Use Your Allusion: Laocoön

This is the first allusion post I've made in a long time, and I hope to start posting them regularly again, as I've gotten quite a bit of positive feedback about them from my regular readers and friends.

Today, I am posting about Laocoön. There is a famous sculpture of Laocoön from around 50BC. In Greek mythology, Laocoön was a Trojan priest who warned them not to accept the Trojan Horse.

He said:

Do not trust the horse, Trojans. Whatever it is, I fear the Greeks even when they bring gifts.

As it turns out, he was right. But unfortunately for him, the gods were angry that he attempted to intervene and protect the people, so they sent two gigantic sea serpents to crush him and his sons.

Often, allusions to Laocoön are made to this particular carving, which was discovered during the Renaissance and is now on display in the Vatican Museum, more than to his specific actions. If someone seems all tied up and miserable in his or her situation, you can compare them to Laocoön.

Use Your Allusion #6: The Boulder (or Labor) of Sisyphus

This is one of my favorite allusions. In Greek mythology, Sisyphus was a king of Corinth who committed a variety of misdeeds on earth, and was relegated to punishment in Tartarus.
His punishment was that day after day, he was compelled to push a large boulder up a steep hill. Every time, as soon as he got it to the top, it rolled down again. Thus, he had to begin pushing it up again and his labor never ended. So if you are stuck in some sort of labor that seems both endless and fruitless, you can refer to it as a labor (or boulder) of Sisyphus, or as a Sisyphean task.

I think this particular allusion can be useful in churches of Christ as we discuss the idea of "restoring" the early church. When I took John Mark Hicks for Restoration Theology, the point was made that we can never really "restore" the early church. Restoring should be thought of as an ongoing process toward which we are always working. I personally disagreed with that, and I argued that while we might not be able to attain moral perfection, to restore the doctrines and practices of the early church is something I believe is somewhat attainable. I stated that the Restoration Movement is in fact a boulder of Sisyphus if it's not possible to ever reach what we're working towards.

In the end, I think that the selection of a better metaphor (at Dr. Hicks' prudent suggestion) helped to clarify. Education seems to be a better comparison. While we can never have exhaustive knowledge of all things, we can learn and mature in a very real sense, and we can stand on the shoulders of those who've gone before us. Because of doctrinal intricacies and cultural differences, it might not be possible for us to be a facsimile of the early church, but we can--and I think we have--made good strides in returning to basic Christianity.