There once was a kindly aged Biblical Greek instructor that I was quite fond of. (I'm not good with languages and he made the process of studying the subject bearable and at times reasonably pleasant). He had a good demeanor about him (He actually reminded me a lot of a friend from adolescence and early adulthood). And along the way in studying, he was always good at giving some of the background context to whatever we happened to be studying that day.
On one day we got to the subject of parables. In particular, we talked about the etymology of the word parable. At that time, I had attended church for most of my life. Logging in probably at least 25 years of church attendance, and with that easily 11 years of parochial school attendance that was filled with chapel meetings and Bible stories and studies, not to mention years of Sunday school and Catechism classes yet I had never heard the background of this term.
I had always assumed that it would mean something like. "parallel truth" or "parallel relationship" etc. But the etymology was a bit different than that. It came instead by the habit of travelers. As they got bored they looked to amuse themselves and pass the time. They would start to skip stones along the path they trod. (The literal meaning of parable).
It's kind of funny growing up.... I'm not sure if its left over Victorian values, or some other element of Germanic cultural influence on my father's side, but my parent's (who are very devout Lutherans) seemed very concerned with speaking out against what they considered as "nonsense". They were very concerned with too much day dreaming and if people spent too much time doing seemingly frivolous activities. And yet here we go, one of the metaphors used to communicate profound spiritual truth about the Kingdom of God comes from a seemingly frivolous activity....
PS – I posted this story a few years back and decided to repost it since it didn’t get a lot of play back when I was new to Facebook. But I will add another related pointed while I’m at it. Most Christians are aware of the story of Mary and Martha entertaining Jesus in the Gospels (Luke 10:38–42). While many people would like to assume they would be on the right side of the issue, from what I’ve seen the opposite would be true given what I’ve seen of a lot of Church Culture (Martha would be seen as the hard working, mature and responsible one and Mary would be seen as a slacker).
