"Using many parables like these, he spoke the word to them, so far as they were capable of understanding it. He would not speak to them except in parables, but he explained everything to his disciples when they were alone." (Mark 4: 13-14)
You don't want to throw your pearls into the hog pen. Or as my grandfather used to say: For some people you have to let the rooster peck 'em. Understandings back then were given in more earthy language. With vivid imagery. These images were like depth charges that settled in you, often with slow motion explosions that had even greater later impact. They were like small movies you took with you revealing deeper understandings as time went on. Imagination is more powerful than symbolic logic.
Just as today, people in Jesus' time had their attention focused on various things. Attention is like a flashlight. Some keep attention shining on internal yak-yak and go through the day virtually unseeing, blinded by their own light, caught in a visual hologram mistaken for Reality. No need to reveal deep secrets to them. They wouldn't hear anyway. A parable might entertain them enough or mystify them enough that they could chew on it later. Maybe.
Others would give their attention for maybe a half hour or so and then their mind turned to other things. A parable would stay with them like a piece of spiritual food stuck in their questing teeth.
And so on. Picture Jesus standing in the center of concentric rings of attention. He wanted to speak in a manner producing maximum impact. Only those closest to him in the attentional ring would receive direct explanations. But everything people needed to know was in the parable.
He "spoke the word to them, so far as they were capable of understanding it." Capability requires capacity, room. If they had no room in the In, they had no room to shelter the Christ child yet to be born.
You don't want to throw your pearls into the hog pen. Or as my grandfather used to say: For some people you have to let the rooster peck 'em. Understandings back then were given in more earthy language. With vivid imagery. These images were like depth charges that settled in you, often with slow motion explosions that had even greater later impact. They were like small movies you took with you revealing deeper understandings as time went on. Imagination is more powerful than symbolic logic.
Just as today, people in Jesus' time had their attention focused on various things. Attention is like a flashlight. Some keep attention shining on internal yak-yak and go through the day virtually unseeing, blinded by their own light, caught in a visual hologram mistaken for Reality. No need to reveal deep secrets to them. They wouldn't hear anyway. A parable might entertain them enough or mystify them enough that they could chew on it later. Maybe.
Others would give their attention for maybe a half hour or so and then their mind turned to other things. A parable would stay with them like a piece of spiritual food stuck in their questing teeth.
And so on. Picture Jesus standing in the center of concentric rings of attention. He wanted to speak in a manner producing maximum impact. Only those closest to him in the attentional ring would receive direct explanations. But everything people needed to know was in the parable.
He "spoke the word to them, so far as they were capable of understanding it." Capability requires capacity, room. If they had no room in the In, they had no room to shelter the Christ child yet to be born.
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