At a recent ski weekend, I heard a young guy say, “Jesus is the Camino.” I pictured a beat-up old car that looked part truck. What did Jesus have in common with that? I wondered. It turns out the youth was speaking Spanglish, and el camino is Spanish for “the way.”

Later that same weekend, someone asked the guest speaker to compare his spiritual life to skiing. Metaphorical language is powerful and common—in life and in the Bible. Using metaphors within youth ministry can be an effective way to help students grow spiritually.

EARTHLY AND HEAVENLY THINGS

Jesus used metaphors many times in His ministry. For instance, He referred to being born again. Nicodemus, a teacher of the law, had come to Jesus in the middle of the night in search of true spirituality. Jesus told him to be born again. Nicodemus was confused and asked how. Jesus’ response provides a motive for using metaphors. “If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you heavenly things?” (John 3:12, RSV).

Juxtaposing two seemingly unrelated subjects, which is something a metaphor does, can help teens grasp spiritual realities and live them out in practical ways. The writer of the Book of Hebrews described faith as the “assurance of things hoped for and conviction of things not seen” (11:1, RSV). So many teens struggle to have both assurance and conviction. Apathy grips their hearts and holds them in indecision and inaction.

Let me propose my own metaphor here. In school teens learn to solve algebraic equations. They solve for x and y. The answers are called a set of solutions. Let the imaginary numbers (x and y) stand for the spiritual and unseen. Let what is physical and visible be represented by real numbers. Today teens are given equations that adults never faced in the past. They need the opportunity to struggle with spiritual metaphors and come up with a new set of real solutions that work in their world.

I am a member of The Salvation Army. When the words salvation and army were first placed next to one another, they created such a collision of concepts that people had to ask the meaning of the phrase. The result determined what a Salvation Army would look like. The members would be soldiers. They would fight both physical and spiritual poverty with the sword of the Spirit.

In Bible study, metaphors can be used to create ownership of spiritual reality in teens. By letting teens meditate on metaphoric passages and discover new meanings, their faith can grow. For instance, meditating on the bread of life could lead a teen to think about someone who was starving and would perish without a piece of bread. They might then translate that to their devotional times and their own spiritual life.

PHYSICAL AND SPIRITUAL REALITY

But metaphors offer another opportunity to experience reality. Since metaphors are related to physical items, there are times where living out metaphors can be beneficial to the teens. In the example of the bread of life, if the teen were to serve a meal at a homeless shelter or go on a mission trip to an impoverished land these experiences might make the need for God to give them their own daily bread even more real. It is this bridge between physical and spiritual realities that makes metaphors such a powerful tool. It is more powerful, yet, because the bridge must be built by the teen. The world holds new problems every day. Teaching with metaphors can help young people build a bridge of understanding and apply their faith into everyday life.

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Jason Pope works out of the Georgia regional youth office for the Salvation Army