How much can a stuffed teddy bear teach about timeless truths? In the classic children’s story “Corduroy” (1968), the answer happens to be: quite a lot. Parenting toddlers has forced me to refamiliarize myself with children’s literature, and Corduroy stands out not for its storytelling, but for its gospel allegory. I would even argue that (much like “Pilgrim’s Progress”) “Corduroy” makes more sense as a gospel allegory than as an actual story.

There are no spoilers to a 58-year-old plot. Corduroy is a teddy bear in a multi-level department store with unspoken but innate desires. When a little girl asks her mother to take him home, her mother says no, pleading both a lack of funds and the missing button on Corduroy’s overalls.

Corduroy did not realize his button was missing but resolves to search for it that night. He accidentally rides up an escalator, which he takes to be a mountain, to the furniture department, which he takes to be a palace. He wants to encounter mountains and palaces, but he still needs to find his button. He tries to pull off a button that is sewn onto a mattress. But he only succeeds in knocking down a floor lamp, which alerts the night watchman. Corduroy tries to hide, but the watchman finds him and returns him to his place in the toy department — still without a button.

The next day, the little girl returns, pays her own money for Corduroy, and takes him home. She runs up four flights of stairs to show Corduroy his own bed in her own room. She expresses her pleasure with Corduroy, but she also sews on a new button in the place of the one he lost. Corduroy realizes that, while “mountains” and “palaces” might be fun and exciting, what he really longed for was a home and a friend.

As with most children’s books, this one requires the reader (and young audience) to suspend certain elements of disbelief. The main character is a stuffed bear with an active thought life and the ability to walk around a department store on his own. Such a thing is impossible in real life, but we can accept the premise and enjoy the fictional story all the same.

Yet that story presents us with even more problems. First, there are plot holes. Why did a booming department store let a bedraggled bear remain on its shelf? Why did the night watchman, after searching for an intruder, simply give up the search to carry a toy back to a different floor?

But second, and more seriously, almost the entire plot does not matter at all. Corduroy goes on a thrilling nighttime adventure, but there is no development, no reward, no consequence. He simply ends up right back where he started. If the story only said that a girl wanted to buy a bear, her mother said no, but the next day she came back and bought the bear with her own money, it would have the same ending.

The reason for this, according to Wikipedia, seems to be that the author, Don Freeman (d. 1978), merely wanted to write a book about a character in a department store at night. And he did so, even if the plot is forced.

Yet there must be more to this story. I do not know what more Freeman may have intended, but inferior stories do not become classics, as “Corduroy” has become. I suggest that Corduroy has endured because, whether intentionally or not, it points to the greatest story — that of the Christian’s redemption and salvation in Jesus Christ. When read in this way, what were flaws in the narrative become crucial pieces of the book’s overall message.

The bear represents the Christian, and his journey begins first with the realization that something is wrong with him. This realization comes through revelation from the mother and daughter, who represent the Father and the Son. Corduroy’s missing button represents the Christian’s sin, and this status of imperfection acts as an obstacle keeping him from fellowship with God.

Corduroy’s midnight adventure stands for his futile attempt to fix himself through his own effort. Although largely directionless, he accidentally stumbles into the path of self-improvement (represented by his escalator ride) that leads him to a place of apparent success (the department so lavishly furnished he mistakes it for a palace). But this journey did nothing to fix his fundamental problem: his button is still missing. Corduroy tries to take a button and make it fit, but he only makes things worse by harming a mattress and knocking over a lamp. The night watchman represents God’s law, who arrests Corduroy’s ill-fated adventure and returns him right back to where he started. All Corduroy’s efforts to fix himself accomplished exactly nothing.

Then the girl returns. Like Christ, she pays the price to redeem Corduroy. Like Christ, she has prepared a place for him to dwell with her. Like Christ, she calls him friend and takes him home with great joy. Like Christ, she loves him even in his buttonless condition, but she does not let him stay in that condition; she makes him perfect again. Corduroy’s final state is much better than anything he achieved on his own; his button is fixed, he finds the home he didn’t know he longed for, and he ascends four stories instead of just one.

Like all allegories, of course, this one has its limits and ought not be stretched too far. For instance, if the mother stands in the place of God the Father, we should not suggest that he is too poor to redeem the Christian because she is poor. Nor should Corduroy’s exclusive relationship with the girl convince us that the Christian does not need to follow Jesus in fellowship with other believers.

But the story does effectively show that Corduroy cannot do what it takes to fix himself or redeem himself. For that, he must rely on another. In this way, it points to the Christian’s relationship with Christ, creating the categories in their young minds even before they can understand the gospel. These are the elements of the story I now stress when reading this children’s classic to my own children. And I would encourage those readers with occasion to crack open this book to do the same.