Controlling Metaphor

[I read a] "little book by F. B. Meyer called The Shepherd’s Psalm (1889). In it, I found what we in English studies call a controlling metaphor (a powerful albeit understated idea that holds all the other parts of a paradigm together). This, I believe, is the controlling metaphor of the Christian life, and one that I first found in Meyer’s book and first seized in that little cozy apartment during my first day in Beaver Falls. Meyer says, “Unbelief puts circumstances between itself and Christ, so as not to see Him…Faith puts Christ between itself and circumstances, so that it cannot see them” (p. 17)."

     - From Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert by Rosaria Champagne Butterfield