A friend on a group page I belong to posted a very good, brief primer on understanding the parables of Christ. I was moved to add this:
Excellent. When I teach on Parables of Christ, I naturally include all these points, and I especially emphasize what a huge error it is to leap right off the bat for the "allegorical" meaning, i.e., who in the parable is God, who's the Christian, where can we see what Heaven is like, etc. A parable is an illustration of a principle, not in the first order an allegory. Some parables are explicitly allegorical, and the Lord Himself says so (that's the most important key to any allegorical meaning: does Jesus Himself say, in so many words, "this was an allegory"?), like the Sower and the Seed. Others are quite the opposite, i.e., contrasts provided to show us exactly what God and Heaven are NOT like! Like the one about the unjust judge, or the man who grudgingly gave his neighbor bread just to make him go away. How often have we heard these parables misused to transmit the lesson, "See, the widow finally got what she wanted, so the lesson is to keep on asking till you get it!" When the Lord's whole point was, "Your Heavenly Father is NOT like that!" Perhaps the most glaring example of the Allegory Fallacy is the parable about the crooked steward who was cheating his boss. That parable has caused how many millions of perplexed furrowed brows and head-scratching down through the millenia and utterly needlessly. The problem begins right from the moment we start reading the parable assuming that the boss is God and the steward is us. And then the "lord" approves the crooked steward's surreptitious book-tampering, only making it worse! "How could the Lord commend dishonesty?" And Christians put themselves through the most byzantine conceptual gymnastics to conjure up some way that "commending" doesn't mean "commending" or how "commending" is even a kind of "admonishing" or how "commending" somehow is a recognition of our (note: "our," perpetuating the error that the parable is about us) faith while allowing for the "losing of rewards," etc. And all this is just so much pitiable, desperate conceptual gymnastics ignoring the simplest of facts: the parable isn't an allegory. The boss/lord (Herr, Señor, Adon or "lord" in any number of other languages where, applied to a person, it's nothing much more than "Mister") in the parable isn't God and the steward isn't us. Who are they? They are the "children of this world" in contrast with "the children of light," and not being the children of light we may even go further and call them the children of darkness. Jesus (the ultimate Lord!) Himself makes the point plain in His summing up of the parable. The steward's master ("lord") commended him for his cleverness, and THAT is how the children of this world understand each other (you might say, "there is honor among thieves"). Most likely the boss got a kick out of seeing something of his own unscrupulous resourcefulness in his lackey. Then Jesus gets to the point: the children of this world (of the darkness, like the boss and his steward) are so much cleverer in such matters than the children of the light. They'll go to any lengths, honest or dishonest, to capitalize on their opportunities, to make the most of their chance. But the children of the light? Do they exhibit the same passion, alacrity, cleverness and just plain energy to make the most (needless to say, honestly and in holiness) of what has been entrusted to them? Do they serve the Kingdom with an unmixed, laser-like focus, or are they distracted by another master or even several other masters? Read the Lord's further interpretation and application after the parable and this is all immediately and eminently clear. What a breathtaking amount of emotional and mental energy is wasted agonizing over the useless question, "Why would God commend the steward's corrupt behavior, and how do we apply this in our lives?"
