Metaphors are so much fun! In the Bible, the language of parables (“parabolic language”) and symbolic logic are the standard. Just grasping those things on their own terms is a whole new vista of sky and mountain that does not exist in Western intellectual traditions.
It’s one thing to have depth. That’s a concept that means you’ve explored a great deal of one particular level. It takes significant depth to be aware that Western Civilization is different, that all the previous civilizations have more in common with each other than any one of them has with the West. But if you don’t seize the fullness offered in that vast difference, you have no height.
Every day I encounter people who claim a spiritual awareness, but can’t seem to get above the daily grind. That’s an example of how language robs us of both depth and height. Most Christians talk about spiritual depth and departing from the ambient secular culture, but all they’ve done is choose a different flavor, usually an older version of the same culture they eschew. Strictness and conservative rules do not make you spiritual. And no matter how hard you try, you can’t breathe life into something that was dead from the start.
For example, you might think my life was in a rut. I eat a narrow range of foods that I can afford and that my body tolerates. Sure, I add wild foods in season, but that isn’t much where I live. I’m not into killing and processing meat. So someone said my life seems to be in a rut as far as they could discern. But this person has zero height in her soul. All she sees is the boredom of the mundane level of existence, and no comprehension of the moral sphere, much less a genuine apprehension of the spiritual.
Engaging your heart-mind opens a vast height to your soul. It shows you options most of the world doesn’t have. For example, this person who sees my life as a rut cannot respond on the heart level and refuses to accept the notion it even exists. So I treat her according to the Laws as written, not so much according to the Laws as living in the moral sphere. It’s an option for me and one we should all learn. When grace doesn’t work in your human relations, there’s always the Law. That’s why the Lord saw to it the written version of His Law Covenants remains available. People without that height see the written record as the whole thing; their soul stops at that level.
We also have hope that a proper application of the Law before such people will eventually trigger something, that God will use it to move them above their shallow ditch of a life.
