Why did Jesus teach in parables?
A great deal of Jesus’ teaching is recorded for us in the form of parables (essentially stories that teach). But why did Jesus teach this way when it leaves so much confusion over what he meant. There is even a story in the bible that shows his disciples were struggling to understand his teaching, if they struggle how will we ever know what he was on about?
We get a clue to why he did this in Matthew gospel chapter 13 verses 10-15.
Jesus says in effect: he only wanted the right people to understand. Those people are the ones who are ready to listen to Jesus and have not closed their minds to what he has to teach.
This can be both confusing and a little alarming to those of us who read this today but there are very good reasons for why Jesus would want to do this.
You probably already know that Jesus was not popular with the religious authorities – in fact they were quite often planning to catch him out and kill him. It could be that Jesus didn’t want to talk too plainly so that he could get away with his teaching (you can’t kill someone for telling a story).
I think this could be partly true but I think it goes deeper than that. I think Jesus only wants those who are willing to be open to what he has to say to understand him. We see in other places in the gospels that Jesus had a clear idea of who should be hearing his message. Jesus just did not waste time on those who would not listen.
I think there is a lesson for Christians today. Christians are notorious for spending all of their time on those who are least likely to be interested. We will give hours and hours over to trying to convince the skeptic about Jesus and take no notice of the people who are actually interested – the reverse of what Jesus did. Jesus didn’t waist time on those who were closed minded to his message but instead gave all his energy over to speaking with those who were interested and open to his ideas.
Of course the challenge for Christians is also to understand if they themselves are open or closed to what Jesus was trying to say.