Metaphor

“There is no need to be worried by facetious people who try to make the Christian hope of heaven ridiculous by saying that they do not want to spend eternity playing harps. The answer to such people is that if they cannot understand books written for grown-ups, they should not talk about them at all. All the scriptural imagery–harps, crowns, gold, and so on–is of course a symbolical attempt to express the inexpressible…People who take these symbols literally might as well think that when Christ told us to be like doves, he meant that we were to lay eggs.”

- C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain