[bobbylarrybobby]

Gravity is not the metric, but it does interact with the metric (well, gravity is what we call it when mass or energy affects space time). The presence of mass/energy causes the shortest distance between two points to no longer be a straight path through space. The path an object takes through space time is always the path with the shortest space time interval among all paths (in that sense the path is “straight” the same way that in flat space, a straight line is the shortest path between two points) — this distance is given by the metric tensor — but gravity makes this path appear curved in space.