metaphor

  • literature
    language,  meaning,  metaphor,  Metaphors,  Narrative,  parable

    Jesus Was a Literature Professor

    Literature professors are a determined lot. Our goal is to deepen our students’ engagement with the text at hand. We desperately want them to dive for the pearls deep below the surface and come up triumphant, gasping for air and eager to go deeper next time. I am aware that literature professors weren’t a thing in Jesus’ time. Jewish students who sat under their rabbis studied the Old Testament (though not as Christians today understand it.) They became rabbis and scribes, teaching what they learned to the next generation. And then came Jesus. He understood all the old texts and the traditional ways of reading them. But the way he…

  • Art,  Featured,  incarnation,  metaphor

    Every Poem Wants to Be Jesus: Why Christians Need Art

    How mysterious is the incarnation of God in man in the person of Jesus Christ! God, who is spirit, makes Himself known in the body of Jesus.  Making the word flesh is, of course, the aim of every poet.  The goal of art is to turn what is spirit into a poem, a painting, a dance, or a song.  It is the same impulse, to turn what is ineffable into something concrete. To turn the abstract into something that can be lived within the body. The Greek word, Logos, which means the Word and the Deed, is an attempt to explain the mystery of metaphor and the nature of incarnation.…