Tromp identifies the problem of language loosing its meaning as one of the the important reasons why young people loose their connection to the faith of their parents. He proposes that the use of metaphors in every day situations can revive the communication and give meaning where meaning was lost.
Tromp blames the ‘tyranny of functional thinking’ for our inability to express adequately what we feel, believe and experience. Functional thinking limits people to what can be recorded with the senses. It considers every non-sensitory experience nonsense. This is in direct conflict with the traditional place of literature which finds its value in the power of imagination. As such it has been the great literary works that have helped us to make sense out of the things we see and find meaning in the reality of the common matters. Recognition of this conflict is useful in order to understand the current inabilities of people to talk about the things of God in everyday language.
Metaphors offer a way to use the power of imaginative language to suggest meaning behind ordinary things. A metaphor casts a new light on a known subject. It sets the old meaning in new light. The metaphor links two different things by way of a common meaning. It is the tension between the differences and the similarities that lead to discovery of the new insight. As such the metaphor is the tool that helps in the search for better understanding of a known subject. There are many situations in which abstract language falls short, where ‘words fail to express’ but metaphors successfully convey deeper understanding. A successful metaphor creates a new similarity which puts the ‘old truth’ in a perspective that gives it a new meaning.
The relevance of this for faith development has to do with our difficulty to express our faith and hopes and doubts in ordinary communication. Our usual language is focused on matter which can be experienced and sensed, not on images and underlying meanings. Yet, that is exactly what we need when we want to talk about our faith with our children. Religious topics seem to remove themselves from the every day language by virtue of their own abstract character. Metaphors make conections between the ordinary things of the tangible reality around us and the messages that they give us about God the creator. In this way we are made to realize that we were meant to see the real reality because it is richer that what the eye sees and what the hand finds. Our inability to speak about God naturally in relation to the everyday reality is connected to the fact that we no longer known how metaphors are rooted in reality. For example: a fieldtrip to see an early sunrise can give the experience of the rising sun, not just the knowledge of it, in order to gain understanding of what it, metaphorically, says about God. In raising a child it is important to invest much time imaginative thinking and acting of both adult and child. Only later do abstract term and concepts need to be introduced slowly. God has used many images to clarify things about His own person and actions. He told Hosea to marry a prostitute in order to demonstrate to the people the gravity of their own unfaithfulness.
Tromp draws three major conclusions: there is great danger in basing a child’s education on abstractions. What is taught need s to have flesh and blood, it needs to be alive and real or the child will disregard is as meaningless; the use of metaphors has the power to break through the limitations of secularized communication; the use of metaphors has implications for faith instruction. It has to be noted that Jesus told parables, He did not hand out catechism booklets.
Tromp’s treatment of the place of metaphors is convincing. It is unfortunate that he was not able to give more focus to the implications for the methodology of faith instruction.