Sharing Your Faith with Analogies (and when not to)
By Family Minister, Dr. Brandon Steenbock
Sharing your faith is your mission as a believer. Jesus gave his first disciples the direction to make disciples by sharing the Gospel, and to teach new disciples to do the same. As a follower of Jesus, sharing your faith is not optional. Jesus said, “You will be my witnesses” (Acts 1:8). It comes with the territory.
One of Jesus’ first disciples, Peter, wrote that we should “always be prepared to give an answer” (1 Peter 3:15). We need to study the Word, be thoughtful about how to share the Gospel, and be ready to answer questions when they come. That’s easy enough when the questions relate to clear and simple truths. “Jesus died for me, and he rose from death, so I know I will rise with him someday.” See? Simple. But it gets more complicated when people ask about things like how the Triune God works, how Jesus can be fully God and fully man, or how God can say he never changes but also that he changes what he does based on our prayers.
When trying to explain these things, we’ll often end up trying to simplify the truth by relating it to something we know. We make analogies, we draw comparisons between stuff we see in day-to-day life and the truth God gives us. That’s reasonable and can even be effective. Jesus did this all the time; we call them the “parables,” and they are full of analogies. “The kingdom of heaven is like…” Jesus would say, and then draw a comparison between everyday life, like a person finding a lost coin, and a heavenly truth, like God’s joy when a sinner turns back to him.
When Analogies Can Be Trouble
We run into trouble, though, when we use analogies that miss the mark and say things that aren’t true. We run into problems when the analogy makes the transcendent or the mysterious easier to understand, minimizing their power and beauty. God is transcendent; he is above us. We don’t want to make him appear smaller by an analogy that makes him “easier to understand.” God’s truth is sometimes mysterious; he tells us things we can only accept by faith, not by reason. We don’t want to make those things seem more rational, as though they come by logic and not by faith.
Here are a couple of examples of what I mean:
Some people say the Triune God is like fire – there’s heat, light, and smoke, but all one fire. In the same way, God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, but all one God. But let’s think – you can have heat, light, and smoke all without fire, and all separate from each other. But the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are eternal and have eternally existed together. You cannot have one without the others. Also, smoke and light are by-products of the fire, but the Son and the Spirit are not by-products of the Father. The analogy misses the mark and confuses the nature of God, and by attempting to make the Triune God understandable, it makes God smaller.
Another example is an ancient explanation for how Jesus can be both true man and true God. Say you push an iron poker into a fire. The iron is in the fire and becomes hot like fire, but the iron and the fire are still two separate things. In the same way, Jesus’ divine nature is in his human nature, and takes on the characteristics of humanity, and his human nature takes on the characteristics of the divine nature. Yet, they are still separate natures. The problem is the analogy breaks up the two natures of Christ when the Bible presents Jesus as fully God and fully man in one person that we can say simply, “God has become human, and this human is God.” There’s a beauty to the simplicity and mystery of it.
Let the mysteries be mysteries. Let the irrational be beautiful. Let the unexplainable be overwhelming. A God too big to explain is a God so big he can handle the biggest things in our lives.
When Analogies Can Be Helpful
Just as Jesus used parables to teach heavenly truths in earthly terms, there are times when using analogies and pictures can make difficult truths easier to understand. This is good when the truth we’re trying to explain is one that God fully intends us to grasp, but our human nature wants to get in the way. Here are a couple of examples:
When a person dies, some people will say, “That’s not really him, that’s just an empty shell. He’s in a better place.” Sounds nice, but it minimizes the importance of our bodies. Our bodies are not just containers for our souls. Biblically, our bodies and souls are two parts of a whole. You might think of it like a car: there’s the body, and there’s the engine. The body without the engine is dead. The engine can run outside the body, but it doesn’t fulfill its purpose and design apart from the body. The car’s body and engine were designed to work together, to be two parts of a whole car. In the same way, a human body without a soul is dead, and while the soul can live outside the body, it finds its ultimate purpose and design when it is united with the body. The human body and soul were designed to be united in one whole human. This is why the resurrection of the body on the last day is so important to our faith (see 1 Corinthians 15).
Another important truth is Justification, that in Christ all people have been declared “not guilty” by God (Romans 3:24). Jesus paid for the sins of all people, so all people’s sins have been taken away. But if all people have had their sins taken away, why don’t all people go to heaven? Think of it like a Christmas present. Imagine I bought a present for you, wrapped it up, put your name on it, and handed it to you. It is paid for, it is yours. If you just tossed it away and said, “I don’t want it!” it doesn’t change that it is paid for, and it is yours. But you have rejected it, so you don’t gain the benefit of the gift. When a person rejects the forgiveness Jesus won for them, it doesn’t change that he paid for their sins. It just means that they will not benefit from it.
Guidelines for Using Analogies
If you need more examples, go to the parables of Jesus. Those demonstrate perfectly how to use pictures or analogies to teach the truth. For now, here are some guidelines to keep in mind:
- Leave mysteries as mysteries. If something is impossible to understand, God wants us to take it on faith. How can God be Triune? How can bread and wine be body and blood? How can God be eternal but also change his actions based on our prayers? These are mysteries that only make God more infinite and beautiful.
- Use analogies for things we’re meant to understand. God makes some things clear to us, but sin clouds our understanding. What does it mean to persist in prayer? Why does God rejoice over one sinner who repents? Who is my neighbor? Analogies and pictures can help us make these more relatable.
- Stick to one point of comparison. When you think of Jesus’ parables, there’s always one main point he’s trying to make. For example, in the parable of the unjust judge, a woman pleads with a judge over and over until he relents, not because he cares, but because she won’t give up. The point is not to give up praying. But God is not like the unjust judge, and we are not all seeking justice over our enemies like the widow. Similarly, in the example of the car and the engine, don’t compare our bodies with a car body or our souls with a V6 engine – they don’t have much in common. The point of comparison is that the two are made to be one.
- Don’t force it. Sometimes the best explanation is the easiest one. If you’re not sure that an analogy works, don’t push it. You might end up making things more confusing. Just say what the Bible says in the Bible’s terms, and let the Holy Spirit do his work.
- Trust the Holy Spirit. Once in a while you’ll land on a way of explaining something that makes you wonder, “Where did that come from?” The Bible promises that the Holy Spirit will give us power, wisdom and the ability to speak his truth. Sometimes that happens best when we spend less time trusting our cleverness and more time surrendering to him.
Short of seeing Jesus face-to-face, there will be few things as joyful in your Christian life as sharing the truth and seeing someone’s eyes opening to it. Be bold in speaking that truth, and wise in how you witness. And trust the work of the Holy Spirit in your and through you.