Yesterday I came across a very interesting passage out of the Urantia Book. I’m no great scholar on this book, so I leave it to you to learn more about it. But suffice it to say that it is a fairly modern religious “revelation” of some kind which fuses together Bible stories with aliens and channeling. That said, some passages within it I find to be especially engaging, such as this one.

In this story, Jesus has just told the parable of the sower, and his disciples then come to him wanting to know the true hidden meaning of the parable. Both Peter and Nathaniel offer differing interpretations of what each element of the parable actually means, and the disciples descend into arguing and division over it. Jesus is just about to tell them plainly what he actually meant by it when Thomas finally speaks up and offers the following analysis:

“Yes, Master, I wish to say a few words. I remember that you once told us to beware of this very thing. You instructed us that, when using illustrations for our preaching, we should employ true stories, not fables, and that we should select a story best suited to the illustration of the one central and vital truth which we wished to teach the people, and that, having so used the story, we should not attempt to make a spiritual application of all the minor details involved in the telling of the story. I hold that Peter and Nathaniel are both wrong in their attempts to interpret this parable. I admire their ability to do these things, but I am equally sure that all such attempts to make a natural parable yield spiritual analogies in all its features can only result in confusion and serious misconception of the true purpose of such a parable. That I am right is fully proved by the fact that, whereas we were all of one mind an hour ago, now are we divided into two separate groups who hold different opinions concerning this parable and hold such opinions so earnestly as to interfere, in my opinion, with our ability fully to grasp the great truth which you had in mind when you presented this parable to the multitude and subsequently asked us to make comment upon it.”

A couple paragraphs later Jesus tells him he is correct and adds in a warning to his disciples not that they shouldn’t *tell* parables to people or that they shouldn’t try to interpret them for themselves, but that they shouldn’t make it a part of their teachings to tell people how to interpret them.

“Well done, Thomas; you have discerned the true meaning of parables; but both Peter and Nathaniel have done you all equal good in that they have so fully shown the danger of undertaking to make an allegory out of my parables. In your own hearts you may often profitably engage in such flights of the speculative imagination, but you make a mistake when you seek to offer such conclusions as a part of your public teaching.”

This is something I am beginning to understand more and more lately with regard to spiritual teachings: that it’s good to try and decode and understand things internally, but that that somehow misses the larger point of what these stories are supposed to do. (I also kind of touched on this recently here.)