The Bible uses strange language to speak of spiritual matters. Jesus tells his disciples you must die in order to live, you must be a slave in order to be great, the first will be last, and the last will be first. These sayings really are challenging and paradoxical. But we have heard these sayings many times so we often forget how strange they really are. John Donne employs similar language in his poems which can sound backwards and impossible, but reveal deep truths. In this way, these images are like upside down ladders that seem backward but they actually lead us forward.

The key poetic tool Donne uses is the Metaphysical Conceit which uses a surprising or challenging image to describe a spiritual reality. Metaphysics is the investigation of things that are beyond the physical. This philosophical pursuit looks at how things are related, not just at the physical level, but in a deeper way, at the metaphysical level. This connection is not easy to see or understand and so Donne employs shocking language to try to describe it.

In his poetry, we will see two ideas that are distant and have very little in common brought together to reveal a third reality. This makes the comparison striking and surprising. As we saw in the Bible: the way to be a ruler is to be a slave and the way to have life is to die. These realities seem to be opposites but Jesus says that one leads to the other. 

John Donne says similar things in his poetry. For example, he says that affliction is a treasure, that God destroys in order to heal, that love is a foolish thing. How does this work? Donne offers these challenging ideas to provoke us to consider them in a new way. Through Donne’s work we can gain a deeper understanding of God and how he has made the world. The key revelation is that God’s ways are not man’s ways. In God’s world, some actions will look foolish or look like a dead end but that is not the reality. God works out these things so they lead to true wisdom and to ultimate victory.