#parables

[danshive]

🦂 Will you help me cross the river, frog?

🐸 I'm not sure I should. You have a deadly stinger.

🦂 I will not sting you. Were I to do so, we would both... Wait, does this parable support racism?

🐸 What?

🦂 In this parable, I'm unable to resist the urge to sting you in spite of it dooming us both.

🐸 I think it's supposed to be about the nature of wicked individuals?

🦂 Maybe that's the intent, but it's not about me being a wicked scorpion. It's about scorpions being wicked.

🐸 What's the difference?

🦂 One's about an individual, one's about an entire species! We're supposed to be stand-ins for humans, right? The literal point isn't the complications of scorpion-frog relations?

🐸 I imagine so, yes.

🦂 So it stands to reason that I represent a people who are wicked, not an individual! A people so flawed that they can't be relied on to care for themselves! That exact excuse has been used in attempts to justify oppressing others!

🐸 I think you're reading too much into this.

🦂 I'm reading just above the bare minimum into this!

🐸 Well, yeah. Do any parables really hold up to nitpicking the specifics? They always represent something else.

🦂 And in this case, I think what it represents is "bigotry is right!" That's terrible!

🐸 I really don't think that's the intention. I think the scorpion form is representative of the nature of an individual, the stinger symbolic of their personal nature. I don't think it's meant to represent a group.

🦂 Again, maybe that's the intent, but you can see my point, right?

🐸 I suppose so, yes. Look, do you want a ride across this river or not?

🦂 No, I'm going to go write a really long blog post about this. Thanks anyway.

🐸 Sure.

[many-sparrows]

[silverbridge-harbor]

I'm at a dinner event but everyone has these comically long spoons, and they keep trying to hold them by the very end and use them to feed the person across from them. It's so fiddly and they're all just dropping and smearing the food everywhere because the balance on the spoons is so terrible and nobody has any coordination. None of these idiots have thought to just hold it close to the top and use it like a normal spoon. But when I tried this everyone started yelling at me, calling me selfish and saying it's allegorical or something, and when I wouldn't stop they all started hitting me with their spoons. None of them even had to get up because the spoons are so long

[lionofchaeronea]

Title: Parable of the Good Samaritan Artist: Jan Wijnants (Dutch, 1632-1684) Date: 1670 Genre: religious art (Christianity) Period: Dutch Golden Age Medium: oil on canvas Dimensions: 127 cm (50 in) high x 137 cm (53.9 in) wide Location: Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia

This painting illustrates Luke 10:25-37, in which Jesus recounts the parable of the Samaritan who cared for a man beaten by robbers when a priest and a Levite would not.

Jan Wijnants was a specialist in landscapes. His adeptness at handling topography can be seen here in the vividness of the trees that overlook the Samaritan and the wounded man.

[my-sacred-art]

Actor Allison Hayes, known best for her role as “the 50-foot woman” (American, Mar. 6, 1930 – Feb. 27, 1977).

Parable of the Wise and Foolish Virgins, undated. Friedrich Wilhelm von Schadow (German, Sep. 7, 1789 – Mar. 19, 1862).

[artist-issues]

Also, I don't know if I've ever said this, but sometimes I feel it needs to be said—no human-made story is ever going to get Christianity exactly 100% right, whether in metaphor or in allegory or in symbolism.

Because Christianity is reality. It the framework upon which everything else hangs. So it would be like if I made a movie about elephants. I could go out and document an elephant's whole life from start to finish. I could produce a faithful account of what the elephant was feeling and thinking. And I could dramatize it without fudging the facts or skewing the truth observed about that elephant in any way.

But when you look at it, it'll still just be A Story About an Elephant. It won't be the elephant. And because it's not all-inclusive, because it's not everything there is to know about the elephant right down to its atoms and ancestry and how many breaths it took and what every other animal thought of it, etc., it won't even be a perfect explanation of the elephant. It'll just get super close.

Because stories are communication. But communication has nuance and suffers from limitations. Especially clear and impactful communication. So, while I might say something true about elephants by making a story about them, I'll never be saying the whole and perfect truth about elephants. Just like you can use a story to say something true about Christianity (or any truth) but you'll never be saying the whole and perfect truth about Christianity.

Besides, God already did that. So relax and be earnest--you're just shining a spotlight on truth. You're not inventing it or breaking it down exhaustively.

[a-queer-seminarian]

“But what I love most about the parables are the details. ...I love that Jesus knew you can’t sew a patch of shrunk cloth on an old garment or the patch will pull away, and that you can’t pour new wine into old wineskins or the skins will burst. ...

I love these details because they reveal to me a God who is immersed in creation, deeply embedded within the lives of God’s beloved. Ours is a God who knows how to mend clothes and bake bread, a God familiar with the planting and harvest seasons, the traditions of bridesmaids, and the tickle of wool on the back of the neck."

- Rachel Held Evans, Inspired