4. What Hushai Knew: Words
What Hushai Knew: Words
Inescapably, preaching is a work of metaphor.”[1] David Buttrick says this in Homiletic: Moves and Structures, one of the most creative books on preaching that’s been published since H. Grady Davis’ Design for Preaching.[2] Buttrick goes on to say, “Theological meaning must always be embodied in images drawn from life.”[3] Hushai had never read Buttrick’s book, but he followed Buttrick’s principles. That’s why he talked to Absalom about bears, lions, sand, and dew. Ahithophel expressed only concepts while Hushai presented his concepts in images.
Theologian Sallie McFague writes: “Images ‘feed’ concepts; concepts ‘discipline’ images. Images without concepts are blind; concepts without images are sterile.”[4] I suggest you read that statement again, ponder it, and then think about Ahithophel and Hushai. Ahithophel presented concepts without images, so his words were sterile. They failed to give birth to life-changing pictures in Absalom’s mind. Hushai, on the other hand, combined concepts and images and won the contest.
One of the bridges between the world around us and the world within us is a system of symbols that we call language; and language is basically metaphorical. It communicates in pictures. God’s creation is a theater and the human mind is a picture gallery, and we link the two by using words.
“Every word which is used to express a moral or intellectual fact, if traced to its root, is found to be borrowed from some material appearance,” wrote Emerson in Nature. The word right, he points out, originated from straight (Latin, rectus); and wrong came from a root meaning “twisted” (from wrong to wring [twist] ). He reminds us that the word supercilious is Latin for “raising the eyebrows,” something that haughty people are prone to do when they disapprove of something.[5]
“Metaphor is a primary way in which we accommodate and assimilate information and experience to our conceptual organization of the world,” writes philosopher Eva Feder Kittay. “In particular, it is the primary way we accommodate new experience. Hence it is at the source of our capacity to learn and at the center of our creative thought.”[6] Since preachers want their people to learn, to think, and to have new and maturing experiences, they had better get acquainted with this thing called metaphor.
Metaphor—the Way Language Works
Today we have an exploding literature on metaphor. When you start reading it, you soon discover that linguists and philosophers don’t always agree on what constitutes a metaphor or how a metaphor actually works. But the linguists and philosophers seem to agree that the word metaphor comes from the two Greek words meta (trans, across) and pherein (to carry), and that together they mean “to carry across, to transfer.” A metaphor is a “verbal transfer” that connects two seemingly unrelated things and creates from this union something new.
One scholar defines a metaphor as “a figure of speech whereby we speak about one thing in terms which are seen to be suggestive of another.”[7] When Isaiah cried, “All flesh is grass!” he was using a metaphor and was inviting his listeners to ponder seriously the relationship between grass and people. Jesus spoke metaphorically when He said, “The seed is the word of God.” His listeners knew what seeds were, but did they know the relationship between seeds and God’s Word?
It’s by using metaphorical language that you turn people’s ears into eyes and help them see the truth. The task of the preacher is not unlike the task of the writer. Novelist Joseph Conrad said, “My task . . . is, by the power of the written word to make you hear, to make you feel—it is, before all, to make you see.”[8] However, using metaphors means much more than following the principles of wise pedagogy and going from the known to the unknown. Metaphor is not simply a “function” of language; metaphor is the way language works. We don’t use similes and metaphors to “embellish” our speech and impress people, the way eighteenth-century Britons put lace on their clothes and silver buckles on their shoes. Many scholars believe that metaphor is the fundamental way language is structured and that we use metaphorical expressions as we communicate simply because language is made that way. Like the man in Moliere’s play who discovered he’d been speaking prose for forty years, we’ve been speaking metaphorically all our lives and perhaps didn’t realize it.[9]
In their fascinating book Metaphors We Live By, Lakoff and Johnson give scores of examples of how metaphors are used in everyday speech.[10] For example, when people talk about “half-baked ideas” or “warmed-over theories,” they’re comparing ideas to food. Ideas are also plants, as in statements such as “The idea died on the vine” or “The idea finally came to fruition.” “I’ve lived life to the fullest” pictures life as a container, as does “I can’t cram one more activity into my life.” Each of these statements involves metaphors, even though we don’t always recognize them. Metaphor is so much a part of everyday speech that we take it for granted.
I’ve already introduced you to the “conduit metaphor,” which unfortunately seems to govern so much of our preaching and teaching. Questions such as “Am I coming across?” or “Am I getting through?” betray the fact that the speaker has the “conduit metaphor” in mind as he or she speaks. Many seemingly tame statements are really metaphors that belong to the “conduit” category. For example: “What are you trying to get into my head?” “What he says doesn’t carry much weight.” “That idea flew right past me.” “Words just keep pouring out of her!” “Stop throwing out so many new ideas!” These statements picture ideas as “things” that are dropped into the conduit of speech and “delivered” (we hope) to the people listening.
Get the point? (Ideas are also like swords or arrows!) Even in our everyday conversations, we use metaphorical language, because language is metaphorical. “All language originated in metaphor. Literal language is a pruning away and a rationalization of our figurative thought.”[11]
As far back as the third century before the birth of Christ, the Greeks were discussing metaphor, and Aristotle wrote in his Poetics:
It is a great thing, indeed, to make a proper use of these poetical forms, as also of compounds and strange words. But the greatest thing by far is to be a master of metaphor. It is the one thing that cannot be learned from others; and it is also a sign of genius, since a good metaphor implies an intuitive perception of the similarity in dissimilars.[12]
I agree with the great philosopher that we can’t go to school and earn a master of metaphor degree; but I humbly disagree with him when he claims that the understanding and use of metaphors can’t be learned. (The fact that Aristotle discussed metaphor in both his Poetics and his Rhetoric suggests that he may have made that statement tongue-in-cheek.) Certainly, with every ability there must be an accompanying intuition that turns the skill into an art; and education alone can’t supply that intuition. But since metaphor involves the use of the imagination, and imagination is a part of the divine image in men and women, then all of us must have within us the basic materials to work with to develop metaphorical skills. Preachers of the Word especially need to focus on mastering metaphor, for that’s the way language is made, the way people think, and the way the Bible was written.
The Power Is in Showing, Not Telling
When I was pastoring the Moody Church in Chicago, I received an invitation to speak to a high school social studies class about “the biblical view of sex ethics.” It was a glorious opportunity, but I turned it into an embarrassing disaster by making two mistakes. First, I took the “conduit” approach and unloaded a lot of theological baggage on them, most of which stayed in the conduit and was never picked up by the students. My second mistake was in presenting my case through argument, aiming at the left-brain students while the right-brain students—the majority—folded their mental tents and silently stole away.
A better approach would have been to show the teenagers the biblical pictures of what happened to people who practiced sex outside the boundaries established by God. Proverbs 5 pictures sanctified sexual love as a beautiful stream of refreshing water, and sex outside of marriage as a sewer running in the streets.[13] Proverbs 6 reminds us that sex is like fire: beautiful and powerful when kept under control, but destructive when out of bounds (vv. 27-29). Proverbs 7 presents a vivid picture of a young man turning into an animal and going to the slaughter as he falls into the traps of the prostitute (vv. 22-27). Nathan’s “ewe lamb” story to David (2 Sam. 12:1-6) makes the point that sex outside of marriage turns people into thieves, and they end up robbing both themselves and others.[14]
So, according to Scripture, when it comes to the matter of sex, everybody must choose either the stream or the sewer, warmth and power or burning destruction, the human or the animal, investment or robbery. If, instead of lecturing, I had shared these pictures with the students, I might have made the kind of impact that would have stayed with them and made a difference in their lives.
C.S. Lewis said, “All our truth, or all but a few fragments, is won by metaphor.”[15] And H. Richard Niebuhr believed that “we are far more image-making and image-using creatures than we usually think ourselves to be and . . . our processes of perception and conception, of organizing and understanding the signs that come to us . . . are guided and formed by images in our mind. Our languages, we are reminded, are symbolic systems.”[16]
We have now reached a key question in our investigation: What is there about metaphorical language that gives it so much power? Contrary to popular belief, not every picture is worth a thousand words, but some words carry a dynamic that is greater than that of many pictures. When Sir Winston Churchill offered the people of Great Britain “blood, toil, tears, and sweat,” why did they follow him instead of run him out of office? What is the secret, if there is one, of the power of metaphor?
Part of the answer is found, I think, in the fact that metaphors affect the whole personality and are not like routine concepts that touch only the mind. Metaphors challenge us and make us think. They arouse our curiosity and force us to adjust our perspective and try to see two things at one time. Then we have to figure out why the two things are put together when they are so different. Sallie McFague is right when she says that “good metaphors shock, they bring unlikes together, they upset conventions, they involve tension, and they are implicitly revolutionary.”[17]
Notice the Puritan poet John Milton’s use of this powerful device. When he received word that his friend Edward King had drowned in the Irish Sea, he wrote the elegy Lycidas in King’s honor. In it, Milton wrestled with the problem of why a good man such as King died young while godless ministers lived long and prospered. He draws a vivid picture of the “false shepherds” of the seventeenth-century English church, calling them men who “for their bellies’ sake creep and intrude, and climb into the fold,” an obvious reference to John 10:1 and Philippians 3:19. But when, in line 119, Milton calls these false shepherds “blind mouths,” we are immediately arrested. We stop and ask, “How can mouths be blind?” The metaphor has done its work![18]
I like Eva Kittay’s statement that metaphors “rearrange the furniture of the mind.”[19] When two seemingly contrary ideas such as “blindness” and “mouths” are brought together, the union creates a dynamic tension that excites the mind and arouses the emotions; and the will is held captive until the tension is either resolved or dismissed. The late physician-novelist Walker Percy wrote, “Metaphors are very strange because when you put two things together it’s a way of discovering meanings which haven’t been discovered before.”[20] And Aristotle wrote in his Rhetoric that “strange words simply puzzle us; ordinary words convey only what we know already; it is from metaphor that we can best get hold of something fresh.”[21]
Metaphors are something that we experience. Hearing a live metaphor and understanding it is a transaction that involves more than the intellect; and it can lead to a changed perspective on life. When that happens, our response to the preacher is, “Yes, now I see what you’re saying!” And with this response comes an emotional and spiritual experience that makes the truth of the metaphor a part of our inner person. We may find ourselves echoing the words of the Emmaus disciples, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?” (Luke 24:32)
In the last paragraph, I used the phrase “live metaphor,” so I had better pause to explain it. Semantic scholars have decided that there are three kinds of metaphors: live or vivid, sick or pale, and dead or faded. Live metaphors are the kind that powerfully “connect” the mind and heart of the hearers so that they want to do something in response to what they learn. Sick or pale metaphors may affect the mind, but they have no effect on the emotions or the will. Dead or faded metaphors bore the mind and may even create a negative “So what?” response from the heart and will. Dead metaphors are clichés; and when we hear speakers use them, we respond negatively with boredom and with pity.[22]
One of the interesting things about metaphors is that they touch different people in different ways at different levels of life. The child’s response to Psalm 23 is different from that of the veteran missionary; but both individuals can respond to the same metaphor, and the response of each can be authentic and rewarding. The people in our congregations come from different backgrounds, have different IQs and educational experiences, and are at different levels of emotional and spiritual maturity; yet each one of them can “plug into” a metaphor and be enriched spiritually. Metaphors are something like our Lord’s seamless garment: people can even touch the hem of the garment and experience life-changing power.[23]
Next we will meet another preacher who, like Hushai, used “power words” to save King David’s life.
“A story-formed community . . . will not be so sure it has all the answers. Such a community will listen for surprises, for strangers, and for imaginative new ideas which it cannot control.”
“Expositors tend to look on sermon or lesson preparation in terms of doing research for a lecture or paper. They should view it more like writing a story or poem.”
“. . . we need not allow ourselves to be abashed by any suggestion that the old metaphors are out of date and ought to be superseded.”
“Imagining is a fundamental quality of being human, engaged in by all people everywhere.”