Mystical Limpets and Metaphors

Our God is a metaphor.

It is all that we know of Him. He is a puzzling reflection in a mirror. A verbal imagery, an incomplete explanation. A story that we tell to each other and to ourselves.

It's a true story, a true image and true reflection. But our eyes can't see it completely, our ears don't hear Him perfectly and our minds can't comprehend Him in His totality.

1 Corinthians 13:12 (NLT and KJV)

There are more colors in the universe than the human eye can really see. Sounds that our ears can't hear. And there is so much more in God than we can ever understand on this earth.

According to Wikipedia "A metaphor is a figure of speech that identifies something as being the same as some unrelated thing for rhetorical effect, thus highlighting the similarities between the two."

We say God is love. God is life. He is the bread of life. He is the living water. He is the Word. He Is.

We describe Him through what we know is good, worthy and noble.

C. S. Lewis has an interesting story. He talks about the way the limpets and limpet mystic would understand what is a man in his book Miracles.

"Let us suppose a mystical limpet, a sage among limpets, who (rapt in vision) catches a glimpse of what Man is like. In reporting it to his disciples, who have some vision themselves (though less than he) he will have to use many negatives. He will have to tell them that Man has no shell, is not attached to a rock, is not surrounded by water. And his disciples, having a little vision of their own to help them, do get some idea of Man. But then there come erudite limpets, limpets who write histories of philosophy and give lectures on comparative religion, and who have never had any vision of their own. What they get out of the prophetic limpet’s words is simply and solely the negatives. From these, uncorrected by any positive insight, they build up a picture of Man as a sort of amorphous jelly (he has no shell) existing nowhere in particular (he is not attached to a rock) and never taking nourishment (there is no water to drift it towards him). And having a traditional reverence for Man they conclude that to be a famished jelly in a dimensionless void is the supreme mode of existence, and reject as crude, materialistic superstition any doctrine which would attribute to Man a definite shape, a structure, and organs."

"Our own situation is much like that of the erudite limpets. Great prophets and saints have an intuition of God which is positive and concrete in the highest degree. Because, just touching the fringes of His being, they have seen that He is plenitude of life and energy and joy, therefore (and for no other reason) they have to pronounce that He transcends those limitations which we call personality, passion, change, materiality, and the like. The positive quality in Him which repels these limitations is their only ground for all the negatives. But when we come limping after and try to construct an intellectual or ‘enlightened’ religion, we take over these negatives (infinite, immaterial, impassible, immutable, etc.) and use them unchecked by any positive intuition. At each step we have to strip off from our idea of God some human attribute. But the only real reason for stripping off the human attribute is to make room for putting in some positive divine attribute. In St Paul’s language, the purpose of all this unclothing is not that our idea of God should reach nakedness but that it should be reclothed. But unhappily we have no means of doing the reclothing. When we have removed from our idea of God some puny human characteristic, we (as merely erudite or intelligent enquirers) have no resources from which to supply that blindingly real and concrete attribute of Deity which ought to replace it. Thus at each step in the process of refinement our idea of God contains less, and the fatal pictures come in (an endless, silent sea, an empty sky beyond all stars, a dome of white radiance) and we reach at last mere zero and worship a nonentity."

What can we do?

Accept that our God is a metaphor? Strip Him of all this human made images, stories and attributes? Leave Him empty and naked, a nonentity like C. S. Lewis says?

The Bible doesn't tell us everything about God. It doesn't tell the whole truth of God or even the universe. But it tells us everything we need to know. And it tells it in a way we can understand it.

We are told stories and metaphors. Because we now only see as a puzzling reflection and one day we will be able to see everything with perfect clarity and know everything completely.