I offer an addendum to the post: "Exaggeration: A Gospel Necessity." I have been sufficiently rebutted by the following scripture coupled with this talk: Mosiah 4:15 and Elder Callister's masterwork on the necessity for refinement in the celestial kingdom.
The first: it's simple...when you're sober, you are precise, cool, even-handed. No hyperbole necessary. Plus, this completely contradicts the sense of balance that pervades teachings about the gospel ("see that you do these things in wisdom and in order").
The second...we must ask the question of how careful the Lord is when using language. Does he use hyperbole, metaphor, and sometimes deconstructible analogies when describing gospel principles? Yes, sometimes. However, such teachings were openly considered to be inferior to the purer stuff given to the apostles (see Matthew 13).
Point being, while exaggeration might be employed, it is definitely not the celestial modus operandi...
Sunday, April 13, 2008
Retraction
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I don't think a complete retraction is necessary, Russ. You said that hyperbole is a common yet inferior "tactic" in teaching, perhaps some sort of lowest-common-denominator catch-all. However, not everyone is ready for Celestial or superior forms of teaching. Christ saved the more sober lessons for those who would understand, who were trained to do so. Hyperbole = milk, soberness = meat. OR one could say that (are you ready for this?) hyperbole is SUBVERSION and soberness is CONTAINMENT. We use hyperbole to "shake up" or deconstruct pre-existing notions.
Christ healed people on the Sabbath. This was an "intense" move. Something he could have done on any other day... yet he did it to teach a lesson. Christ threw the moneychangers out of the Temple violently... with a whip, overturning tables. Hyperbole. It was intense, it was gripping, He was deconstructing the ideas that people had about the Sabbath or the Temple in order to reach the most people and to get people's attention. But then afterwards, containment. Christ since then has taught reverence and temperance in teaching others. He still obeyed the Laws of the Sabbath, etc., and his Apostles taught us to do the same.
So the point is, Russ... we need hyperbole sometimes to subvert our ideas, and sober, moderate teachings afterwards to contain them.
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