Skip to main content

Fables and Parables

By Carl S ~

As I child I read Aesop's fables. Returning to them again, I find their wisdom and observations about human nature to be still fresh. For some time now I've thought about biblical parables which are also well known. Let us consider those parables strictly in their own words, and if they hold up as well as Aesop's fables as practical moral lessons.

English: "The Ant and the Grasshopper&quo...
English: "The Ant and the Grasshopper", from Aesop's Fables (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
In the fable of the grasshopper and the ants, the moral of the story is not to spend all one's time in pleasure, but to be practical as well, working and providing for the future hard times that will come if you don't. On the other hand, we have the parable of the prodigal son with an opposite message: spend your inheritance wastefully, and when you've used it all up, come back to your father and be rewarded beyond your wildest dreams. (Meanwhile, your good and faithful brother is ignored.)

A Biblical parable of the slaves teaches a similar message: The slaves are given “talents,” i. e., money, to invest. One of them, fearing that the master will punish him if he loses it by his investment, buries his talent. For this reason alone, he is punished.

The parable of the sower is confusing. If we are to believe the audience's reaction to it, even they had to have it explained to them. The idea that the seed-sower would expect to have it sprout on rock, hard ground, or where the birds can soon consume it, is a rejection of reality. To explain the seed as wisdom or virtue rejected by individual human beings comparable to rock, hard ground, absorbing too much rain, too little sunlight, etc., is like saying that their very natures couldn't possibly create conditions for those words to sprout, their plants to thrive. (Meanwhile, the implication is that a creator created those humans, those conditions.)

Regarding false prophets, one is warned by example: “A good tree cannot bear bad fruit.” Yet we have seen good trees with bad fruit on them. Where is the warning in that? What is the moral lesson behind the command to go another mile whenever anyone forces you to go one mile? What of the parables about the dealings of the slave owner with his slaves? Are there really moral lessons to be gained from them when their basic relationship is morally wrong?

The parable of the vineyard workers has the vineyard owner paying the worker who toiled one hour the same wage as those who worked all day. What's the moral in that? The parable of the mustard seed says “It is the smallest of all the seeds.” This is not true. On the other hand, “If you have faith the size of a mustard seed, (Faith comes in sizes, like small, medium, large, extra-large?), you will say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there, and it will move.”

What is the lesson of the parable of the shepherd who leaves ninety-nine sheep to bring back the one which has strayed off, and rejoices over it more than the ninety-nine who didn't – “go astray?” Is that really a moral lesson or an excuse to go astray? (And by the way, we have yet to hear of a shepherd giving his life for his sheep. What would be the practical, moral lesson for doing that?)

Oh well, there are common themes in many of these parables: Forgiveness and forgiving. Trouble is, to be forgiven, you have to do something to be forgiven for. And, if like the prodigal son, you do it up big time, the bigger the rewards you get! And, if you're paying attention, you'll notice that killing the one whose telling the parables will get you the “grand prize forgiveness,” because “They know not what they do.”

I'm sticking with Aesop.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Are You an Atheist Success Story?

By Avangelism Project ~ F acts don’t spread. Stories do. It’s how (good) marketing works, it’s how elections (unfortunately) are won and lost, and it’s how (all) religion spreads. Proselytization isn’t accomplished with better arguments. It’s accomplished with better stories and it’s time we atheists catch up. It’s not like atheists don’t love a good story. Head over to the atheist reddit and take a look if you don’t believe me. We’re all over stories painting religion in a bad light. Nothing wrong with that, but we ignore the value of a story or a testimonial when we’re dealing with Christians. We can’t be so proud to argue the semantics of whether atheism is a belief or deconversion is actually proselytization. When we become more interested in defining our terms than in affecting people, we’ve relegated ourselves to irrelevance preferring to be smug in our minority, but semantically correct, nonbelief. Results Determine Reality The thing is when we opt to bury our

So Just How Dumb Were Jesus’ Disciples? The Resurrection, Part VII.

By Robert Conner ~ T he first mention of Jesus’ resurrection comes from a letter written by Paul of Tarsus. Paul appears to have had no interest whatsoever in the “historical” Jesus: “even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, we know him so no longer.” ( 2 Corinthians 5:16 ) Paul’s surviving letters never once mention any of Jesus’ many exorcisms and healings, the raising of Lazarus, or Jesus’ virgin birth, and barely allude to Jesus’ teaching. For Paul, Jesus only gets interesting after he’s dead, but even here Paul’s attention to detail is sketchy at best. For instance, Paul says Jesus “was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures” ( 1 Corinthians 15:4 ), but there are no scriptures that foretell the Jewish Messiah would at long last appear only to die at the hands of Gentiles, much less that the Messiah would then be raised from the dead after three days. After his miraculous conversion on the road to Damascus—an event Paul never mentions in his lette

Christian TV presenter reads out Star Wars plot as story of salvation

An email prankster tricked the host of a Christian TV show into reading out the plots of The Fresh Prince of Bel Air and Star Wars in the belief they were stories of personal salvation. The unsuspecting host read out most of the opening rap to The Fresh Prince, a 1990s US sitcom starring Will Smith , apparently unaware that it was not a genuine testimony of faith. The prankster had slightly adapted the lyrics but the references to a misspent youth playing basketball in West Philadelphia would have been instantly familiar to most viewers. The lines read out by the DJ included: "One day a couple of guys who were up to no good starting making trouble in my living area. I ended up getting into a fight, which terrified my mother." The presenter on Genesis TV , a British Christian channel, eventually realised that he was being pranked and cut the story short – only to move on to another spoof email based on the plot of the Star Wars films. It began: &quo

ACTS OF GOD

By David Andrew Dugle ~   S ettle down now children, here's the story from the Book of David called The Parable of the Bent Cross. In the land Southeast of Eden –  Eden, Minnesota that is – between two rivers called the Big Miami and the Little Miami, in the name of Saint Gertrude there was once built a church. Here next to it was also built a fine parochial school. The congregation thrived and after a multitude of years, a new, bigger church was erected, well made with clean straight lines and a high steeple topped with a tall, thin cross of gold. The faithful felt proud, but now very low was their money. Their Sunday offerings and school fees did not suffice. Anon, they decided to raise money in an unclean way. One fine summer day the faithful erected tents in the chariot lot between the two buildings. In the tents they set up all manner of games – ring toss, bingo, little mechanical racing horses and roulette wheels – then all who lived in the land between the two rivers we

Why I left the Canadian Reformed Church

By Chuck Eelhart ~ I was born into a believing family. The denomination is called Canadian Reformed Church . It is a Dutch Calvinistic Christian Church. My parents were Dutch immigrants to Canada in 1951. They had come from two slightly differing factions of the same Reformed faith in the Netherlands . Arriving unmarried in Canada they joined the slightly more conservative of the factions. It was a small group at first. Being far from Holland and strangers in a new country these young families found a strong bonding point in their church. Deutsch: Heidelberger Katechismus, Druck 1563 (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) I was born in 1955 the third of eventually 9 children. We lived in a small southern Ontario farming community of Fergus. Being young conservative and industrious the community of immigrants prospered. While they did mix and work in the community almost all of the social bonding was within the church group. Being of the first generation born here we had a foot in two

Morality is not a Good Argument for Christianity

By austinrohm ~ I wrote this article as I was deconverting in my own head: I never talked with anyone about it, but it was a letter I wrote as if I was writing to all the Christians in my life who constantly brought up how morality was the best argument for Christianity. No Christian has read this so far, but it is written from the point of view of a frustrated closeted atheist whose only outlet was organizing his thoughts on the keyboard. A common phrase used with non-Christians is: “Well without God, there isn’t a foundation of morality. If God is not real, then you could go around killing and raping.” There are a few things which must be addressed. 1. Show me objective morality. Define it and show me an example. Different Christians have different moral standards depending on how they interpret the Bible. Often times, they will just find what they believe, then go back into scripture and find a way to validate it. Conversely, many feel a particular action is not