Before I get into a discussion about man being incapable of understanding the mind of God (as I promised last week and which may end up be a very short essay), I need to provide some groundwork for analogies, which I will rely on fairly heavily. We have had discussions about analogies before, i.e., which ones apply and which ones don't.
An analogy brings a complex topic into focus by mapping well known concepts onto complex or less understood concepts. A good analogy allows a person to apply a certain number of known elements to the same number of less understood elements. For example, the sentence "The test was a piece of cake" has a single element "test" that corresponds to a single element "piece of cake," which conveys the idea that "The test was as easy as eating a piece of cake" (which is actually a simile). Analogies can have more elements. For example, "The test and bonus section were a piece of cake with frosting." However, the more elements we add to an analogy, the more likely it is to break down at some point. In fact, all analogies break down at some point. Also, a bad analogy is one where the elements do not map well onto the intended context.
There is also a problem in that people do not, or at least are not willing, to map the intended information. If an analogy suggests an idea that one is not willing to consider or to accept, then the analogy may seems like a bad analogy. Jesus ran into this all the time in His use of parables, which are analogies that involve an entire story and which usually involves human characters.
In the parable of the Good Samaritan, a Jewish traveler was mugged and left for dead by the roadside. First, a priest passed by, and then a Levite passed by, and both look the other way. Then, a Samaritan passes by. Samaritans and Jews generally hated each other, but the Samaritan helped the injured Jew. Jesus told the parable in response to a question about the definition of a "neighbor." Portraying a Samaritan in positive light would very likely have made Jesus' audience feel very uncomfortable. In fact, many hated Jesus because His parables made them see things about themselves that they would rather not admit.
Analogies, parables, similes, metaphors, etc. are wonderful and valuable teaching and learning tools, as long as the giver of the analogy skillfully maps the elements and the learner accepts the mapping. Many in Jesus' day did not understand His parables because they did not recognize or refused to accept the mapping of the elements.
2 comments:
Nicely written to be sure.
In addition I would like to add that analogies serve various purposes. Some can be used to teach moral lessons and life lessons. Common proverbs, Œsopes fables, certain literary works etc can fall into this category. However, moral analogies (which are often unidemensional) can be very dangerous in political discussions because they confuse morals (which are generally accepted by the listener and teller as absolute) with politics (which is indeed the very practice of pragmatism). They therefore mislead.
My opposition to earlier uses of analogies in our debating were precisely because I felt the analogies used did not do good service to the complexities of the subject and not necessarily that they lead to conclusions with which I did not agree. They ended up preventing an understanding of the sophistication of the subjects at hand. Good intellectual exchanges demand both sides to fully comprehend the opposing position regardless of level of agreement.
What I don't like about analogies is that even though they may make their point, they are easy to misunderstand or to manipulate. When used in politics, they constitue an elementary stage of
propaganda...not much more.
But in transmitting elementary morals, they are formidable because precisely as Alan says, they allow those who are not able to understand (children for example) to learn easily.
I eagerly await Alan's next post!
Arguing this point is like mice eating or not eating cheese...er..uh...oh okay, you guys win.:)
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