There Is a Poetic Way of Informing the World

One of the biggest changes in how I read Scripture and even how I look at the world has been learning that there is a poetic way of speaking that is actually more true than a merely technical description.

For most of my life I was suspicious of symbolism. Whenever someone said, “Well, that’s symbolic,” I assumed they were trying to escape the plain meaning of the text. It felt like a way of making something mean whatever you wanted it to mean. If everything is symbolic, then symbolism becomes nothing more than relativism dressed up in beautiful language.

But that assumption has been slowly unraveling.

Symbolism Is Not Relativism

Largely through listening to Jonathan Pageau and then wrestling with these ideas for myself, I have come to realize that true symbolism is almost the opposite of relativism. Symbols are not arbitrary. They reveal patterns that are built into creation itself. They are shared, universal realities that point beyond themselves.

A symbol only works because it participates in the truth.

The Hands and Feet of Christ

One example that completely changed how I think about this is Christ’s crucifixion.

For years I heard the debate about whether Jesus was nailed through His palms or through His wrists. Historically, it may very well be that the nails passed through the wrists because the hands alone would not have supported the weight of His body. The same arguments are made about whether the nails went through His feet or His ankles.

Those are interesting historical questions.

But they are not the deepest truth.

Scripture tells us His hands and His feet were pierced. Icons portray His hands and His feet. Christians have confessed His hands and His feet for centuries. At first I thought this was simply an imprecise way of speaking.

Now I think it is something much richer.

His hands are how He touched the leper. They are how He blessed children. They are how He broke bread, washed feet, healed the blind, and raised the dead.

His feet are how He walked among His people. They carried Him through Galilee. They climbed mountains. They entered Jerusalem. They stood before Pilate. They walked the dusty roads in search of the lost.

His hands and His feet are how His humanity met the world.

That is what was nailed to the Cross.

Whether the nail entered slightly higher through the wrist is historically interesting, but it is not the point. The poetic description is actually telling us something more profound than the mechanical description ever could. It tells us that the very humanity by which God entered the world, touched the world, loved the world, and redeemed the world was offered up for the life of the world.

The Poetry Is More True

The poetry is not less true.

It is more true.

Not because it ignores history, but because it tells us what the history means.

I’ve spent years resisting this way of seeing because I thought symbolism was an escape from reality. Now I see that bad symbolism is arbitrary, but true symbolism is rooted in reality itself. It is woven into creation by God. It is discovered, not invented.

Who Teaches Us How to Read Symbols?

Of course, this raises another question.

If symbols are objective, who teaches us how to read them?

If symbolism is not whatever I imagine it to be, then there must be a right way and a wrong way to understand the Christian story. The Cross, the Temple, water, bread, wine, light, kingship, sacrifice, marriage, even the hands and feet of Christ all belong to a coherent pattern that stretches from Genesis to Revelation.

That pattern was not left for every generation to reinvent.

It was handed down by the Apostles, preserved in the worship of the Church, proclaimed in her preaching, painted in her icons, and safeguarded by the life of the Church Christ established.

Without those guardrails, symbols become private interpretations. They slowly become projections of ourselves.

But when received within the life of the Church, symbols do what they were always meant to do.

They don’t hide reality.

They reveal it.