Outside #1
One of
the most important objectives of this class has been exploring the potential
for myth to convey transcendent truths despite referring to a world apart from
our own. I have come to realize that our understanding of truth and knowledge
is much narrower than it ought to be, and that myths such as those written by
Lewis can be very effective in transmitting powerful truth. This reminds me a
lot of the use of parables in the Bible.
Jesus
frequently spoke in parables to teach his disciples rather than speaking blunt
truths to them. Though they often did not fully understand what he was saying
to them, the fact remains that Jesus took advantage of the potential for
narratives to convey important truths to others. The Parable of the Talents,
for example, may have never actually happened in real life. But the telling of
the tale, true or not, helped the disciples understand an important principle
about how God relates to His children—that is, that those who are faithful with
a little will be blessed with a lot. Jesus used several of these kinds of
parables to teach the people that followed him, and it leaves me asking the
question of why? Why didn’t Jesus simply lay it out? Why would the greatest
teacher in history choose to use stories to teach truth?
It
seems to me that the use of narrative in teaching truth may be effective in
that it connects with a part of the person that cannot be accessed by a mere
regurgitation of information. Each of us has an inner desire for things greater
than ourselves, and narratives like those used by Jesus or those written by
Lewis, may be able to tap into this inner sensibility of people that cannot be
touched by anything else. We can hear a truth and know it in our head, but it
may be that only through experiencing a truth in story that we can fully
understand it.
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