The Lord's Army

Like anybody, I am always up for a good metaphor. Metaphors make wonderful learning tools, and they help us understand concepts more clearly. Even Jesus Christ was a big fan of metaphors, using parables to explain spiritual concepts to His disciples.

Another great learning tool is repetition. Repetition seldom has negative side-effects, and often helps us improve memory. I generally need to hear something several times before it truly sinks in.

Despite the value of these two great tools, I think they can become dangerous when they are mixed together too frequently. Like a concoction which slowly affects our ability to think clearly, when the same types of metaphors are used over and over again, the metaphor can have the affect of losing its metaphorical value, and becoming just a little too real.

For instance, sports metaphors seemed to be used and reused in the business world. True, competition is an inherent part of a capitalist system, but there is a great difference between competition with yourself and competition against another person. When a businessman or businesswoman applies the first type of competition, they can make great things happen. However, if they get caught up in the second type of competition, such determination may lead them to compromise their integrity. Now I am not saying such is caused by sports metaphors, I am saying that perhaps they don't help prevent unhealthy competition. But that is a different topic altogether. Let's look at a repetitive metaphor associated with religion.

Perhaps, because along with religion, war has been another constant in human culture, it gets used quite frequently in religious metaphors. Whether it is the “Lord's Army,” the “Armor of God,” or fighting in the “battle against evil,” militaristic metaphors are used again and again in demonstrating religious concepts.

I have nothing against the military, but I wonder if repetitive use of such metaphors at times leads us to mistakenly view religion as a genuine military action.

We are all aware that acts of war have been committed, motivated by religion, throughout history. While this horrible misuse of religion continues even today, I think even lesser forms of associating religion with war can become damaging.

The major negative side-effect I have seen coming from such metaphors is the “identification of the enemy.” For instance, I hear again and again that we are in a “battle” against evil. I fully agree that there is always a conflict of interests between good and evil in the world. However, I feel that viewing this battle in a militaristic sense can lead towards the need to create a tangible enemy.

In a real war, you must inevitably fight against opposing armies, which, until we invent robot-only warfare, means real, living, breathing people. However, in this “battle against evil,” we are not fighting against other people. In fact, if you want to be specific about it, we are fighting FOR the well-being of ALL other people. In reality, it is not a fight against anything, it is the struggle for peace, righteousness, and good.

Nevertheless, it seems that those who view this life as a battle against evil seem to need to assign people as their antagonists, whether they be Muslims, Mormons, Democrats, Atheists, Republicans, Catholics, Jews, etc. Rather than seeking to fight for the well being of these people, they become “the enemy.”

Ultimately, such thinking is destructive to the true purpose of religion. When we allow ourselves to identify other people as our enemy, how will we ever be willing to “fight” for their well-being, if such is actually required for us?

So, maybe we could lay off the military metaphors just a bit?