Genre Troubles

Our adult Sunday School class finished up a series on the parables last Sunday with the parable of the Wise and Foolish Builders, and I can never think of this Bible passage without remembering an incident from my childhood.

One Sunday when I was four- or five-years-old, our Sunday School teacher gave us an assignment. During the coming week, we were to ask our parents to help us to learn one of the parables, and then, next Sunday, we’d each share our parable with the class.

I went home and told my Mom about the assignment, but she never helped me learn a parable.

The next Sunday, the teacher went around the room asking each child to share his or her parable. When it was my turn, I told the teacher I didn’t have one. The teacher was surprised but kindly moved on to the next child.

After class, my Mom asked me how I did telling my parable. “I didn’t have one to share,” I replied.

Stunned, my Mom said, “Of course you did. Don’t you remember? We talked about the wise man building his house on the rock, and the foolish man building his house on the sand? And then the foolish man’s house fell down?”

“Oh, Mom,” I said, with the full disdain of childhood. “Of course I remembertalking about that. But that’s a song, not a parable.”

Probably not the first or last time I embarrassed my mother.



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Michael Crichton, author of Jurassic Park and creator of the TV show ER, died on Tuesday at age 66.

His first novel, The Andromeda Strain, was published in 1969 while he was still attending Harvard Medical School.