Love is an Orientation
Here is a question I get quite a bit; and just recently have been asked it more than usual:
Why did Jesus talk in parables?
I also wrote about this question here, but because I’ve been asked it so many times recently I thought I would say something again. I believe he did so for reasons that are two-fold. First, Jesus spoke in parables to get others in his era, for the first time, to think for themselves in knowing what it means to implement Kingdom Principles in their own real-time situations. Until the point that Jesus came along, all ‘believers’ were force-fed rules and regulations by religious gatekeepers who did all of the thinking and disseminating for everyone – ‘everyone’ who was then just expected to fall in line.
God could have had the Bible written, specifically in the Gospels, as another laundry list of yes/no situations that Jesus could have very easily communicated to everyone. What is considered the New Testament today could have been nothing more than an updated version of Leviticus. But, secondly then, Jesus knew that such a simplistic yes/no medium for living and thinking within the new covenant would not work for every situation in every circumstance throughout all of the generations to follow until he came back.
That is why today, hermeneutically speaking, it is so vital for us to start clinging to the ever-applicable Principles within Scripture that we might start to instill a Jesus-inspired baseline biblical framework to work off of. I am not trying to relegate Paul or the Old Testament as second or third class citizens because the same means of principled-interpretation can be used for them as well. I speak more about this in my book (specifically in Chapters 6, 7 and 10), but,
I’d love to hear your thoughts on why you believe Jesus spoke in parables when he clearly could have answered everything, with much ease, in more easily accessible fashion? And what does this mean for us today?
Much love.
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