Salt Lake Tribune guest columnist Matthew Bowman on the illumination and limitations that can be found in parables and metaphors.
in the church. Lesson manual after lesson manual, General Conference talk after General Conference talk, offered instructions and guidance and three ways to do this and four steps to accomplish that. For Robinson, it had all become too much.
In the parable of the bicycle lurk both the value and the pitfalls of metaphor when we talk about religion. "Worth of a Soul," by Liz Lemon Swindle. In the Bible, Jesus taught by parables using common objects around him. Which brings us back to the parable of the bicycle. It both punctured but also reinforced the metaphors that shape how Latter-day Saints have talked about what it means to be religious for the past 60 or so years. These metaphors are so powerful that members have forgotten they are metaphors As such, they’ve become assumptions, maps for how reality works. Apostle D. Todd Christofferson speaks at General Conference on Palm Sunday, April 2, 2023.
, Latter-day Saints pursued middle-class respectability. In the United States, this meant law, medicine, business. The ranks of these professions filled church leadership, and the metaphors of these professions filled church manuals. These were men accustomed to thinking about the world in the language of contracts and finance and payments and forgiveness.
There are meaningful and important ways in which Jesus’ atonement can be thought of as the repayment of a debt, of course, and meaningful and important ways in which the practice of Christianity can be thought of like an investment. But religion is healthier and stronger when it does not bind itself to a single metaphor.
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