MQ = IQ

Business and management gurus tell us that a person’s ability to think metaphorically is as important as intelligence quotients; hence my title, MQ = IQ.
I think that sails beyond the business world and is exquisitely true for all of life. Metaphor is defined as a figure of speech in which a word or phrase is applied to an object or action to which it is not literally applicable. “I’m so hungry I could eat a horse” is a simple metaphor. It begs the listener to expand their knowledge base without undue or extreme literal explanation.

The Bible is rich with metaphoric delights. The person who says that every word is intended to be taken with a wooden and literal eye is unwittingly draining the Book of its potential awe and power. Even “Thou shalt not murder” grows when the Holy Spirit is allowed the breath of Jesus who says, “But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother shall be guilty…whoever says, ‘you fool’ shall be guilty…”. Suddenly murder becomes a subject of inventory for every single one of us whose resentment, dishonor and unkindness lives unchecked neatly tucked away in our hearts.

Cognitive researchers whose life is spent in thinking about how people think (how’d you like to live with one of these folks?) tell us that as the world grows more complex “imaginative rationality” has become ever more valuable. Metaphorically speaking in a tired cliché that’s called, “thinking outside the box”.

The Apostle Paul said it this way, “I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened so that you may know what is the hope of His calling and what are the riches of His inheritance in the saints”. We are on the brink of a spiritual renaissance, or as Kris Vallotton calls it, “the eve of construction”.

Literalists have the world blowing up while others of us have the earth being consumed in the passions of an outrageous God whose Throne is encircled by a rainbow and surrounded by a leadership team saturated with eyeballs beyond count and bodies carried about by six wings.

Which reminds me; God told Noah that every time He looked at a rainbow He would be reminded to spare creation. As if to underscore this notion, God filled His own Great Room with a round rainbow. Metaphor or not, that’s just cool.