Metaphor and Simplicity

Reading from Richard Rohr's book, Preparing for Christmas: Daily Meditations for Advent, I read this:

"Religion can only use the language of metaphor because we are pointing to transcendent things."

We certainly experience the use of metaphor in the Bible when we read the stories (parables) of Jesus, don't we? What about the creation story? Revelation?

I think it is important to notice the necessity of metaphor and to recognize it.

Do we really believe that God and God's kingdom are simple enough for us to understand if we just read the Bible? Do we think that is the case? Don't we recognize that it is so much more complicated than that? God does what God can to help us to see what God needs us to see, but even so, our minds and experience are so much less than God's - don't we believe that metaphor can help us to "see through the mirror" a little more than without?

And, with that said, I think we need to learn to recognize metaphor when we see it. If we take passages of the Bible literally - without the consideration that they could be metaphor - we do a disservice to the Word of God. Words have a purpose, and I believe we need to understand the purpose before we can understand the meaning.

If we think we have it figured out, we can rest assured that we do not.