A Compendium Of Metaphors ~ Campbell

 

It was not until I renounced some of the facticity of my earliest, taught-beliefs, that I finally found a way back to those beliefs. Crawling back, having lost some major battles, I came upon my old Bible, with the pages, like dry, fall leaves, blowing meaninglessly on the table, where all of my plans had been made. I slammed the book shut and there was a sudden, numbing silence. Apart from a slight ringing in my ears, I was convinced that God had nothing more to say. I’d done what I was supposed to do, but my actions were not rewarded. On my way to becoming a popular youth pastor, a Christian singer/songwriter and a board member for several churches, I was tested in ways I never would have even imagined. My grandmother died, a good friend was paralyzed in a car wreck, my wife left me for another, my pastor threatened me, my dog died, I went completely broke, my dad died and then I got cancer. I picked up my Bible again; while the pages turned brown and then to dust. While living in a borrowed basement bedroom of a demolished house, with no money left, all alone, divorced and even sick, I finally started to have serious doubts about the abundance I had been told about. Something was missing; I did not have a more abundant life.

That’s when I started looking under every rock I’d never considered before. Some of my choices were terrible ones, but I was having a serious perception-problem, so I started looking through every window pane I could wipe. At first, this was the most miserable part of my life’s journey. I could not find a single truth. Businesses were more of a struggle and relationships were too. I was like an old computer; crashing every day. I wondered if there was any real truth anywhere. I turned to science. Science was not the same as my earlier, religious paths; there was a completely different rule in science: nothing could be stated as fact unless it was thoroughly tested. This idea appealed to me. In the past, while seeking spiritual fulfillment, I was literally told not to ask too many questions. I was encouraged to stick to the rules established by traditions.

 

Then, almost at once, many of the journals, papers and books I was reading were beginning to seem more and more familiar. I would hear ideas and suggestions I had heard before; only now, they were being tested in labs and there would not be any singing to accompany these newer ideas. It was not something people dressed up for and took their families to see; it was just literature and it was more mysterious and more beautiful than anything I had considered before; except I had considered these ideas. What science was attempting to understand and explain started looking like just like ancient ideas; only devoid of burdensome historicity.

It finally occurred to me that I could take another look at my own, dogmatic ideas of the past, and consider them, one-by-one, for their mythological significance. As myths, one-by-one, the truths began to resurface. Without fact-checking every parable, the meaning of each parable began to harden into fact. It was no longer necessary to find the borrowed tomb of Christ or the actual cave Plato had in mind when he presented his allegory; the meanings have outlasted any historical significance.

This was not disappointing. If it works as a myth and fails as history, then the most valuable lesson may be metaphoric. What if we don’t have to have an Ark, a Chalice, a Cross or a burial cloth? What if the truths are far more significant than the artifacts could ever be?

I never saw the light until I stopped looking for the light. I never heard that perfect whisper – that still, small voice – until I stopped listening to all of the noises. The Notes God has given us are not stories: they are all clues. Everything, from the double helix of DNA to the stars in the sky, is filled with code.

Don’t get me wrong: I am not saying that anything must be a lie or a fact; I am saying that there is always more to it. The Word has an ulterior motive.

I cannot quote him or even recall his name, but I read some advice from one historical researcher who said, “You can go into any town and write down the names of the roads and learn a lot about the town and its history from that starting point.”

I started to look around my own, small town and I considered the names of all the roads. These roads were named after families who first settled in this area. In some cases, the roads are named after minerals found in the area. I only mention this here to point to the underlying significance. If you need to go to a specific place, you may need to go down Holloman Road, but if you want to know what Holloman means, you may need to look elsewhere. In Christianity, you may need a Bible to tell you exactly where Solomon had a temple. But if you want to know how or why he had a temple, you may need to look for potentially deeper significance.

That said, some of the places are undiscoverable today. We can’t really hope to find the black ash from the burning bush that once operated as a speaker for God’s voice, but we could still treat that story as a metaphor to see if it yields a different truth. Doing so does not mean that a story has to be a lie or true; it just means that the story may have a different, potentially more significant message. A clue.

Joseph Campbell helped me to see ancient religions and myths in this way. Owen Barfield, the literal father of the literal Lucy, from The Lion The Witch and The Wardrobe, asks us to consider a rainbow. When I did as he instructed, I could clearly see, for the first time, that a rainbow in the sky for you, may not even appear in the same sky for me. This opened the door for me to consider everything from my own point of view. When I started doing this, I began seeing more significance in everything.

I went right back to the table, where I’d left the pile of dust. There, I found fragments of the very verses I used to read in another way and I started thinking of them metaphorically. One by one, I found each verse to be truer in this newer way.

Maybe Jesus didn’t mean that Peter was a literal rock when he looked at him and said, “I think I will call you Rock.”

Maybe there is a much deeper lesson in all of the reasons why someone like Jesus would refer to someone like Simon as a Rock.

Contrary to entropy and classical physics, the dust and debris started appearing on the table and pages started forming. My old Bible reassembled right before my eyes and that’s when I realized: It is The Word of God.