Part 1 Seven Parables For A Plastic Soul

Where scripture becomes seed, paradox becomes doorway, and story becomes surgery for the soul.

Seven weeks. Seven lessons. One nervous system reborn.

 

Part 1: The Seed: Why Jesus Spoke in Parables

When a memory forms, the brain sends tiny electrical signals across a gap between neurons. When that signal repeats, the bridge strengthens. Fire it again tomorrow and the next day, and the path becomes a road. Continue long enough, and the road becomes a highway. Neuroscientists call this long-term potentiation. Scripture calls it God writing His law upon the heart.

It stirs wonder that the Creator of the brain chose stories as His primary medium for teaching souls.

Jesus could have delivered lists, frameworks, or systematic instruction, yet He spoke of mustard seeds and fishermen, wheat and tares, lamps and coins, weddings and vineyards. He stretched eternity across daily life so that truth could be handled like bread and smelled like soil.

Of course, He was perfectly capable of speaking with clarity when the moment called for it. The Sermon on the Mount is a river of unmistakable instruction, and after the resurrection He “opened their minds to understand the Scriptures” in the plainest terms. Yet when He wanted truth not only to be grasped but to follow a person for decades, to haunt them kindly, to carve new pathways of desire, He chose the story, the image, the metaphor. Plain speech may win the mind in an afternoon. A parable colonizes the heart for a lifetime.

Metaphor was not decorative. It was creation language. It was how heaven fit into the human mind.

When someone commands, “Repent,” your thoughts acknowledge. But when you watch the prodigal shivering among pigs, humiliated, returning home only to be embraced and robed by a father who runs to meet him, something inside you bends. You do not merely learn repentance. You feel it.

A precept reaches the intellect, but a story roots itself more deeply and durably in the nervous system.

Why Stories Reshape Us When Statements Alone Inform

Today, neuroscience gives vocabulary to what scripture has shown for millennia. The brain changes through emotion, repetition, imagery, and engagement. When truth comes through metaphor, the mind treats what it hears as if it lived it.

Say “forgive,” and we agree in theory. Tell of a man beaten on a road, ignored by religious elites, then rescued by one labeled unclean, and forgiveness gains texture and weight. You smell dust. You see wounds. You feel tension.

You remember.
You rehearse compassion.
You become capable of mercy before circumstance demands it.

Truth delivered as story plants like living seed.

The Genius of Christ’s Teaching

Jesus translated invisible realities into things you could see. He taught that the Kingdom of Heaven is like:

• leaven expanding quietly in dough
• mustard rising from the smallest beginning
• treasure hidden beneath dirt, worth selling everything for
• a net gathering every kind of soul

These are not merely moral examples. They are living metaphors that continue unfolding as disciples grow.

A parable matures inside you.
A rule may be obeyed or ignored.
A story works like yeast, slowly altering the whole loaf.

This is why He said, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.” Hearing was not passive. It required hunger.

Why the Brain Loves Metaphor

Neurologists have found that when we hear metaphors, sensory regions of the brain ignite. A phrase like “hardened heart” activates the sensation of hardness. “Living water” triggers pathways associated with thirst. “Yoke made easy” evokes bodily heaviness lifting.

Jesus taught in a way that embedded truth in sensation, not only logic. Reflection strengthens these neural pathways. Repetition insulates them. Practice integrates them.

Scripture calls this “the law written on the inward parts.”
Science calls it plasticity.
Heaven calls it conversion.

Why He Did Not Speak Plainly To Everyone

Parables contain layers.
To the casual, they entertain.
To the proud, they irritate.
To the hungry, they reveal.
To the humble, they instruct.

Story guards sacred truth while granting access to those who seek. Metaphor reveals when approached with time and softness. It cannot be rushed.

Parables do not dispense instant conclusions. They offer mysteries that unfold only as the soul ripens.

Why did Jesus speak in parables? Was it because the people were hard-hearted?

Partly. Jesus explained that many who listened did not truly hear, and many who saw did not perceive. A parable protects the unready from greater accountability while still offering a doorway to truth for those who are willing to seek.

A blunt command can harden resistance, but a story invites reflection. Parable bypasses defenses, awakens curiosity, and gives the heart time to soften. For the proud it conceals, but for the humble it reveals. The same story both shields and nourishes.

Parables are mercy for the unprepared and revelation for the hungry. They do not punish hardness, they work around it with grace.

Where Joseph Smith’s Experience Fits Beautifully

Joseph did not skim scripture for trivia. He labored in it. He wrestled, questioned, pondered, returned, prayed. His effort carved channels in the mind where revelation could flow. Desire broke the soil. Meditation kept it moist. At the right moment, a verse like James 1:5 sprouted and changed the world.

God teaches through imagery because imagery demands contemplation.
Contemplation creates depth.
Depth gives birth to revelation.
Revelation changes character.

Christ did not invite students merely to understand concepts. He invited disciples to be transformed into His likeness.

In Summary

Jesus used metaphor because:

• stories activate the brain more deeply than abstract instruction
• metaphor requires participation, not passive acceptance
• imagery anchors spiritual truth in familiar experience
• parables unfold over time, revealing more as we grow
• meditation strengthens neural and spiritual pathways
• story reshapes desire, empathy, memory, and identity

A principle can be debated.
A parable lives in you.

This is how heaven tutors the soul.

Experiment For The Reader

Choose one story of Christ. Sit with it. Not to master it, but to be mastered by it. Let the image stand. Notice what softens. Notice what resists. Write down what lingers. That lingering is where transformation begins.

Closing Quote

Our brains change in response to what we dwell on. To follow Jesus is to dwell on His words until they form us.

- Jeff McCrory, Neuroplasticity and Spiritual Formation

 

Play the song and let it be the doorway. Stories enter best when the heart is quiet.

    Key Points From Part One

• Jesus used metaphor to form hearts, not only inform minds
• Story activates the brain more deeply than abstract instruction
• Parables require engagement rather than passive belief
• Pondering scripture lays neural pathways for revelation
• Transformation happens slowly, like seed becoming tree

Coming in Part Two: how scripture rewires thought and desire, why God invites us to wrestle rather than skim, and how laboring in the word prepares a mind to receive revelation.

Further Reading & Research on Metaphor and the Brain

• Metaphorically Speaking: Understanding Metaphors and Brain Responses
  Emory University Research (Lacey et al., 2012)
  Shows that textural metaphors like "rough day" activate brain regions involved in touch, indicating that metaphor triggers sensory simulation rather than abstract processing alone. Read here


• Neural Correlates of Metaphor Comprehension
  Frontiers in Human Neuroscience (Rapp et al., 2012)
  fMRI research demonstrating that metaphor comprehension recruits distributed networks across sensory, emotional, and language areas of the brain. Read here


• Brain Activation During Processing of Conventional Metaphors
  Neuropsychologia (Bambini et al., 2011)
  Shows that even familiar metaphors activate right-hemisphere and limbic regions associated with emotion, imagery, and personal memory. Read here


• Embodied Cognition: What It Is and Why It Matters
  Annual Review of Psychology (Barsalou, 2008)
  Foundational work showing that cognition is grounded in bodily experience, explaining why metaphors have physical/emotional resonance in the brain. Read here


• Neural Representation of Abstract and Concrete Concepts
  NeuroImage (Binder et al., 2009)
  Concrete imagery activates sensory regions more strongly than abstract language, reinforcing why spiritual truths taught through images "stick." Read here

These are not required reading — only pathways for those who want to explore the science behind why Jesus' parables move hearts, awaken memory, and slowly reshape the soul.