![]() ![]() Worldly Wiseman represents worldly wisdom. So in Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, the character Timorous represents fear and Mr. Allegory is a form of literature in which material figures represent immaterial virtues or vices. The parables are both simple and complex, but they are not simple and complex like that.Īt least, the parables are not allegories in the normal literary sense. The way some people read the parables simplistically is reminiscent of Aesop’s Fables, but the way others read them reminds one of the way some discern clue after perplexing clue in their Beatles albums for that conspiracy about Paul’s having died in a car accident. It is definitely possible to overthink Jesus's parables, by which I mean to read them with too much speculative scrutiny, ransacking every point and detail for every possible meaning it may have locked up, squeezing symbols out of symbols, long bypassing the primary intent of the story for some imaginative concoction of biblical connections. Parables are illustrations meant to run alongside their points and reveal them in rather immediate ways. ![]() On the other hand, there is another school of thought equally erroneous that would have readers poring over the parables like some kind of Magic Eye hidden picture painting. But the parables are much more complex than that and certainly, in the context of Jesus’ direct teaching and ministry, do not belong in the category of vague moralistic fables. The parables are of course fairly simple up there at the surface-some of them simpler than others-and there are clear moral lessons in the stories. In this erroneous reading, the parables are read superficially like moral lessons. The first error many readers make is to believe that the parables are simplistic religious illustrations, almost spiritual folktales. Before we establish what the parables are, however, it is helpful to establish what they are not. ![]() In my upcoming book, The Storytelling God: Seeing the Glory of Jesus in His Parables, I thought it important to clear up some common misconceptions about these important stories. The parables Jesus tells in the four Gospels are peculiar kinds of stories that too many readers read very wrongly. ![]()
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