“I believed that stories helped us to ennoble ourselves, to fix what was broken in us, and to help us become the people we dreamed of being. Lies that told a deeper truth.” — Dr. Robert Ford, Westworld Season 1
Stories:
- Hold our attention
- Present diverse perspectives
- Lower our resistance
- Inspire us to action.
“Maybe financial gurus shouldn’t be telling us to imagine that we’re filthy rich; instead, they should be telling us to replay the steps that led to our being poor.” (Made to Stick, p. 212)
“All Bible stories are the kind of truth that is relatively distant from real, divine teachings. Still, they serve as a means for gradually introducing children and youths into deeper teachings about truth and goodness and eventually to truly divine teachings (since divinity is at the core of the teachings). When the stories are read by children and touch their innocent hearts, the angels with them experience heavenly delight, being drawn by the Lord to the inner meaning and therefore to the things that the narrative details represent and symbolise. The heavenly delight of the angels is what flows into the children and gives them pleasure. The whole point of putting stories in the Word was to bring about this first stage, the childish and youthful stage of people who are to be reborn. That is why the stories were written in such a way that absolutely everything in them would contain something divine.” (Heavenly Secrets, paragraph 3690)
All these things Jesus spoke to the multitude in parables; and without a parable He did not speak to them, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, saying: “I will open My mouth in parables; I will utter things kept secret from the foundation of the world.” (Matthew 13:34,35)
Parable, means literally: “to cast [throw] beside”
Recorded on Sunday 25 February 2024