Parables

I was always taught that a parable is "an earthly story with a heavenly meaning" and that Jesus told parables to help us understand.

But Jesus said he told parables to hide the truth of God's word.  (You don't believe me?  Go look at Mark 4.)

Furthermore, the parables aren't stories that make sense to us.  As Pastor is wont to say, "The stories start off sounding like something we're familiar with, but there's always a curve ball."

As I'm proofreading another CCA book, I noticed this line:

Parables always teach reliance upon Christ and never teach reliance upon ourselves.

But somehow, our sinful nature still wants to think that the primary point of parables is to give us a pep talk (or a scolding) about behaving a certain way.  Nope -- the parables teach reliance upon Christ alone.