Hyperbole that’s Truer than Facts – Brad Jersak

HYPERBOLE THAT’S TRUER THAN FACTS 

When is hyperbole truer than facts? An elderly couple I know faces a dilemma. One spouse is prone to hyperbolizing when communicating the needs of her heart. But as someone raised to identify speaking factually with honesty and integrity, her husband tends to correct whatever she says. That can make her feel like he distrusts her and questions her character. This can get triggered by something as benign as her description of how many geese are gathered to defecate all over their back lawn. If her report multiplies the actual number of geese by 10 or 100… why? Her husband wonders why that’s not considered lying. I’ve observed this pattern in their marriage forever (hyperbole — probably not more than 3 ½ decades).

But is hyperbole a form of lying? No, it’s not even the same as exaggerating. It’s a rhetorical tool that depends on the reader or listener knowing for sure that what’s being described is unrealistic. Only the crass literalist will misunderstand. And when you know that hyperbole is fantastical, then you can get to the deeper truth beneath it. A hyperbolic statement is not about correct data but about weightiness or gravity or urgency—the weight of wonder or the gravity of potential consequences or the urgency of actions required.

For the wife to offer data points that do not express those aspects is to communicate something less truthful about her feelings or needs. For the husband to fact-check her accuracy at that point displays relational insensitivity and emotional deafness. And for them both to recognize what hyperbole does as over against what it says builds a bridge of communication.

MORAL AMPUTATION

Jesus’ teaching ministry was a master class in hyperbole that has shaped our use of it. “If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off. If your eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out.“ No one thinks Jesus meant that literally (least of all Origen, whose slanderers got away with murder—see my hyperbole there?). But Jesus is telling the truth by emphasizing how consequential the misuse of our hands or eyes can be to ruin a life and to harm another… far more dire than a mere amputation. Not that we should literally cut off body parts but that we should make radical commitments to “cut out” anything that imperils our soul. If Jesus had just said, “Don’t look with lust or steal stuff because you could do significant damage to yourself or others,” he would have been stating facts while falling short of communicating the gravity of our actions… only through hyperbole could he convey the whole truth.

• • “To the one who puts a cause of stumbling into a little child, it is better to have a millstone tied around his neck and to be cast into depths of the sea.” (my paraphrase)

Literally? Arguably. But that’s not the point. The dramatic word picture is not about the weight of the millstone but the heavy responsibility of adults to ensure the well-being of children. It’s not about the 10,000 leagues the offender must sink into the sea, but how deeply God feels about the misuse and abuse of children. Jesus isn’t even threatening or prescribing a punishment for predators. He’s highlighting the urgency and seriousness with which we heed his warnings about how we treat “the least of these.”

As for my friends, YES, there seems to be 1000 geese pooping in their backyard… so something dramatic needs to be done! And if you focus on the fact that there are maybe only 10 foul fowl messing up the grass, maybe nothing will get done… because so far, nothing has been done!

SHE’S NOT DEAD!

Luke 8 provides a powerful example.

• • ⁴⁹ While Jesus was still speaking, someone came from the house of Jairus, the synagogue leader. “Your daughter is dead,” he said. “Don’t bother the teacher anymore.”
  • ⁵⁰ Hearing this, Jesus said to Jairus, “Don’t be afraid; just believe, and she will be healed.”
  • ⁵¹ When he arrived at the house of Jairus, he did not let anyone go in with him except Peter, John and James, and the child’s father and mother.⁵² Meanwhile, all the people were wailing and mourning for her.
  • “Stop wailing,” Jesus said. “She is not dead but asleep.”
  • ⁵³ They laughed at him, knowing that she was dead. ⁵⁴ But he took her by the hand and said, “My child, get up!”
  • ⁵⁵ Her spirit returned, and at once, she stood up. Then Jesus told them to give her something to eat. ⁵⁶ Her parents were astonished, but he ordered them not to tell anyone what had happened.

In this story, the messenger from Jairus’ house believes that the little girl is dead. People in the first century could tell the difference between life and death. They knew the difference between a coma and a corpse. Even the ancients knew to check for the cessation of respiration or a heartbeat.

Further, the narrator of Luke’s Gospel believed she was dead and that this miracle was a resurrection in which “her spirit returned.” He thinks her spirit has left her body, signifying death.

Literalists corner themselves into believing either Jesus was wrong or both Jairus’ household and the author of Luke were mistaken. But what if this is a more subtle use of hyperbole? Maybe Jesus knows exactly what they know: that the literal girl is, in fact, dead. “In fact,” yes. And yet he defies the facts. He doesn’t just say, “Sure, she’s dead, but I will raise her from death.” He rejects their report. “She’s not dead. She’s just sleeping.” 

Was Jesus wrong? No. Was he lying? No. But how can she be both dead and not dead? How can Jesus deny the facts and tell the truth? I’m suggesting that we hear Jesus’ words in the same way we read hyperbole—even if it’s a more subtle version. Through an obvious contradiction of the FACTS, Jesus makes a powerful assertion of the TRUTH. His power over life and death is MORE than mere resuscitation—more than miracle CPR or a magical NDE (near-death experience). The TRUTH is that as Lord of life, Jesus Christ has fundamentally changed the nature of death itself. In Christ, death is now, at most, a state from which all will awake. Jairus’ daughter is but the firstfruits of what Christ will accomplish for all when he “tramples down death by death and upon those in the tomb bestows life” (from an ancient Christian hymn).

In other words, Jesus’ declaration that “she is not dead, she is asleep” tells us the weighty TRUTH about his conquest of death and hades, and of his divine identity as the Lord of life.