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 how the left and right hemispheres of the brain pay attention to the world in two different ways. The left is narrowly focused, analyzing individual things (“analysis” means to “dissect, to pull apart”). Because of this, the left brain often mistakenly thinks it sees the big picture. The right hemisphere on the other hand is broadly vigilant. It is far better at un-covering the big picture, and therefore comprehending wider and broader view of reality.

This doesn’t mean the right hemisphere is superior to the left. Both hemispheres are necessary and play vital roles. . It’s just better equipped to come further into enchanted reality. It does this because it’s better at collaboration. It is only in our right hemisphere that the world “presents” itself to us. The right then transfers our experiences to the left brain, which gets a “re-presented” version of the world. The left hemisphere analyzes, interprets, and returns all of this to the right hemisphere for refinement (the right plays devil’s advocate).

This reciprocating, back-and-forth between the hemispheres hardly happens anymore in the Western world. A bias for the left brain is winning, making us blind to what we don’t see. One example is 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.” The cross is about love, Christ betrothing his Bride. However, beginning with Anselm in the 1100s, a narrower view was introduced: substitutionary atonement. Jesus only paid for our sins on the cross. He didn’t betroth us. That’s law, not love. This view became mainstream in the 1500s.

Jesus did indeed pay for our sins. But if the good news is only 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 one of many reasons that Iain McGilchrist writes, “Western Christianity is active in undermining itself.” Most of us in the Western world don’t start with the right picture regarding the cross our mind. This matters, for, as McGilchrist writes, “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 the Enlightenment Matrix.

In the film, Morpheus recognizes he can’t explain Enlightenment Matrix to someone who’s trapped inside the Enlightenment Matrix. So he asks Neo a question: “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?”  Neo recognizes he can’t. So Morpheus makes him an offer: Take the red pill.

I’m offering you the red pill. Take the blue pill and this stuff I’m writing about 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.