Chesterton once wrote that a paradox is ‘the truth standing on her head to get attention.’
The Bible teaches that Jesus is the Truth in flesh.
Perhaps a parable is the truth rolling around in the dirt.
Parables deal with the stuff of earth – soil, seeds, wheat, buried treasure, jewels, vineyards, wine, cloth, fish, feasts, trees, coins, sheep, goats, etc. The Truth in flesh (Jesus) gives truth in flesh (parables) by incarnating the truth into stories that display the quality of the world and life as it actually is. This makes it all the more striking that Jesus’ contemporaries did not have eyes to see the truth. They could not see what was right in front of them all the time. They had no truth to bring to the images, so the images meant nothing to them.
To be continued.
