Images of Horror and Hope

I do not know many people who cook over poop, and I doubt it takes much argument to conclude that the Old Testament prophet Ezekiel was a strange person. Cooking over poop was on his to do list among other unconventional things. He enacted theology in the weirdest ways imaginable in order to grab people’s attention and to unsettle them with truths about their situation.

Stanley Hauerwas has said that description is everything. He has said, “If I say, ‘World War I, World War II, what comes to mind? Now if I say, ‘World Slaughter I, World Slaughter II, what comes to mind?’ Description is everything” (Lecture at Fuller, Spring 2011).

In each generation, it is the task of pastors and theologians to communicate good news as actual good news with fresh and vibrant imagery that captures the imagination.

I doubt, however, if I would ever recommend following Ezekiel’s procedures for creating theological imagery. However, it may prove helpful to take note of the fact that vivid images can potentially speak to us on a visceral level. We may understand what the imagery is seeking to communicate, albeit we may remain unable to articulate why it resonates with us and how it is we understand. It’s been said we don’t always need to know how we know (which may be in part due to do our inability to articulate how it is we know something; it’s then perhaps a matter more of an incapacity to articulate than much of anything else).

In short, images and for that matter stories do what discourse often fails to do. Images can capture a person’s imagination and facilitate inroads for comprehension on a rather basic level. This may be in part why metaphors and vivid imagery are indeed so necessary for theology. We understand ideas with metaphors, and we speak of human affairs in relation to God metaphorically because metaphors are what we have linguistically to describe the significance of God’s conspicuous and inconspicuous sublime ubiquity. Strange and perhaps even horrifying metaphors may very well awake us to the uncomfortable and yet hope-filled truth of God’s reality in our midst.

For as long as I can remember, my mom has told my dad to involve more stories in his sermons. This is not merely for purposes of entertainment; this is for purposes of communication.

Imagery has of course done much for philosophy. The metaphors of buildings and webs have done much to frame philosophical endeavors. Similarly, imagery has done much for theology. There is no need, however, to limn the hosts of theological imagery here.

In part truth as we know it is a description of reality, and in part theology is symbolized reality that seeks to articulate reality’s significance. This was the business of Ezekiel, and this is the business of pastors and theologians today. It may be said that Ezekiel was an excellent theologian because he sought to vivify the reality of human affairs in relation to God, and he did so quite provocatively.

Sometimes I wonder if we have grown so diffident about the business of theology that we have morphed it into a timid academic discipline writing with abstract wisps of air in the clouds completely unrelated to our earthy, gritty somatic existence.