This isn't my english homework.

I don't talk much about things that go on in my life, mostly because I don't think much about things that go on in my life. But I'm starting to grow weary of just taking life as it comes. I want to accomplish something, and in order to do that, I have to figure out how to organize my thoughts, organize what I stand for, organize who I am.

I'm listening to Rob Bell right now. He's almost as funny as Francis Chan and Judah Smith. Why do so many people have issues with him? Also as far as I can tell, he's the among the most thoughtful speakers in the christian community.

But that's unrelated.

Over NNED Summer Camp this year, I sketched out a word in my notebook.
Parable.

I remembered a note in the ESV study bible for Psalm 78:2 (I will open my mouth in a parable; I will utter dark saying from of old, things that we have heard and known, that our fathers have told us.)
The note says, "Parable and dark sayings are the tools of wisdom teachers, and require imagination to unlock their meaning."

If you've ever read the Gospels, you know that Jesus taught in Parables a few times. He pretty much never just went out and told people (crowds) something. He always did it with a story.
I've heard sermons preached about parables before.
Almost all the time, the pastor will talk about a parable like a story with a one-to-one correspondence to something about Jesus. But that's not the impression I get from the term "dark saying". In fact, I have never ever seen the word Parable described as a "Dark Saying". I think that's an awesome perspective of them.

These things that Jesus taught about weren't just a nursery rhyme like we reduce them to in sunday school or a trite lyric from a christian song. The words Jesus spoke in parables contain the absolute truth about reality. Nothing underscores this better than a dark saying. Like this is important stuff, the very fabric of the universe. That verse in Psalms and the ESV note imply that the truth in Jesus' words is locked up in meaning. I don't think that Jesus' parables were just a metaphor for the afterlife. I think that they contain truth that can't be expressed any other way.  Like how you can only store hydrofluoric acid in a plastic container, some truths need to be contained in a dark saying.

I think that's one area that the modern Church has neglected.
Evangelism has been a booming business since the 200s.
We talk a whole lot about Jesus, and that's great.
But I don't think we spend enough time saying what Jesus said.
Obviously it was important enough for him to say it. We probably should, too.

I think that Movies are the modern-day parable.
Sadly, so many of them are created for the sole purpose of consumption.
People pay for movies, so people make movies to make money.
They are selling a story. The best ones make the moviegoer think. Usually they leave a happy cathartic feeling at the end. But few movies successfully tell a parable of truth, a dark saying of old, something that really, truly introduces people to reality as it really is.


For some reason, christian subculture hasn't embraced the idea that you can't tell someone something that they don't want to know. They will just ignore it or reject it or explain it away. Even if its true. Even if its the gospel. The vast majority of people I know do not want to hear someone talk about the bible. That is boring and sober. In order to get truth inside of someone, it has to go in sideways, through a dark saying, a parable, a movie, a carefully constructed discography, anything that isn't direct. It has to dwell in them unnoticed in order to survive.
If we diverted any small percent of the resources that the church spends on ineffective ministry strategies into getting truth inside of people without them rejecting it, we wouldn't have to spend billions of dollars sending food to starving people, because starving people wouldn't exist.
But I don't want to talk about food, food is one of the most broken, messed up things in America.