Postmodern Parables #1

An Introduction to a series by Mark Braye

P

arables are stories told to teach, elicit thought, strike hearers visually and conceptually, and deliver a message in an artistic structure.

Parables throw ideas alongside life; they illuminate an idea in a fun form; and they connect elements of faith with elements of the everyday.

Throughout the Gospels, Jesus Christ used parables as a medium for more than one-third of His teachings. We know them well. The parables Christ told explicitly or implicitly delivered messages of hope, love, and grace; they showed hearers what a new/better way of living should look like; they illustrated, in terms people could understand, elements of the divine and elements of faith. Parables were, and still are, important; vital even, to communities of faith.

We love stories. We’re very narrative-centric (”What’s your/her/his/their story?” “Is this a news story?” “I liked the special effects but not such a great story”). From the moment we’re born, parents and grand-parents and other friends and relatives are telling us stories and reading us stories. From early ages we’re watching and learning from the stories of Sesame Street, Dora and Boots, and Thomas the Tank Engine. We read fiction and non-fiction. We read stories about Sam-I-Am, The Hardy Boys, a dog named Cujo, and Holden Caulfield. We read biographies and experience the true stories of Wayne Gretzky, Pierre Trudeau, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Lebron James, Clint Eastwood and Barack Obama. We enter the worlds and stories of Narnia and Pandora through the special effects of movies and the imaginations of writers and filmmakers.

I love to read and I love to hear stories, but I love films. I might be a movie geek. Motion Pictures are my favorite forms of story. I love how film incorporates written word, visuals, music, and human hands to tell a story.  

In his book The Great Movies, Roger Ebert writes: “We live in a box of space and time. Movies are windows in its walls. They allow us to enter other minds - not simply in the sense of identifying with the characters, although that is an important part of it, but by seeing the world as another person sees it.”

Movies allow us to see a lot. Movies say a lot to us. Movies say a lot about us.

I believe films are postmodern parables. I think they teach, make us think and converse, strike us visually, and deliver a message in an artistic structure. With postmodern[1] parables I want to look at a movie or a writer/directors movies or a genre of film that:

• a.) displays themes we can connect to our spiritual journeys or ministry
• b.) has a story of redemption or a character(s) learn something along a journey of discovery
• c.) eludes to Christian scriptures or elements of faith and theology
• d.) contains “glimmers of the gospel”
• e.) explores themes and tells stories of social justice, ethical dilemma, liberation, and the battle of good vs. evil

I’m going to write about movies and I want us to think and talk about movies and how they are more like parables than we give them credit for.

Get your popcorn ready.

 

Writer: Mark Braye and his wife Nancy are officers in Essex, Ontario, Canada. They have two children, pictured above, Hannah and Micah. The four of them love to play and watch Sesame Street.

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[1] “postmodern” because it sounds cool and, like the word parables, begins with the letter P.

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