Quenching the fire

To my chagrin, fire metaphors are still everywhere in Christian preaching, music, books and conversation: “On fire for Jesus”, “Fan the flame of God’s love”, “Burning bright for the gospel”, “I’ve lost the fire” etc. as well as the related discourses surrounding passion and being “passionate about Jesus”. Because of my work with teenagers I hear these all the time. The fire of passion is a youth group staple. But it isn’t biblical.

Biblical metaphors of fire (as opposed to literal references) are almost always connected with God – with his anger and his judgment. In a few other cases fire represents the destruction caused by evil or lack of wisdom and restraint. Even when fire is spoken of literally, it is frequently accompanied by words like “consume”, “devour”, “burn”, “destroy”. In the Bible, fire is for destruction – for the unmaking of what has been made and the punishment of humanity. If God’s people are ever spoken of as fires or flames (which is extremely rare) it is when they are the instruments of God’s judgment.

I’m not automatically opposed to non-Biblical metaphors about spirituality but I think, in this case we have chosen poorly. The scriptural usage should tip us off: fire consumes, it destroys, it cannot be controlled. When we use language that endows us with the attributes of fire we are promoting a spirituality of self-consumption, of burn out, of unsustainable and uncontrollable emotion. More than that we are promoting a spirituality of judgment.”Passionate” Christians are frequently intolerant of those less passionate than themselves. As fires, burning for Jesus, we tend to become the fire of God’s wrath, burning up whatever we deem to be less than pure gold in our brothers and sisters. We sit ourselves down in the judgment seat of the perfect judge, the Consuming Fire.

And we invite judgment upon ourselves. Inevitably, our spiritual fervour wears us down and our fire, at some point, dims. This is because the passion of fire is based on emotion and no emotion can be sustained indefinitely. I know all about this self-judgment. I have talked to more teens and adults than I can count who are in the throws of despair because they no longer feel close to God, they’ve lost their passion, they wonder if they even still believe. Their fire has gone out. Of course, they don’t let on to anyone at church or in the youth group because they are afraid the judgment they are calling onto their own heads will only be redoubled by their friends and mentors. I’ve experienced all this myself, too. It brings a paralysing fear.

Am I splitting hairs by criticising mere figures of speech? Because we use words to make sense of the world and to help us understand how we ought to live in it, the kinds of words we use need to be carefully considered. If we followers of Christ insist on understanding our role in the world as fires burning with passion for Christ we will, I think, ultimately be unable to extend redemption to it. Our time will be spent (and so often is) gazing inward, tending the fire we think should be burning in our hearts – ensuring it never goes out or burns out of control. As such, fire metaphors are isolating, heroic, individualist discourses that can cut us off from the body of Christ and from the freeing possibility that we can offer little to the kingdom on our own.

There are Biblical metaphors that, I think, would serve us far better. They are, in a sense, the opposite of these fire metaphors we’re so fond of. All of them are metaphors of agriculture and growth. Almost always, the Bible refers to God’s people as a plant of some kind. A vine, a tree, a shoot. Needing water, pruning, connection with a complex system of roots, trunk, branches, leaves and sunlight in order to flourish and bear good tasting fruit – in time. The important difference, is that a plant is a gradual unfolding of life that is continuous. It is seasonal, rhythmic – it experiences periods of rapid growth and the bearing of sweet fruit followed, often, by leaner times when it must conserve energy. It requires painful pruning, sometimes even with fire (God fire) – but always it is alive, growing (if only a little) and dependent on resources other than itself.

These beautiful metaphors of agriculture allow for much more diversity among God’s people. They allow for a greater dependence on his care and judgment and a greater open-handedness and connectedness with one another. They allow citizenship in the kingdom to be dependent on faith and conscious decision rather than sustained emotion. They allow for a spirituality of communion and honesty rather than competition and disingenuousness.

If you are passionate about your faith, please don’t take this as a criticism of your passion or a call for you to abandon it. But when your passion flags and the fire begins to simmer down just remember that you are a tree, planted by streams of living water. You will outlast every fire.