8 Sermon Illustrations on Symbols

When the Egyptians built the tombs for their kings they faced a problem -- how to ensure that the King in the afterlife would have an eternal supply of food and servants. They decided that, since the Ka -- the spirit counterpart or "double" of the deceased -- was not material, it did not need physical things, but only the images of those things. Therefore artists were commissioned to fill the tomb walls with "cartoons" depicting the Ka enjoying family, friends, and the favors of servants.

I was sitting in my piano teacher’s lamp-lit living room, waiting for my sister to finish her lesson in the next room. Dr. Douglas, the piano teacher’s white-haired husband, came into the room and told my mother and me that he had something to show us. He asked me to hold out my hand, and into it he dropped several rough pebbles from a plastic vial about the size of a film canister. He quietly informed me, “You’re holding in your hand a piece of the Berlin Wall.”

I had never before realized that you could hold a piece of history in your hand. In my young mind, the Berlin Wall was a symbolic thing. It stood for the divide between the free world and the communist one. I didn’t expect that someone could bring a piece of that wall (which in previous months had been hacked to pieces by celebratory Germans) across the ocean any more than someone could steal a golden egg from a giant and bring it down Jack’s beanstalk. I realized that evening that the Berlin wall was no mere symbol; it had been a thick concrete barrier, designed to make people prisoners of their own country.

Though as a child, the world and its geo-political conflicts were not significantly more real to me than a fairy story, it now seems all too real, and at times, too close to home. Clashes of ideology have physical outworkings; every day someone loses his life because of violence that is religiously motivated. The truism that IDEAS MATTER is demonstrated every day in news footage and fatality counts.

And just as ideology ends with material consequences, material events shape ideology. Belief systems begin with real people and real events in real places, and Christianity is no exception to this. It is easy to mistake the cross for a symbol or a philosophical concept instead of a roughshod implement of execution. But Jesus did not die in the realm of theology; he died on a hill that was named “The Skull.” He earned his living as a carpenter, driving nails into wood, and he died with nails driven mercilessly through his body.

The writers of the New Testament strive to make it clear that they are not simply peddling an idea; something has happened in real time that has changed history, and they were the witnesses. The apostle John writes, “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched -- this we proclaim concerning the Word of life. The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us” (1 John 1:1-2).

Just as by letting me hold in my hand a fragment of the Berlin Wall Dr. Douglas showed me that communism was more than a political philosophy, Jesus’s followers wanted to make clear that he hadn’t been resurrected merely in their minds and hearts. He had been physically present with them; he had even eaten breakfast with them on the beach.

Each of us lives at the juncture of spirituality and physicality. Jesus is alive in both realms, and the two cannot be separated. His claims have implications for the life that you are living in real time, whether you are a carpenter or a sage. The distance of history does not negate the reality of Jesus’s life and death any more than the distance of geography negates the fact that we live in a world of unrest. The question begs to be asked, “What will you do with Jesus?”

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Copyright © 2006 Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM). Reprinted with permission. "A Slice of Infinity" is a radio ministry of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries.

Lydia Playfoot wanted to wear a ring to school — a ring that symbolized her commitment to remain chaste until marriage. But school authorities said no — and punished her for wearing it.

It’s an example of the growing hostility to the Christian faith in the public schools — both in Great Britain and in America.

Lydia Playfoot belongs to an organization called The Silver Ring Thing, similar to the American True Love Waits program. The ring is engraved with a verse from 1 Thessalonians, warning believers to avoid sexual sin.

But Lydia’s high school in South London has a rule against jewelry — and forbade her to wear the ring. Lydia sued. She pointed out that the school allows Muslim students to wear a head covering called the Hijab. And students of the Sikh faith are allowed to wear religious bangles.

In response, the school argues that distinctive head-garb and bangles are REQUIREMENTS of Islam and the Sikh faiths. By contrast, it says, a purity ring is merely an EXPRESSION of religious belief.

Well, Lydia disagrees. She told the court, “The real reason for the extreme hostility to the wearing of the ... purity ring is the dislike of the message of sexual restraint.” This message is “‘counter cultural’ and contrary to societal and government policy,” she said.

This is not the first time British Christians have gotten in trouble for wearing small symbols of their faith. Two years ago, a 16-year-old was suspended from her school in Derby for refusing to remove a cross and chain to comply with a jewelry ban. And this year, a 13-year-old was told to remove her crucifix and chain because they breached health and safety rules.

Health and safety rules? Unless you’re a vampire, just how dangerous can a crucifix be?

British Christians have also come under attack by British Airways. Nadia Eweida, a Heathrow airport check-in worker, was suspended without pay for refusing to remove a crucifix. British Airways claimed the crucifix violated the company’s dress code — the same code that permits Muslims and Sikhs to wear headscarves and turbans. Eweida is suing British Airways for religious discrimination. As she put it, “Only Christians are forbidden to express their faith.”

She’s right. When British authorities and employers make a distinction between religious requirements and religious expression, one has to wonder why they won’t make distinctions between ordinary jewelry and jewelry that symbolizes religious faith — especially when they bend over backwards to accommodate other faiths.

To permit required religious garb while forbidding discreet symbols of religious faith is, in effect, a form of discrimination against Christians and Christians alone.

It is, to use a term loved by secularists, INTOLERANT.

The same types of attacks are occurring in the U.S. As I write in my book GOD AND GOVERNMENT, Christians at some public schools are having to fight for the right to leave school for religious holidays without being punished.

You and I need to be aware of the attempt to silence even the quietest Christian messages — even as our society goes the extra mile to be sensitive to other faiths.

Lydia Playfoot is right: Rules about clothing and jewelry are less about accommodating religious requirements than they are about silencing Christians.

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Copyright (c) 2007 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

An anniversary of sorts took place this month, and though it likely slipped passed most of us without recognition, its recipient is still smiling. The emoticon, perhaps better known in the realm of online discourse as the smiley face, has been smiling for 25 years. Its creator, Carnegie Mellon University professor Scott Fahlman, suggested the symbol in 1982 in an online discussion about the limits of online humor. “I propose the following character sequence for joke markers: :-),” he wrote. “Read it sideways.”(1)

The rest is history. Fahlman’s smileys spread from his classroom to other classrooms, from universities to the corporate world, and eventually around the world. The emoticon aided what online communicators were all too aware was ailing. In the world of instantaneous communication, MIScommunicating is sometimes more likely than communicating. Humor, sarcasm, and general human warmth can easily be sacrificed in this subculture of speed and technology. Words merely given in brief can be misperceived as terse or loaded. Comments meant to be taken lightly can be missed altogether. Many would argue that the invention of the emoticon has helped, though it certainly has not eradicated every obstacle.

Nonetheless, the quick embrace and subsequent evolution of emoticons suggests at least a subtle awareness that in the breakdown of language something human is in fact lost. High school and college professors readily lament the frequency with which “chat” language is creeping further into term papers. Their greatest concern is that many students don’t even realize there is a difference. While it can be argued that email encourages a certain sloppiness in communicating, text messaging has forged the creation of an entirely new language -- a language created with regard first for the technology as opposed to the speakers or the conversation itself.

In a recent publication, Ken Myers of MARS HILL AUDIO made the observation that words and language both shape and affect our humanity. He then added, “The corollary of this claim is the observation that cultural institutions and habits that corrupt or weaken our use of language are profoundly dehumanizing.”(2) When words are ransacked of meaning and replaced with concepts less distinct, we ourselves become something less distinct. Though technology is far from the only culprit, wherever the offense is committed, consequences are costly. In fact, it is said that one of the first steps to slavery is a loss of language.

In “The Last Battle” C. S. Lewis illustrates the enslaving force of corrupted words. The ape explains, “[The god] Tash and Aslan [the Lion] are only two names for you know Who. That’s why there can never be any quarrel between them. Get that into your heads you stupid brutes. Tash is Aslan. Aslan is Tash.”(3) Later the ape altogether changes the name to “Tashlan,” and the impressionable crowd abides. In their hearts they still want to believe in the Aslan they thought they knew, but the loss of language is enough to set them to serve the deceptive ape. “When ... you have killed a word,” writes Lewis in another work, “you have also blotted from the human mind the thing that word originally stood for. Men do not long continue to think what they have forgotten how to say.”(4) Those who allow their language to be corrupted, find their minds following suit. In the loss of words, something human is lost.

In this, there is much to be said about the kind of God who values words, whose most persistent instruction to a faltering people is “remember,” and who gives us both permission and the responsibility to say what we mean. “Good teacher,” asked the young man of Jesus. “Can you tell me the way to eternal life?” But Jesus asked in reply, “Why do you call me good?” In other words, are you saying what you really mean? Are you ready to walk with the burden your own word requires? “For no one is good -- except God alone” (Mark 10:18). Are you willing to hear my answer as one who truly knows who I am?

There is a connectedness between our words and our humanity, between the Word at the beginning and reality today. Those who stand alert in the world of words, who fight the corruption of language, and who learn to let their “yes” be “yes” and their “no” be “no” shall see something more through the glass darkly. They may in fact see the God who first spoke a word and brought the world into existence.

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1. Daniel Lovering, “Happy Anniversary, emoticon,” LA DAILY NEWS September 22, 2007.

2. MARS HILL AUDIO JOURNAL, Issue 75.

3. C.S. Lewis, THE LAST BATTLE (New York: Macmillan, 1970), 32.

4. “The Death of Words,” ON STORIES, Walter Hooper ed. (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1982), 107.

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Copyright © 2007 Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM). Reprinted with permission. "A Slice of Infinity" is a radio ministry of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries.