Here is a really interesting article that explains how Lewis used analogies to win people over. It is an extended meditation on teaching lay people. I should think it would give a pastor a good deal to think about.
Some Reading
Posted by unknowing on November 23, 2006
http://unknowing.wordpress.com/2006/11/23/some-reading/
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For He willeth we know that the least thing shall not be forgotten
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The confession of evil works is the first beginning of good works
Preparation of heart is the unlearning the prejudices of evil converse
If we cannot write with the beauty of Mozart, let us at least try to write with his purity
lilrabbi
/ November 23, 2006I usually can’t make it a chapter in a good book without seeing one or two delicious analogious with theology or philosophy or life in general. I’ve wondered if this isn’t a good thing, since Tolkien and Lewis didn’t like it when people said their books were analogies. Sometimes I’ve even felt guilty about it. But then I remember that all of life and all of meaning is analogical, and so maybe it isn’t so bad. Everything on the higher levels must be analogized in the lower in order for the lower ones to understand. It must be transposed, right? Hmmm…
Joel
/ November 23, 2006You ought to get Poetic Diction, by Owen Barfield, and read that carefully. It will help you feel better about finding analogies.
On the other hand,
I think that most authors (some would not)would resent the turning of their longer story into something pointed. Stories are not about something else. It seems a prostitution of a story to use it just to make some point. Stories aren’t enjoyed because they are illustrations or slaves of somebody’s argument; they are enjoyed because they are stories, noble and free. Stories that serve to make a point, rather than to tell a story, depart from the way of stories.
So I wonder if T and L resented having their love of making stories ransacked for ulterior motives. As if their stories were not about what they were about but were about something else. As if they had nothing in mind other than an argument.
On the other hand, stories are about something else, aren’t they? They must be transposed. But they are not about something else independently of the story in which the something else is placed. The difference seems to me a little more clear when I consider what Le Guin said about stories. How can she tell you what it is about without retelling the story? There is no fast food alternative without loosing the nutritional value.
Think of Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress. There is a lousy story. Pilgrim’s Progress isn’t about the plot, it isn’t really even about the characters. It isn’t so much about what happens as it is about making points, about instructing us in Christian living. The great thing about it is how it helps you understand the spiritual life and how it shapes your disposition toward spiritual things. But it fails as anything more than instruction in christian living.
Don’t get me wrong, it is very good instruction in christian living. But it is not a good story. And a good story can give you good instruction in christian living, but it does more. There is a fullness, a roundness, a completeness of having a beginning a middle and an end, the fullness of a world, sub-created to a story, it seems to me, depth of characters, satisfaction of a well resolved plot. I don’t put down a good story I have finished feeling that I have really learned something with that one, but feeling satisfied that I have come through a good story, something with more dimensions, perhaps.
Notice that the clearest point in the muddled thinking (I’m trying to find the heart of the matter and it seems to be eluding me) seems to be the analogy . . . to fast food, of all things.
Well, I think stories are more subtle persuasion than rational arguments. Maybe there is something there.
And I also think there is something of the particular in arguments and making points that stories avoid, and remain more timeless for avoiding, you know?
Perhaps stories are more subtle forms of analogy, and overt analogy is a clumsy way of handling the thing?
lilrabbi
/ November 23, 2006Absolutely. If the story without out a point had no analogical relation with reality, it would be a bad story. I’m thinking that while it isn’t the authors goal to make analogies, if he fails to make them it is a bad story. There must be the point of contact, otherwise you’re left with being a kind of presuppositionalist about stories. heh
Joel
/ November 23, 2006Heh, indeed. You know, I had a bit disparaging presuppostitionalism that I deleted from my reply. Death to that.
lilrabbi
/ November 27, 2006Yes’m.