Mental Discipline and Jesus

"Then the disciples came and said to [Jesus], 'Why do you speak to them in parables?'  And he answered them..., 'This is why I speak to them in parables, because seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand.'"  Matthew 13:10, 13

How is your thinking a reflection of your relationship with Jesus?  Most of us likely don't give a lot of thought to the way that we think.  Over the years, we have been taught in various ways, in school, in life, and the content of what we have been taught has also shaped what we think. 

It is very intriguing to me that Jesus taught quite often using parables.  In fact, as I read through the Gospels about Jesus' life, one thing seems to come up quite regularly in Jesus' teaching.  He rarely gives a straight-forward answer.  Instead, He makes people think, and in doing so, forces them to come to the conclusion that He desires.  For example, when the paralyzed man is brought to Him by his four friends, Jesus announces that the man's sins are forgiven.  That's hardly why the friends brought him to Jesus.  Knowing the thoughts of the religious leaders in the room, that only God can forgive sins, Jesus challenges them with a question.  Which one is easier to do from an earthly, human standpoint: tell the man to get up and walk, or announce that his sins are forgiven.  Of course, the religious leaders could not answer that it's easier to have the man get up and walk.  They would be exposed when he didn't.  So the answer would be to announce that his sins were forgiven.  After all, who can see sins forgiven?  It's not obvious to us humans. 

That's when Jesus brings in the hammer to the argument.  Here's how you will know who I am.  Then He told the man to get up and walk, and he did.  Jesus could have answered their thoughts by saying, "Hey, I'm God, I can do this."  Instead, Jesus worked in such a way to challenge their thinking, so that they arrived at the same conclusion on their own. 

Jesus is dearly concerned with how we think.  He doesn't want to simply spoon feed the answers to life to us, but for us to give thought to the mysteries of life, and to recognize how everything, in the end, points back to Him.  Good and bad, plenty and need, all parts of life eventually guide our thoughts back to the One who has rescued us from sin, death, and Satan.