For the Love of the Father

And he said to him, ‘Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours.  It was fitting to celebrate and be glad, for this your brother was dead, and is alive; he was lost, and is found. – Luke 15:31-32

Back on March 21, right before everything fell completely apart around here, Lileks wrote an amusing little take on the story of the Prodigal, playing on the weaknesses of human nature and the fact that sometimes people do not change.  It reminded me that the story is not about the lost son so much as the elder brother.

There are three little parables that Jesus tells.  The first is about a lost sheep, verses 4-7: 

What man of you, having a hundred sheep, if he has lost one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the open country, and go after the one that is lost, until he finds it?  And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing.  And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and his neighbors, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.’  Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.

The second, verse 8-10, tells of a woman’s lost coin:  And when she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.

Did the other sheep, the un-wandering ninety and nine, resent the recovery of their fellow?  Did the nine coins that had not fallen and rolled under the furniture become angry because the tenth coin rejoined them and occasioned rejoicing?  Coins are not capable of jealousy.  I have never spent any time with sheep, but I assume that, like most animals, they might try to butt in to get more attention or more food.  They are hardly capable of bitterness because a stray has been brought in.  I would guess that low and indignant umbrage is most likely, in the material realm, an exclusive feature of our fallen human nature, though it is doubtless a motivator for fallen angels in the higher realms.      

The original writings that have become our Bible did not, of course, have chapters and verses, yet our divisions for the purposes of convenient reference are not always completely arbitrary.  Chapter 15 of Luke is of a piece, and it starts off with this:  Now the tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to hear him.  And the Pharisees and the scribes grumbled, saying, “This man receives sinners and eats with them.”

Because Christ went out teaching and healing and offering hope to all, people who had rejected or been rejected by Judaism were drawn to Him.  Jesus was actively looking for the lost, the strays, the forgotten, even the rebellious, and the Pharisees condemned Him for doing it.   

The Lord said to them, “Look, these are Mine as well.  These are My sheep that have wandered away.  I have come for the very purpose of bringing them in, and I am bringing them.  You ought to be rejoicing.  This is what pleases the God you claim to love.”

That’s the point of it all.      

If we love God we seek to do the thing that pleases Him.  If the elder brother had truly loved his father and not been serving him for what he was going to get, he would have been happy to join the celebration – not necessarily for the sake of his flawed brother but because of the joy of his father.  Instead, the elder brother, like the Pharisees, was embittered by that joy.

I suppose that we in the Raccoon-0-Sphere might be accused of being too tolerant, too willing to accept the truths of any old tradition.  I don’t  think that’s the case, but I do think Christians can forget that, although the descendants of Abraham were and are God’s Chosen People and the lineage of the Messiah, He has always dealt with, spoken to, and called people of all tribes and tongues.  Righteousness and seeking after truth pleases God wherever it occurs even when it is halting and incomplete.  The revelation that came through Abraham’s Seed is the ultimate.  Many, though, throughout the ages, have caught glimpses and snippets and hints.  And God loved them. 

He loves the world.  We are -- every one, His children.    Yes, some of us are very far away in that strange country.  Some remain defiant.  Some are still carousing.  Some are broken.  Some are trying to live on garbage down at the pig pen.  All have strayed.  All can come back.  Those who are back, or who never strayed too much, if we love our Father, we will rejoice when our bedraggled, beaten brothers and sisters appear on the horizon.  However long they have been gone, wherever they have been, whatever they have done, we will be glad, first because our Father is glad, and for His sake, if nothing else, we will join Him in welcoming them home.

Mighty Right vs. Mighty Wrong

The task must be to banish from mankind's thought the idea that anybody has the right to use force against righteousness, against justice, against mutual agreements – Solzhenitsyn

And Jesus came and said to them, All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. -- Matthew 28:18

And he arose and came to his father. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him. -- Luke 15:20

We sometimes read Matthew 28:18 as “all power”, but the Greek word is transliterated as exousia, authority.  God is a God of authority – because He’s God.  He is not the God of compulsion.  If God compels everything then we are not free moral beings. 

When Jesus told the story of the Prodigal, it was in the context of two other parables in Luke 15, the Lost Sheep and the Lost Coin.  These three stories share some common elements, but the last story differs in one critical aspect.  In the case of the lost sheep, the shepherd leaves the ninety-nine and goes in search of the one to carry that sheep back into the fold.  When the woman lost a coin, she brought in lights and actively swept the floor seeking her lost treasure. 

When the younger son came asking for his inheritance, the father gave it to him and allowed him to leave home.  The father did not travel into the far country looking for the boy, nor did he send his servants out to find him and drag his worthless rear home.  There is no active intervention on the father’s part – until the son makes a decision to leave the pigpen and go home.  The father has been watching the road, sees his son and recognizes him at a great distance.  He does not wait at that point but runs out to welcome and embrace him.  Why didn’t he do that before?  Why didn’t he go after his son? 

A man is not a sheep or a coin.  We are God’s highest creations, given a free will, given a choice to rebel or obey.  The first two parables illustrate aspects of God’s love and concern for us, His longing for us, while the story of the Prodigal gives us a fuller indication of how God works in the world.  Never is it God’s will that there be rebellion and evil any more than it was the will of the father that his son abandon his home, squander his inheritance and wreck his life.  The father had authority, but he refused to use force or compulsion.    

There may be cases where God makes it almost impossible for a chosen one to “kick against the pricks”, as happened with Saul of Tarsus on the road to Damascus.  The Good Shepherd may go after a sheep and carry it in.  He may unleash the Hound of Heaven on our trail to rout us from our briars and holes.  But even then, He leaves us free to choose.  At the very least, we lift up our heads and utter a plaintive cry for release from the pit into which we have fallen.  We must take the first critical step away from the filth and muck, back toward home.  Certainly then His hand will be upon us to sustain us on that right path. 

The quote from Solzhenitsyn helps us realize that authority is no longer something in which the world is heavily invested.  The world recognizes only the perverted authority that flows from force – from the barrel of a gun, to put it in Marxist terms.  This seems to be the case with much of Islam, certainly with the dominant elements of political Islam.  Conversely, the Judeo-Christian worldview rejects force and compulsion and recognizes what we sometimes call “moral authority”.  This is a redundancy as, in reality, there is no other kind. 

We use force against compulsion in defense of righteousness and justice, life and liberty.  That is the only reason for it, the only justification.  When force is used in place of authority, when the government uses armed and armored intimidators to enforce compliance, we call it a police state. 

Prodigals

He also said: "A man had two sons. The younger of them said to his father, 'Father, give me the share of the estate I have coming to me.' So he distributed the assets to them. Not many days later, the younger son gathered together all he had and traveled to a distant country, where he squandered his estate in foolish living. ... When he came to his senses [came to himself, KJV], he said, 'How many of my father's hired hands have more than enough food, and here I am dying of hunger! I'll get up, go to my father ...'" -- Luke 15:11-18

We are all strangers in a strange land, though many do not recognize it and try to be at home. In a sense we are all prodigal sons. We all need to "come to ourselves".

The pig pen is not a physical situation but a spiritual one. The materialists and the nominally religious may live in nice houses and eat the finest foods, but it is no more than the filth of the sty and the empty, unsatisfying husks to the real life that awaits them. In the end, it is not where you are or what you have that counts, but the relationship with the father. The elder brother was as much a "husk-eater" as the prodigal.

Did you ever look up "prodigal" in the dictionary? Luke 15:11-32 is one of those things that everyone has heard about, whether or not they have actually read the story. It is a powerful and moving tale, beautifully and succinctly told. It has been such an influence on Western civilization that the term used to describe the wandering younger son has taken on a different meaning. We often use the word to mean someone who lives wildly and recklessly. After all, the elder brother accused the returning son of wasting the father's money on -- as we might say -- sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll. Prodigal can refer to be excessively or recklessly wasteful, or a spendthrift. But it also means exceedingly generous, or lavish.

In a way, the father was rather prodigal. The son asked for his share, and the father unhesitatingly handed it over to him. When he had wasted his inheritance and returned, again the father eagerly and enthusiastically showered him with gifts and a renewed status. He drew from his bounty to lavish good things upon his son. The younger boy was much more his father's son than the elder. They shared the desire to express their love through generosity. The son was wrong only in his youthful lack of wisdom.

The elder brothers are so much wiser, so they think. They would never have given the boy a bagful of money to blow senselessly. They certainly would never have been taken in when he came crawling back -- and he would have crawled if the elder brother had been in charge. He might have been given a chance to prove himself worthy of returning; he would never have been trusted again. He would have been the lowest of servants. The elder would have recouped his losses eventually, while bitterly grinding the younger's soul.

Yet it takes little thought to see who would have been the more devoted son thereafter. Would the prodigal have gone a day without somehow expressing his gratitude to his generous father? Would he have been less lavish with his thanks, his praise or his efforts to please than he had been with his money? Would the younger son have missed any opportunity to do his father's will and thus express his love?

Did the elder brother ever "come to himself" and go home?