Letter: Divine metaphors differ

In his Oct. 12 opinion “There is a God,” T. Stephen Brown claims that “The Christ is that God.” Brown makes the false assumption that we all have the same image of God that he does. The word “God” is a metaphor for something that goes beyond words and beyond thought. God is a figment of our imagination. Our image of God develops out of our experiences in life, and, since each of us have a different experience of life, we all have a different perception of God. As Americans, most have a Christian image of God, but that has always meant different things to different people. I see atheists and evangelicals arguing all the time over a metaphor. One believes his image of God to be true, and the other feels that image of God to be false, and yet both of them are arguing over a metaphor. This country, and the world, is divided over a metaphor, and people are dying and suffering over a metaphor. Through technological advances in communication and transportation, the world is becoming an ever smaller place and cannot afford people who feel superior to others in their image of a metaphor.