Modernity's big red nose

The Interpretation of Parables is central to any thorough-going understanding of the mission and purpose of Jesus, yet it is at the very point of the interpretation of parables that moderns trip over the clown shoes of modernity. Understanding parables requires a familiarity with symbolic, typological, and figurative communication, but part of the clown act of modernity is a symbolic mime-act in which we are stuck in an invisible box. Moderns insist that they have moved beyond the Ancient and Medieval use of ‘symbolic communication’ to a precise scientific clarity.

Postmoderns, though they have realized that the box of modernity’s mime act was invisible only because it wasn’t there, continue to insist that their clown suit and mime act be taken seriously, and that they are different because, unlike the smiling clowns, their face paint has a frown and a tear and because they have an earring in their right ear (though not because they are a pirate).