest." But reflection on this image becomes unbearable, frightening. And eternity of rest? Best not to think about it.

St. Thomas Aquinas opens the mind to a far more enticing metaphor. He speaks of God as actus purus, pure act/action. That is, as Aristotle taught, the fullness of being, the Supreme Good that attracts all to itself as beginning and end of all things. The Latin phrase corresponds to the Greek term energeia, energy. God is simply energy that manifests itself in creation. As the cosmos--and supremely humankind--are made to the image and likeness of God, our natural destiny is not to "rest," but to be eternally creative--a dynamic that inevitably surpasses the categories of finite human thought.

It follows that the traditional metaphor of heaven as our destined resting place fails to convey the dynamism of creating all things new. Literally, heaven obviously means the heavens, the sky that is up there, whereas hell is a state down there.

Such directional imagery arises from the cosmology of thousands of years ago and is now totally out-moded by our modern sciences of physics and astronomy.

The problem is that we keep on repeating metaphors that have radically lost their meaning. This leads us into a schizophrenic conundrum where we say one thing and mean it's virtual opposite. I say rest, but mean action. I say heaven, but I mean utterly beyond time and place. Like musicians we must transpose our thinking into another key in order to avoid doublespeak or, in effect, to stop telling lies. Otherwise, the metaphor of heaven can degenerate into the absurdity of "pie-in-the-sky in the great by and by" that sometimes surfaces in funeral rhetoric as praising the delights of "the lush, heavenly link!"

What is desperately needed now is the artful creation of new metaphors that synthesize a valid theology and valid science. As David M. Byers succinctly phrases it (America. Feb. 7, 2005), those who seek a faith that "makes sense" are "generally horrified by literalism, recognizing the role that sacraments, symbol and metaphor play in conveying religious truth." These people "want coherence." They "need a creed that does not seem to contradict what they believe to be true on non-religious grounds." Otherwise, Byers notes, traditional Christian imagery "may begin to seem less and less 'realistic' to more and more thoughtful people."

I submit that the term "afterlife" is far superior to "eternal life," because the terms "eternal" and "life" are rooted in a world-centred experience that has no relevance to the reality beyond human death.

How about trying on the bold metaphor of St. Teresa of Avila? Her image envisions that the silkworm "dies" and has become a beautiful butterfly free from its limitations. The little self forgets its limited life in the boundless ocean of life. It is not a death, but a victory over death, a rising and a resurrection. This accords with Gustav Mahler's metaphor in his Songs on the Death of Children: "A little lamp has gone out in my tent. Hail to the joyous light of the world!"

Personally, I like to think of the analogy of the baby being born, driven down the birth canal in unprecedented pain and fear. It "thinks" it is dying out, but in reality, it is coining into the life for which it was created.

Today, we are a gestational people crying out our birth pangs, as we struggle to evoke new and daring metaphors that will take our breath away, assuaging the hunger both of our spirits and our minds, while plumbing the inexhaustible mystery of our being.

Hear Mahler again in his "Symphony No. 2, Resurrection:" "Forget thy trembling! Prepare thyself for life! ... With wings that I have earned in the struggle of love, I shall fly upwards to the light no eye has reached ... And in dying, I shall live!"

Fr. Jim Roberts lives in Burnaby, B.C.

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