God being an Iron and all

[kiya]

So I have a great-aunt. She's the sort of matriarch of the family who would keep tabs on everyone and send them all little wreaths of shells and wildflowers if they were all within convenient reach of her. Given that this is an age of travel, though, she can't do that. But then . . . she discovered AOL.

So today, I received from her a bit of Christian net-kipple. This particular thing suggested that to be Christian is to be like a pumpkin. For one is brought in from the patch, has the dirt washed off and all the icky stuff removed, and a smiley face marked on one and a light set inside so all can see.

My irony meter has blown a gasket.

Comments

[tiassa]

Being a Christian myself, I think people need to stop making all these weird analogies, because they're, for the most part, worthless tripe. I don't need some bizarre story about a pumpkin to understand my religion, thank you.

Speaking of weird analogies, I had a Sunday School lesson once where the teacher was talking about something Mother Theresa said, about wanting to be like a pencil in God's hand, because nobody thinks about the pencil when they read the letter, they think about the one who wrote it. Or something like that.

So, at the end of the lesson, the teacher handed out these pencils that said, "I am a pencil in God's hands." The only problem was, when you realized that you were the one holding the pencil, it kind of turned the analogy in a direction the teacher probably didn't intend.

[avram]

Well, I seem to recall that Jesus guy being fond of the occasional metaphor himself. Maybe that's where they get the idea.

[tiassa]

Yes, but there's an immense difference between the parables in the Bible and this pumpkin business. Or the pencil bit. Or any number of absolutely stupid analogies to which I've been subjected by well-meaning people. Parables are intended to teach people, like when I compare someone's computer to a car or whatever to make them understand why they can't do something. Fluff analogies are designed to give people a warm fuzzy.

My personal opinion is that people focus too much on fluff instead of what they're supposed to be doing - for example, I had a Sunday School class where the teacher read us stories out of Chicken Soup for the Soul instead of using the lessons in the manual. I got absolutely nothing out of that class, except a severe hatred for Chicken Soup for the Soul.

[brooksmoses]

The pumpkin is really rather an odd analogy, indeed. Although I suppose it is almost seasonal, though....

I think that analogies of that sort have more to do with the wreaths of shells and flowers than they do with actually explaining things, though. It's more of a "Oh, look at this pretty analogy! Isn't it so precious?" sort of thing -- an exercise in decorative prose.

Which makes having it be appropriately pre-seasonal even more appropriate, really.

<whimsical>Of course, it may simply be an illustration of the fractal nature of the universe -- everything in the world is, in some way, an analogy for God's relationship with the world. So one has self-similarity, and following it around the loop indefinitely leads to a fractal-nature. The story itself is a metaphor for how God deals with the world ("Everything, even ostensibly non-Christian symbols, can be tied in to the relationship somehow."), and the explanation of how it's a metaphor is itself a metaphor, and so on.</whimsical>

- Brooks

Another loglet. . . .

[kiya]

Tesla peers at Brooks' comment on your pumpkin post. That man is way too geeky.
I say "Isn't it cute?"
Tesla says "It really is."
Whitney beams.
Whitney debates quoting this exchange and posting it in a reply comment. ;)
Tesla says "Oh dear. ;)"
I say "What do you think?"
Tesla says "What the hell."
Whitney grins, and therefore does so.