With a past in one faith and a present in another, I have found common ground.

I do not say my Jewish friends, family, et al that they have "missed the boat" or are destined to one version of hell or another.

I do believe there are differences or I would have stayed on that one boat and not jumped ship. However, I did not feel I was jumping from a sinking ship. It simply was a ship headed the same direction, but a different ship. I did not seek one better or more luxurious or more advanced.... the ships just had a different name and the floor plan was laid out differently.

As I watch ships passing in the night I wonder why their passengers cannot see the other people as people and why they cannot identify what they are one as some kind of vessel.

Ocean liner, rowboat, canoe... yes, all different but any ol' gob worth their salt and pretty much any landlubber should be able to recognize them as valid ways to voyage on rough seas.

The symbolism of water and boats.

Symbols.

When the boat becomes a symbol it is bigger than a boat, it is that and then more. Actually, the reality of it being a boat often slips from view. There is more to reality than we can clearly say or pack into words or concepts. So, we symbolize them. 

Symbol is apparently Greek, from ballo and sun - meaning "to bring together" or even "to throw together". That symbol is now capable of bringing together some meaning that could nto otherwise be verbalized. If you have ever had your breathe taken from you, whether it is from love, beauty, experience, nature.... words are just too shallow to say what we want to say. They fail in comparison and pretty much do a finger painting or limerick where a master or a poet would have failed to capture it's glory.

I do not perhaps believe as you do. Statements to me, are symbols. Things we say contain "stuff"--- some accurate, some poetic, some astonishing. Terms are symbols.

"Jesus was/is God the preexistent second of the Trinity of the divine."

I know some early Christologies did not have a resurrection story that it came later as Christology got higher.

So when someone says "Jesus is God" does it bother me? No. Shouldn't it? If I know that developed later? But it doesn't.

Why?

Because, I never ask, "Is it true?"

To me, that is a silly question.

Symbols are not true and false. They are like poetry and art and can be good and bad but they are not true or false like facts. When you move a symbol into "true or false" realm you take its power away. Like art, poetry... the question is personal, "meaninful or meaningless?"

The gospels and the Christian scriptures do not all agree on how things should be symbolized. Why not?

Well, again,  "meaningful or meaningless?" What holds meaning for one, holds none for another.

Sure, it has been debated and discussed and people have been killed and labelled heretics by arguing about symbolism. But, it is reductionist and pretty futile.

Someone will say my boats were religions and some will say they were ideologies and someone will think I meant boats. One person will say I meant luxury crusiships and another will argue I never was on one and likely meant canoes, because I owned one of those...

I will alone know what I meant and may take that with me to my grave. Yet, the words, the symbols can be always and forever looked upon and decided either meaningful or meaningless.

We cannot label a usage meaningless for all and everyone. So, for some the meaningfulness of a symbol does not depend on how factual it is. For others, they need to show it is not factual to find the meaning. For others, they need to insist on the factual of the symbol for it to be meaningful.

Some will argue that it reduces their dogmas and doctrines to mushy relativism. It loses meaning for them. Does it for everyone? Well, for some symbolic import makes it more meaningful. What of those who find poetic appreciation of some aspect of the reality? What of those who it causes imagination to detail? What if it is the only way one has to reveal the hidden?

Symbols and sym,bolism does not make something "untrue" or "meaningless". It can pump it so full of Truth and meaning. It can break through our rationalistic defense. It can free us from meaning making. Our mind can travel to the edge of places where words are shallow and our best attempts at language fail.

It can take us into Mystery where conative, affective and cognitive all duke it out and where Wisdom actually resides waiting for resurrection, rebirth  and finally, reconciliation....

What makes it meaningful... Isn't that what we all seek?

One day perhaps, we will leave other people's symbols alone. 

Maybe one day we will quit packing ours in boxes or encasing them in concrete and setting them down to be steps for some and stumbling blocks for others.

I too will dream of that day...