Prodigal Son . . . the Reason Christians Don’t Believe in Justice.

I wrote this article . . . oh . . . maybe fifteen years ago. It has set on my hard drive ever since. I’ve let maybe a dozen people read it to mixed reviews.

I recently offered this to another reader, and he insisted that I should publish it. He made a good point on why. . . . I’m an iconoclast and stir the pot of complacency. I kinda like being that . . . but . . . I don’t really like bible studies as blog posts.

And then at this year’s (2015) TANC conference, I heard that some folks objected to the fact that I wasn’t proof-texting my discussion of historical evolution of determinism. Why I needed to quote Bible verses for a history lesson is anyone’s guess, but Christians are funny that way.

Speaking of funny, I did read one scripture to sanctify a TANC lecture and then like a good New Calvinist preacher, I talked about what I wanted to talk about. But I would like to illustrate what it looks like to evaluate bible verses absent the theological bias predestined into every New Calvinists world view. This article isn’t a proof-text study. It is more of a textual evaluation. I figure my “Where is the scripture?” critics will be howling for me to abandon quoting Bible passages after this article.

>snicker<

That contrast might be ironic, but I don’t think the subject that follows is funny. Actually, I think the account commonly known as the Prodigal Son is the saddest tale in the four Gospels. And our interpretive conclusions of this account illustrate our profound bastardization of justice.

Read on . . . if you dare.

*   *   *

The Prodigal Son is a Christian staple. If a person has been in church for more than a month, it is probably statistically impossible that they haven’t heard the story. And certainly, Christians think they get the point: God is amazingly forbearing with sinful children and jealous siblings.

Who could doubt that is what we are supposed to get from it? Who would have the nerve to suggest otherwise?

Well, me, I suppose. I’m the problem child.

I’m going to cut to the chase. I think the account illustrates a stunning amount of family dysfunction. The parable is really about a younger son who merely failed to achieve his financial goals. (It was an epic fail, but nonetheless, it was just a financial failure.) The parable is about an unjustly treated elder son. And the parable is about a pining, neglectful delusional father.

Of course, Christians don’t see any of this dynamic because they are sure they know what the story is supposed to say because people come to their spirituality desperately unsure of themselves. Preachers spew indoctrinated self-doubt by the pound, so it takes nothing for pew-sitters to see themselves in the younger son—wayward and undeserving of a place in the family of God. And for those few who know they have done the father’s work and felt the sting of being ignored and taken advantage of . . . well, they never voice their objections because Christians don’t really believe in justice.

Love Foiled or Loves Foils

Let’s summarize our understanding. A younger son takes his father’s money and leaves the family to go find his fortune. He loses his father’s money and finds himself in dire straits. He returns to his father for a job so he might eat. The father receives his son back in grand style. The older brother is jealous. The father is magnanimous. Isn’t God wonderful? This is the story commonly called the “Parable of the Prodigal Son.”

First, let me point out that the story is not a parable. The account is introduced with the phrase “A certain man had two sons . . . ” which signals that this is the recounting of specific set of events by real people, which means this is not an allegory, and all such interpretations are error.

Second, I want to point out that prodigal means wasteful. I don’t know how many people know that, but odds are that most people think prodigal means sinful. Maybe in the loosest of interpretations, wasteful can be called sinful. But . . . like I said, that would be the loosest of interpretations.

But before we get too far down this path, let’s read the verses together—

What? Did John just say read a Bible verse?

I know some of you are passing out right now.

>snicker<

 11 Then He said: “A certain man had two sons. 12 And the younger of them said to his father, ‘Father, give me the portion of goods that falls to me.’ So he divided to them his livelihood. 13 And not many days after, the younger son gathered all together, journeyed to a far country, and there wasted his possessions with prodigal living. 14 But when he had spent all, there arose a severe famine in that land, and he began to be in want. 15 Then he went and joined himself to a citizen of that country, and he sent him into his fields to feed swine. 16 And he would gladly have filled his stomach with the pods that the swine ate, and no one gave him anything. 17 But when he came to himself, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired servants have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger! 18 I will arise and go to my father, and will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you, 19 and I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Make me like one of your hired servants.” ‘ 20 And he arose and came to his father. But when he was still a great way off, his father saw him and had compassion, and ran and fell on his neck and kissed him.

The actions of the wasteful son are the subject of much conversation. He is often scorned by men standing behind Plexiglas podiums because sin, sin, and more sin preaches good on Sunday.

Back when I actually cared about what preachers made up for Sunday consumption, I heard the wasteful son characterized as a snot-nosed adolescent, petulantly demanding spending money, a jet set playboy who ran around the world on daddy’s credit, flying the corporate jet, having sex with prostitutes and eating expensive food and about everything in between.

(Preachers are inventive that way.)

And universally, the preachers assumed that the wasteful son was living his life in defiance of his father’s wishes, and we are encouraged to scorn him for squandering the Father’s stuff.

This understanding is wrong.

Read verse 12. \

12 And the younger of them said to his father, ‘Father, give me the portion of goods that falls to me.’ So he divided to them his livelihood.

Uh, if inheritance actually means the transfer of ownership then the younger son spent his OWN money. The father suffered no wrong by the son’s actions. The son may have been wasteful, but assuming that ownership actually means the right to dispose of property, he was free to act as he saw fit with his own money.

I have heard a couple of inventive preachers say that in ancient Middle Eastern culture, asking for an inheritance before the father was dead is tantamount to wanting the father dead. This loose effort at historical-cultural interpretive methodology is validated by the fact that we live in a culture where inheritance is received at death. Plus, Christians think this scriptural addition tracks with our overarching doctrines of unworthiness and general human depravity, so we give it a pass.

However, this isn’t true. Not least of which the story about this “Certain man” and that particular detail is nowhere implied in the text. But the fact is that inheritance upon death would have been impossible in that era.

Think for a minute.

Liquid wealth–money–was scarce in most every century but maybe the last few centuries. In the first century, land and chattel was wealth.

How would a man, who has come of age, ever start his own family if he wasn’t given some portion of the family holding prior to his father’s death? The answer is, he wouldn’t. As a cultural practice, estates would have been divided when a son started his adult life just so the culture could accommodate its own population.

I think the pontificating souls seeking to insert the younger son’s “death wish” are working too hard to vindicate the father of his choice to accommodate the younger son’s request. The effort is misplaced, looking for a scandal behind a simply stated transaction: the father gives the son the portion of his inheritance and the son leaves.

Why did the younger son want to leave? We really don’t know, but that hasn’t stopped preachers from inventing reasons. I figure I can follow in their footsteps for a minute. The youngest son may have seen a traveling merchant riding with his caravan one day and thought that life on the road seemed exotic. And after a conversation with the sheik and an assessment of the hard, hard, hard work of farming, the younger son realized he didn’t want to till the ground and play with the sheep for the rest of his life. Maybe he thought traveling with the merchant would get him to the big city where he could make his fortune.

But here is what I want to point out: whatever the reason for leaving, it cannot be because of a character failing, though his rational for returning have profound implications later in the passage.

Now, let’s talk about the lost money. How did he lose it? The text says riotous living.

What is riotous living?

Good question.

Maybe younger man fulfilled his eldest brother’s suspicions. Maybe he was like so many kids that leave strict authoritarian households, isolated from the rest of the world, (i.e. a farm) who suddenly find themselves free of constant oversight, free to make up their own mind and do their own thing. And absent the parental handwringing and henpecking, the kids find themselves totally unprepared to deal with the rigors of life.

If this is true, then sure, the son bears the burden of his choices but . . . hummmm . . . who does his unpreparedness really reflect on?

All is not good in River City.

17 But when he came to himself, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired servants have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger! 18 I will arise and go to my father, and will say to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you, 19 and I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Make me like one of your hired servants.’

Now, I’ve had my share of disagreements with my parents. I’ve even had some knock-down drag-out fights with them, but I cannot honestly imagine having this conversation with myself: “. . . . and will say to him, Father . . . I am no longer worthy to be called your son . . . ”

I cannot imagine saying this to myself.

Why?

Because I have a father that truly accepts me. He has never put my sonship up for debate.

So I have to ask the question: Where would an adult man get the idea that he may have disqualified himself from the household? Why would an adult man conceptualize the need to make such a plea to his father?

I think the answer is implied in the son’s mindset: a mindset that he acquired during his time in the house. What kind of comments would have built such a mindset?

It is not hard to speculate . . .

 “No son of mine would ….”

“Not in THIS house, you won’t…”

“You’re not worthy to be called MY son…”

“I have never been more embarrassed in my life because you . . .” Is this implied as background to the text? Maybe . . . maybe not. But what is not implied is the younger son’s mindset: “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you.”

So here is a question. How does spending money that was rightfully his merit being a household outcast?

Notice younger son’s mindset: “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you.”

Remember the father has handed over the part of the estate that rightfully belonged to the son. The money was his to do with as he saw fit. I can think of no Torah prohibition (assuming the “certain man” is Jewish) that forbids an adult man from doing as he wishes with his inheritance. How is spending (and losing) his own money an offense to the father?

Unless the son understood that his father was really a meddlesome somebody and never really gives. Could it be that a lifetime with this “certain man” made it clear that the certain man only gives with strings attached, that his “generosity” is laced with endless conditions and caveats that hang over the head like a curse? And one of the curses is that to fail at any point is the same as being banished from the household?

Continuing on . . .

The next comment reveals even more about the son’s mindset: “Make me like one of your hired servants.”

What?!!

Now I can understand knowing that I am not entitled to the STUFF my father has, not least of which is because I have already asked for my part of the inheritance. And I can imagine going to him, hat in hand, for a job.

But . . .

 (How can you want to leave me? Don’t you love your father?)  But . . .

 (“If you walk out that door, you are no son of mine!”) Where in the hell did the son get the notion that his financial failure should make him second-class citizen? Where does he get the idea that the appropriate place in his father’s house was to be ordered about as a mere hireling?

Look Past the Romance

20 And he arose and came to his father. But when he was still a great way off, his father saw him and had compassion, and ran and fell on his neck and kissed him. 21 And the son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and in your sight, and am no longer worthy to be called your son.’ 22 But the father said to his servants, ‘Bring out the best robe and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand and sandals on his feet. 23 And bring the fatted calf here and kill it, and let us eat and be merry; 24 for this my son was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’ And they began to be merry.

“But when he was a great ways off . . .” This implies bunches.

The only way for the father to see his son “a great ways off” is for the father to be spending time looking down the road. I know this image is romanticized by preachers the world over, but the practical reality is devoid of romance.

To recognize someone at a great distance requires that you are studying things at a great distance. “Many years” have passed and the man you see coming is covered in filth, his clothes in tatters, and his beard very likely an unruly mess caked with pig #$%. What level of study would be required to identify this man as his son?

As a generalization, to study requires unbroken attention, and that means you are not doing anything else. This means that you are NOT working to prosper or grow the family business. You are letting your business partner down; and in context to this story, the business partner is your elder son. Simply put, if the father was spending his time watching a road, by default, he was neglecting his other son.

We will get to the fatted calf and the merrymaking in a minute, but let us look at V. 24 “ . . . my son was dead . . . he was lost . . . but now is found.”

Notice what these words reveal.

His son was not dead. And his son was not lost. Or maybe I should say it this way. How can you be looking down a road for someone if you believe them dead? It is important to hear these words absent the theological romance. If you are studying a road looking for someone who you believe dead, what does that say about your connection to reality?

And the psychological study does not get any better from here.

“. . . he was lost . . . but now is found.”

Notice what these declarations reveal about the father’s mindset. To be anywhere but where HE is to be “lost.”

Let that sink in for a minute and then ask yourself this: If you heard a father talking to his kids through the screen door of his house, what would you think of him?

Older and Responsible

25 Now his older son was in the field. And as he came and drew near to the house, he heard music and dancing. 26 So he called one of the servants and asked what these things meant. 27 And he said to him, ‘Your brother has come, and because he has received him safe and sound, your father has killed the fatted calf.’

Let me condense the events.

1. The youngest son arrives home after who knows how long.
2. There is a party in full swing.
3. The eldest son knows nothing of the party.
4. The eldest son had to ask a servant about said party. HE had to ask!!!!!

Can you imagine the rush of emotion that shoots through the eldest brother?Maybe he had heard a rumor that his youngest brother was dead. Maybe he accepted his father’s delusion. And now he comes home to a party where his brother is alive, and suddenly he is awash with wonder? Relief? Dismay? And we certainly know that his last emotion was anger.

Notice that the father didn’t even think to dispatch a servant to the field to tell the older son of his brother’s return. The eldest son had to ask!!!!There were two sons away from the house that day. I find it interesting that the father was only looking for the dead son.

You wonder why I think this is the saddest story in all of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John?Is anyone else insulted? To be sure, the eldest son was.

29 So he answered and said to his father, ‘Lo, these many years I have been serving you; I never transgressed your commandment at any time; and yet you never gave me a young goat, that I might make merry with my friends. 30 But as soon as this son of yours came, who has devoured your livelihood with harlots, you killed the fatted calf for him.’

Mostly preachers focus on the eldest son’s jealousy because preachers need something to say on Sunday. But now let us look at the eldest son’s mindset afresh.

•  “I have served.”
• “I have followed your commandment.”
• “You never gave me a goat . . .” (said another way—you never rewarded my diligence.)

Notice the equation in the elder son’s mind.

Diligence + service + adherence to commandment = reward.

Does your family work that way? Does your father’s relational attention revolve around service to commandments and the bequeathing of goats?

I’ll bet not. And if your family is in fact characterized by this dynamic, I’d lay money you’ve spent lots of time in therapy working out the underlying neglect that plagues your soul.

“No, no, no, no,” someone is going to say, “It was the son. His selfishness and pride prevented him from seeing the truth. See what was in his heart? He was thinking about prostitutes. Only sinners think about prostitutes.”

Oh?

All right. Let us assume for a moment that elder son had a catastrophic misunderstanding, a disastrous turn of ill character that suddenly bleeds out.How is it that the father LET him maintain that misunderstanding?

This is crucial!

Unfortunately, like all classically abused children, the faithful son fails to put his finger on the real problem. He is still caught up in the mindset of abuse, so he puts the conflict in terms of comparison.

The elder son’s words are a powerful testimony to the underlying dysfunction of the house. The father didn’t regard the elder son enough to fetch him from the field. The father didn’t regard his elder son enough to send an invitation. The father is reaping the whirlwind of his ongoing neglect and disrespect.

These words spoken by the eldest son are NOT a mark of pride and selfishness but the manifestation of a longstanding complaint. The elder son’s reply is because he has been estranged from his father BECAUSE of his father’s neglect. The party is the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back: The eldest son can no longer bottle up his outrage when he learns of a party to which he wasn’t invited.

Fathers that spend time with their kids know about their character flaws. We all know that quality time is a myth. Parenting is about QUANTITY TIME. A father can only know his kids in the proportion to the time he spends with his kids. So the reality is, if the father didn’t know about the faithful son’s longstanding grudge, it is because he had not spent time with him. And since this doddering fool is looking down the road for a dead man, we already know where he was spending his time.

• You didn’t give me a goat = small reward.
• You gave him a fatted calf = big reward.

This failure to correctly identify the problem is why preachers like to blame the faithful son. The reward mentality seems so obviously a manifestation of pride and selfishness. But this misses what the faithful son is really struggling to point out. He is railing against injustice. And like I said, Christians don’t really believe in justice, so we cannot side with the elder son in this fight. The eldest son cannot be “deserving” of the things he demands. Doesn’t he understand his real place in the world? Doesn’t he understand that he only lives in the house by the father’s unmerited grace? If grace is unmerited, he cannot demand any standard of treatment from the father because he really deserves the life of the younger son wallowing in a pigsty. Doesn’t he understand this? How could he be so theologically deficient?

. . .

But now notice the similarities between the elder son’s and the younger son’s mindset. Notice how they hold the SAME disastrously bad assumptions. Here is the elder son’s mental math. Diligence + service + adherence to commandment = reward. The elder son has been led to believe—somehow—that his service and obedience merits reward. He fundamentally believes that his greater diligence and service will at least merit a bigger goat. Notice this is the other side of the same coin of the younger brother.

Read the younger brother’s words again:

18 I will arise and go to my father, and will say to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you, 19 and I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Make me like one of your hired servants.’

Here is the younger son’s mental math.

 I was not diligent + I did not serve + I did not adhere to commandments = disinheritance. What is the equation in the elder son’s mind?

 I was diligent + I did serve + I did adhere to commandments = greater reward.  See, it is the flipside to the same social dynamic. The dysfunction underlying this family relationship is staggering.

 

Estrange Things

This “certain man” had TWO estranged sons operating under the same disastrous familial assumptions. And what does he do? What does the father boil his faithful sons complaint down to?

Look at the words afresh . . . if you dare.

 31 And he said to him, ‘Son, you are always with me, and all that I have is yours.’

“You are always with me?”

Who is kidding whom?

Because the eldest son is in the same geographic location, he is “with him?”

This is the same madness expressed upon greeting the younger son. This fool for a father thinks that geographical location = relational intimacy.

I told you that this father is delusional.

The whole interchange happens because the elder son ISN’T . . . WITH . . . HIM. The eldest son is just as dead to him as the younger son. The Faithful son feels neglected because in every meaningful way, he is treated the same way someone treats a corpse.

Oh, but there is more . . .

“All I have is yours.” Say those words out loud. Now notice that the father is subtly dwarfing his son’s complaint. Here is the translation: “If you wanted a party, you could have thrown one yourself and eaten whatever you wanted.”

How utterly blind can this “certain man” be?

It wasn’t about the #$%@ goat!!!!!!

I contend that this passage is a long diatribe too short. If my father said this to me, under the same circumstances, I would have replied:

³²Then you had no business spending my money without talking to me. But this fight isn’t about you or your infernal inheritance, you neglectful son of a bitch. It is about you at least having the courtesy to pretend that my opinions matter, and that I happen to rate enough of your attention to at least be invited to your parties. ³³The issue here is neglect. Your neglect of the man who stayed with the family business and was INTERESTED in running our estate while you have been spending your days looking down a road after a son that you thought was dead.

End of diatribe.

. . .

Without going too deep into where I get this from, I will offer these observations about the father’s “generosity.” The ring on the younger son’s finger was very likely a reference to a family signet ring. A signet ring would have been used to seal bills of sale, similar to a corporate credit card.

The fine robe . . . that was a trip to Gucci.

And we haven’t begun to calculate the cost of the party.

Anyone ever been to a pig roast? I have. And as a way of comparison, I know it takes about 8 hours to cook a hundred-pound pig. A calf weighs about a hundred pounds at birth. A fatted calf probably weighs close to four hundred pounds. How long would it take to cook the calf? Eight hours per hundred pounds of beef?

Do the math.

The point is that days of manpower and resources would have gone into roasting a calf and preparing the trimmings.

DAAAAAAAYYYYS . . .

(And the father couldn’t get an invite to the son? The father never looks down the road for the eldest son?)

There is no such thing as generosity when you are using other people’s money and taking credit for generosity while using other people’s money is profound moral corruption. I know that preachers do this with impunity but that doesn’t change the root depravity and it certainly doesn’t excuse the father’s behavior. This is the bottom line: The father had no business indulging in this extravagance . . . alone. If the father’s words are true, “All I have is yours,” then the father had no business preemptively spending the estate money; it wasn’t his alone to spend.

 

Misplaced Passions

Some will contend that the eldest son should have had the same passion for the returning brother that the father did. The loose logic is based in the fact that preachers love to allegorize everything they read. The father’s passion and forgiveness for the younger son is God’s passion for the lost. The elder son’s time in the fields is metaphorically the passion to save the lost and bring them into the house. So when the elder son has no compassion for the younger brother, he obviously does not share God’s passion for lost souls.

Shrug . . . That preaches good on Sunday.

But remove the eisegesis (the reading in of assumptions into a biblical text) and the reality portrayed in the story is very different.

First of all, the elder son was never given a chance to express his benevolence or even a fraternal love for his brother. He showed up at the tail end of a party to which he didn’t get an invite—a party that he is paying for because his business partner decided to raid the family trust. This is a profound familial slight that overshadows and frames all subsequent moral action.

And my second question is: Why?

Why should the faithful son share his father’s passion for a brother? I have siblings that I wish well and am pleased for their success, but I cannot ever know the nature of paternal love for them, because I have never had the responsibilities and OBLIGATIONS of parenting. We have all seen families where the kids raise the kids, where children take on the obligations of parenting, and we all know how perverse that family dynamic is.

Continuing in the defense of the faithful son . . . let me point this out. The Father’s BUSINESS was the industry of the estate: farming, livestock, etc. The Father’s passion was his dead son. This is an essential distinction. Because we in modern Christianity have a loose logic that tells us that that God’s BUSINESS is evangelism, so the business that the kids should be involved in is getting people into the church. So the business of God is raising the kids. But this isn’t true: Raising children is not a family business and to demand such a thing is perversion.

So let’s be clear: the Faithful son has no obligation to the father’s paternal passion any more than he had an obligation to embrace the father’s delusion. It is that simple. It is never a child’s responsibility to have parental passion for a brother or sister. It is the father’s responsibility to raise his OWN KIDS!

Also notice that the eldest son had been . . . well . . . “faithful” which means that the eldest son is the only morally validated person in this account. He was faithful with the very inheritance he received, which is precisely why he is so pissed. The only moral failing in the exchange between father and elder son is from the father.

The Disaster of Neglect

The underlying theme within this account is an overwhelming amount of neglect seasoned with some strikingly dysfunctional family dynamics.

We don’t read these passages well because we all know that the good guy in the passage is supposed to be God. And like the youngest son, most people rehearse speeches that they hope will persuade God to give them food when they can’t get the job done themselves. So this parable eases our conscience because we see ourselves in it. And besides, an easy conscience is better than an honest one. So Christians are rarely inclined to be honest about what we read in canon, which means that by default, we fail to measure the current state of the Church.

Be an honest observer and you will see this very family dynamic throughout Church. You will see an overarching assumption that says: Keep God’s commandments + work around the family estate (read Church) = the reward of the father’s attention. You will see servants (read pastors and apostles) who forever have to make announcement of the father’s plans because HE didn’t have the foresight or interest to go make the invitation himself.

You will see sons and daughters who act out the abuse of neglect much like the eldest son. They are confused and frustrated by the lack of fatherly attention (open access to the prosperity of the father’s house). And when they voice their complaint, they get scolded into submission by a vague appeal to equal ownership, catastrophic misunderstanding, and a disastrous turn of ill character. But yet they are never treated as though their opinions matter or that their presence is important.

And at the root of the social dynamic is an erroneous toleration of neglect because Christians don’t really believe in justice.