the timboucher experience

I’ve been thinking about why Jesus used story-telling as such a major part of his teaching. Various theories seem to exist about why this was so. These seem to be the most popular ones:

1. That is the style that all Jewish teachers of the time period used
2. Stories are “simpler” and easier to remember than principles and straight teachings
3. He was hiding his true message, so as to escape the notice of Jewish and Roman rulers, whose authority he threatened (obviously, this didn’t work)
4. His teachings were basically a mystery religion, where the stories were the outer mysteries revealed to the masses, and the initiated disciples alone were privy to his true teachings.

Each of this makes sense to a certain degree. I only found one article which went beyond those ones, comparing it to the style of modern preachers who “tell it like it is” and address social issue head-on.

1. Parables are more enduring than telling it like it is.
2. If the situation changes, the telling it like it was becomes irrelevant, but the parable lives on.
3. Parables have a time-release effect; they plant seeds that sprout later.

That’s actually a very good article, and I recommend it. It’s actually the only one worth anything on the topic, in my opinion. Personally, I tend to agree with the whole concept that the human mind functions according to stories as a unit of understanding.

Bits of information cannot function as thinking units, that is unless we make story-engrams with them. Fundamental to human thinking is that we are story bound. Organizing the stimuli that surround us in story form is how we structure our world; how we make sense out of our environment; how we describe cause and effect relationships, and every other relationship.

The most powerful way to express meaning is through stories. By using stories, you remain open to new insights which might remain hidden from you were you to reduce it to a code of beliefs. I did find one Christian pastor who had something similar to say to that:

…[I]t would seem that parables were not meant to clarify but to confound our intellect…

The concept of “Christ Consciousness” comes into play here, I think, although I’ve not seen anybody talk about it in this regard. Also referred to Cosmic Consciousness, it’s this idea that Jesus a sort of mystical union with the entire Universe, so that all things were laid out before him and connected to him. Christians tend to believe that Christ alone was able to attain this level of spiritual perfection, while New Agers and many Eastern religions believed that it could be attained by anyone through rigorous spiritual exercise. Whichever side you fall on, I think this notion has everything to do with why he spoke in parables.

In my weird dream about Jesus that I had last week, I described him as looking like all people at once. And he went among the crowd, telling each person the one thing they needed to know. The thing is though, that possesing Cosmic Consciousness, he can see over, around, under and through people. But the people to whom he spoke were not able to do so. As such, he needed to basically “speak to them in their own language,” rather than try to tell them something straight out which because of it’s awesome penetrating truth, would seem threatening, and would probably be rejected outright. So I tend to agree with the one author who said that stories are like planting seeds, whereas the whole plant might be rooted out and destroyed.

• I will utter dark sayings of old
• The Greatest Story Ever Told
• But for those outside, everything comes in parables
• Bodhisattva, won’t you take me by the hand?
• The Futility of Interpreting Parables