The problem is not that modern man thinks literally while the Bible thinks poetically.

The problem is that modern man has forgotten that his own literalism is built on metaphor.

We think “force” is simply what we observe. But we first know force from within: from the hand pressing, the shoulder straining, and the body meeting resistance. Only afterward do we look outward and say that waves push houses, planets pull bodies, and matter acts on matter.

The word “push” only seems literal because we have forgotten its origin in the body. Imagine seeing only shapes moving on a screen. One circle touches another, and the second circle moves away. The bare sight does not yet tell us what happened. Did one circle push the other out of the way? Or did the second circle make room?

We say “push” because we are not neutral observers. We are creatures of flesh and bone. We have pushed and been pushed. We have strained and resisted. Then we carry that inward drama into the visible world.

Imagine this: a great wave comes roaring inland and tears a house from its foundations. The modern man says, “The wave was stronger.” He may be right. But he should notice that he has already made the event into a tale of strength.

Another age might have replaced power with authority and said that the house bowed before the sea, as men make way for a king. We would call this poetry. But our mechanistic language is poetic too. We simply prefer the poetry of burdens, pressure, and strain to one of reverence, lordship, and rightful yielding.

This does not make the modern picture false. It has uncovered many true things. But it does mean that the Big Bang is not imagination-free while Genesis 1 is imagination-based. Both depend upon analogy. Both teach us to see the world through human experience, for no other way is open to us.

The biblical worldview is not less rooted in experience. It begins from another experience just as basic: that things move toward their proper ends. Hunger seeks food. Seeds seek light. Hands reach for what they desire.

This is why Aristotle remains so useful. A thing is not fully explained by the force that moves it. We must also ask what it is for. The first is efficient cause, the second is final cause. Modernity did not invent efficient cause, but it enthroned it. It trained us to see the world mainly through force. This works very well for many things. It helps us build bridges, clocks, and airplanes. But when this kind of imagination becomes the whole explanation, purpose fades from sight.

The river becomes only water in motion, the tree becomes only a biological machine, the sun becomes only a thermonuclear furnace. None of this is false. It is simply incomplete. In reality, things also have ends: the river waters the valley, the tree gives shade and fruit, the sun rules the day.

A child knows this before he can explain it. He knows what a door is for before he understands hinges. He knows what a bed is for before he understands carpentry. Final causes are not less immediate than efficient causes.

The great mistake of materialism is that it forgets force is a metaphor drawn from embodied life. We first knew force because we had shoulders, legs, backs, and burdens. Then we carried that bodily drama into nature and called it the basic layer of reality. Finally, forgetting the projection, we turned it back upon ourselves. Society became competing pressures, desire became inward pressure, thought became neural mechanism, love became brain chemistry.

But no one can actually live this way. Man does not live by efficient causes alone. A thing’s motion is governed by its end: the hand moves differently when it means to grasp, to strike, or to bless. So the question is not whether we will read the world through human experience. We always do. The question is which human experience gives us the greater world: force or purpose.

A biblical worldview does not deny force. It refuses to let it become the whole world. Creation is more than a field of pressures. It is an order of purposes too. To see this again is to begin the ascent from mechanism to purpose, from matter in motion to a world charged with finality.