God speaks through symbols God takes great pains to graft symbols into the minds of his people. Each of these convey a distinctive theological teaching about aspects of who God is, who we are, our relationships with God, ourselves, each other and the world, about holiness, right and wrong, about redemption and so on. Nowadays our thinking is shaped by other symbols that depict what it is to have meaning and to depict the meaning of life. They are almost all tuned to our most primal desires or needs, i.e. for belonging, security, meaning in life. Here are some of the messages behind the pictures we see on TV advertising.
Life is risky.
In the film world children especially are being brought up with a symbolic world of dungeons and dragons, Rambo etc. The importance of Christian symbol Leanne Payne talks of resymbolising the soul. Like the TV adverts the symbols convey a message to the soul, and if the symbols are godly symbols they will convey truth to the soul. If however we have misunderstood the symbols they will convey wrong messages. Over the centuries, regrettably1 many symbols became associated more with belonging to the right group in the church than with their original meaning.