Dear Friends,
Why don't we just explain what the films mean?
You would be surprised how often we are asked a question along those lines. Just today in fact someone suggested we put up a video of John or I at the end of each parable to explain what the film meant.
The reason we don't?
Because our films are descriptive, not prescriptive. They are intended to cause you, the viewer, to engage with the story and ask questions. One of the writers we have looked to as we research the parables is Robert Farrar Capon. His book Kingdom, Grace, Judgment touche on the subject here:
" 'for to him who has, more will be given; and from him who has not, even what he has will be taken away' (Matthew 13:12). This seems to me to be one of those hard sayings of Jesus that cries out, not for a prescriptive interpretation, but for a descriptive one. Jesus, though he could be taken as issuing a statement about what God will do to reward or punish those who hear the parables, seems to be more reasonably understood as giving a description of the way things are."
The stories we tell are intended to be a depiction of the way things are in real life set in our day and age. What that means is our films are often not all tied up in a bow at the end. One time, I was showing the films to teenage couple who were anything but excited about God. At the end of the films from the Purple DVD the boy turned to me and said, "I don't get it, what are you trying to say?". I asked him what the films meant to him and what they made him feel and he and I could both tell he understood. It was the fact that he knew these stories were from Jesus Christ he assumed they must be loaded, or in other words "prescriptive". So then he asked me how the original parables went and we read the bible passages off the DVD menus for each film.
I could tell he was a little frustrated and then he said, "Well Jesus didn't explain it either".
Exactly. These stories, parables, are meant to make us think and ask questions. They aren't necessarily a prescription of how to live life they are a description of how life unfolds. If we really want to know what to "do" we must go to the storyteller and ask him, for in the end he knows the story in all of us.
The Cinematographer,
Stewart H. Redwine
C: 310-770-0448
E: sredwine@36parables.com
Why don't we just explain what the films mean?
You would be surprised how often we are asked a question along those lines. Just today in fact someone suggested we put up a video of John or I at the end of each parable to explain what the film meant.
The reason we don't?
Because our films are descriptive, not prescriptive. They are intended to cause you, the viewer, to engage with the story and ask questions. One of the writers we have looked to as we research the parables is Robert Farrar Capon. His book Kingdom, Grace, Judgment touche on the subject here:
" 'for to him who has, more will be given; and from him who has not, even what he has will be taken away' (Matthew 13:12). This seems to me to be one of those hard sayings of Jesus that cries out, not for a prescriptive interpretation, but for a descriptive one. Jesus, though he could be taken as issuing a statement about what God will do to reward or punish those who hear the parables, seems to be more reasonably understood as giving a description of the way things are."
The stories we tell are intended to be a depiction of the way things are in real life set in our day and age. What that means is our films are often not all tied up in a bow at the end. One time, I was showing the films to teenage couple who were anything but excited about God. At the end of the films from the Purple DVD the boy turned to me and said, "I don't get it, what are you trying to say?". I asked him what the films meant to him and what they made him feel and he and I could both tell he understood. It was the fact that he knew these stories were from Jesus Christ he assumed they must be loaded, or in other words "prescriptive". So then he asked me how the original parables went and we read the bible passages off the DVD menus for each film.
I could tell he was a little frustrated and then he said, "Well Jesus didn't explain it either".
Exactly. These stories, parables, are meant to make us think and ask questions. They aren't necessarily a prescription of how to live life they are a description of how life unfolds. If we really want to know what to "do" we must go to the storyteller and ask him, for in the end he knows the story in all of us.
The Cinematographer,
Stewart H. Redwine
C: 310-770-0448
E: sredwine@36parables.com
posted by 36 Parables at
Sunday, February 24, 2008
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