Symbolism 101

Discovering symbolism may seem like a daunting endeavor at first. The language used by people to describe symbolic patterns may seem outlandish or far-fetched at first. However, with some care, one can become more explicitly aware of the patterns that repeat themselves in our lived experiences.

Why should I bother with symbolism?
During the last few centuries, intelligent people have repeatedly undermined religious faith with scientific discoveries and reason. Through this, man could not practice religion without being seen by many as a naive believer in fiction and fairy tales. The world has become much bigger and has become a melting pot of religions and cultures, resulting in a superficial dismissal of Christianity because of the mere existence of other religions with gods.

By recovering a symbolic worldview, we can acknowledge the validity of scientific discoveries while confirming the christian faith as a higher truth. Instead of dismissing the bible as a fairy tale, we observe the patterns of folk stories and see how they are representative of real life, as well as how these patterns are described in the biblical stories. By taking a closer look at contemporary movies such as Batman and Shrek, we can see how the biblical narrative is still present in our modern storytelling, albeit sometimes in an upside-down manner.

We can compare all these stories: movies, folk tales, religions from all over the world, events in history, ... and see how the common patterns between all these stories are fully revealed in the biblical stories, and come together in the story of Christ.