Fable & Fact

SCRIPTURE: To those who listen to my teaching, more understanding will be given, and they will have an abundance of knowledge. But for those who are not listening, even what little understanding they have will be taken away from them. That is why I use these parables, ‘For they look, but they don’t really see. They hear, but they don’t really listen or understand.’ Matthew 13:12-13 NLT

QUOTE: Fable is, generally speaking, far more accurate than fact, for fable describes a man as he was to his own age, fact describes him as he is to a handful of inconsiderable antiquarians many centuries after…. Fable is more historical than fact, because fact tells us about one man and fable tells us about a million men. — G. K. Chesterton

THOUGHT: I came across this Chesterton quote a month or so ago and have been mulling it over since. There is a practical war in our country over a handful of inconsiderable (small, tiny, minor) antiquarians many centuries after attempting to define what people were thinking and doing according to their own standards. Jesus, with his skillful parables, could tell the truth about God and people without arguing about historical details and getting into fact wars. Such wars were the purview of the legal experts and Jesus’ words to them were shockingly severe. He went for the heart, not the head, and he got there every time.

I think we might need to become better storytellers.

PRAYER: Lord, I need wisdom and creativity as I answer the so-called facts of those who would rewrite history – yours or mine. You delight in truth in the inward being, and you teach me wisdom in the secret heart (Ps. 51:6). So put truth there, and help me to speak it out in unarguable ways.