The Right Metaphor

Iain McGilchrist says Western Christianity is undermining itself. C. S. Lewis said something similar. Both cite the same reason. We’re starting with the wrong metaphor.

Last week, I wrote how Lucifer couldn’t come further up into Heaven. So he couldn’t come further in to see what’s at the center the heavens and the earth. Love. Lucifer only saw law. We’re often guilty of the same error. In The Master and His Emissary, Iain McGilchrist tells us why.

McGilchrist describes the differences in function between left and right hemispheres. The left perceives in pieces. Even when it puts the puzzle pieces together, no clear picture emerges. It’s just a bunch of connecting pieces. Or it’s the wrong picture. That’s because the left hemisphere is focused on the familiar and categorizing (outlines, bullet points).

The right brain sees as a whole. It is the source of experiencing and comprehending. The right is better at discovery, the unexpected, metaphor, and the integral nature of things. When it puts the pieces together a wider, bigger picture emerges.

This doesn’t mean the right hemisphere is better than the left. It’s not. It’s just better equipped to come further into enchanted reality. It does this because it’s better at collaboration. The right experiences, sending events to the left brain. The left interprets, returning analyses to the right. The right forms a coherent whole—the bigger picture.

This isn’t happening in the Western world. A bias for the left brain is winning. So we’re blind to what we don’t see, like what happened on the cross. For most of church history, the consensus was that we were betrothed to Christ on what Augustine called “the marriage bed of the cross.” Love. But since the 1500s another viewpoint became mainstream. Substitutionary atonement. On the cross, Christ paid for our sins. Law.

Jesus did pay for our sins. But if the gospel—the good news—is about satisfying the demands of justice so that God could forgive our sins, then there’s no goods news before we fell into sin. Substitutionary atonement theory parallels criminal law, the penal theory of atonement. It blinds Christians to what happened at the cross, where we were betrothed to Jesus, our husband.

This is why McGilchrist says “Western Christianity is active in undermining itself.” We start with the wrong metaphor. “All understanding, whether of the world or even of ourselves, depends on choosing the right metaphor. The metaphor we choose governs what we see.”

The right metaphor is marital love, nuptial union. This is how we come further up, into the One True Heaven. We can then come further in, to love, to why we exist, the marital gospel. Marital union is the central organizing metaphor for the gospel. It’s the portal into enchanted reality.

And so I am asking you to come further up and further in. Ransom took this trip, but he was kidnapped. I can’t do that (something about the law). You can read The Chronicles of Narnia. Tumnus the fawn tells Lucy, “The further up and further in you go, the bigger everything gets.”

Or you can take the red pill. I believe I took it in 1995. I had been a pastor for several years. But I sensed something was off in the American church. So I resigned. The next week, I met Dallas Willard. He became a mentor. A few years later, in 1999, I saw him as my Morpheus.

That was the year “The Matrix” was released. Written by Larry and Andy Wachowski, it’s the story of the human race being blind to its error. When the Wachowski’s agent first read the manuscript, he got all excited. They’d written a script about Descartes. The Enlightenment.

Inside the Enlightenment Matrix, we’re blind to the big picture. We don’t come further up, so we don’t come further in. It’s no coincidence the cross was reduced to law at the same time that the Enlightenment shrouded the Western world. We unknowingly operate inside a matrix.

Morpheus knows he can’t explain this to someone inside the Matrix. So he makes an offer: “Have you ever had a dream, Neo, that you seemed so sure it was real? But if we’re unable to wake up, how would you tell the difference between the dream world and the real world?”

You can’t. Neo can’t. So Morpheus makes Neo an offer Neo: Take the red pill.

I’m offering you the red pill. Take the blue pill and this all goes away. Take the red pill and you wake up in the real world. We begin to come further up.

But that’s next week. For now, a reminder if you’re newly subscribed. This series, further up and further in, began on February 10^th. Might want to start there.