Brian’s Reflection: Wednesday, March 26, 2008


Every religion is true one way or another.
It is true when understood metaphorically.
But when it gets stuck in its own metaphors,
interpreting them as facts, then you are in trouble.

- Robert Campbell, dreamer & teacher & truth-teller,
born on this day, 1904


Yep. Oh, I know I go on about this. But it’s true – and it’s very dangerous to human life.

It was raised for me yet again by the author Steve Berry, whom I’ve taken to reading just for diversion – but then as always with fiction one gets challenged. I had read “The Third Secret” (rats! I’m reading them out of sequence, and I hate that, being an O-C type on such matters), and am 2/3rds of the way through “The Alexandria Link”. And what’s it about? How the Bible has been gerrymandered to support the Jews “right” to Palestine, and how a powerful group of world financiers want to prove it so they can destabilize and control the Middle East! Yes, Myth-become-fact is a dangerous game!

I’ve spent my preaching life trying to get people not to get “stuck in it’s own metaphors, interpreting them as facts”. We could – and no doubt will, sigh – argue into Eternity about “what’s true and what isn’t and to what level”, meaning literally, factually. But that isn’t what matters. Christians can argue forever about the exact nature of the resurrection of Jesus, how, where, with what kind of a body, etc. But it is all useless if we miss the point. The “point” being that the Source of all Life is Always Alive, and we are alive with It – and the meaning of our existence is To Live. The power of Death and Fear and Evil cannot rule – as Gandalf says to the Balrog, “You may not pass!”.

There is one supreme manifestation of the truth of Resurrection: us, and all Life. The human race is determined to live despite all odds against. Powers conspire to assist us, along with those which conspire to defeat us.

Let’s not let “facts” enslave us. Live the metaphor.

Brian+