“One of the most important things I learned through the last decade of my marriage, culminating in the divorce, is that nobody outside a marriage really understands what goes on within that marriage.” Speaking from experience I concur. Frankly I wonder, again speaking from experience, if anybody inside a dysfunctional, or even functional, marriage really understands what’s going on. The longer I live, the more I have experienced personally, in all areas of life, St. Paul’s observation that here “we see through a glass, darkly”. I often think of the analogy of a labyrinth of distorted mirrors. I’ve also learned the truth of T. S. Eliot’s adaptation of the Heracles myth:
Rod, you might want to read Mark Judge's recent short article on his discovering that experiencing grief can lead to an even deeper understanding of Christianity and our relationship with Jesus. It seems that you are being pulled down by your understandable grief on the fracture of your family and I pray you will find your way despite this loss. https://stream.org/the-upper-room-a-beautiful-new-christian-understanding-of-grief/
Nouwen’s book is a life-changer. It was one of the many small things that gave me the courage to begin my conversion-conversion only begins with confirmation. I’ve been struggling this Lent and been meaning to re-read it, but, mostly just staring at it. Tonight, I’ll re-read it when everyone else is asleep.
Personally, I have felt skeptical toward that place since learning of their attitude toward women, and even female animals. Seems a little neurotic, to put it in mild terms.
On the other hand, though, I do love the Jesus Prayer.
It's not that God doesn't love women or thinks they're awful or something, but as in church, there are places that only the men are allowed to go. I once was on a private tour of St. Nicholas Ukrainian Catholic Cathedral in Chicago (with a UCC VIP) and in order to show us the church, our little group ascended from a staircase from the basement to a place behind the iconostasis. I don't think I was the only woman in the group (2 of 6, maybe), but it made me really, really uncomfortable, and I made a beeline for the deacon's door to get out of there. I feel like Athos is kind of like that - there's something very holy about it, and it's a place that is separate, with its own rules.
Several years ago, when Fr. Andrew Damick went to Mt. Athos, he was kind enough to take a prayer request of mine with him. If you do end up going, I'd very much appreciate if you'd say a prayer for my family.
I remember reading somewhere, perhaps in George MacDonald, that if your picture of God the Father is not the one expressed in this parable then your picture is wrong.
I wonder if anyone could do that in full awareness, though: is it possible to choose Hell in a condition of perfect freedom and knowledge? I'm inclined to believe that in a such a condition, a person would have no choice but to choose God, and that the rejection of God thus always involves an element of constraint and delusion.
»The love and mercy that the Father has shown to us prodigals must not rest in us, but must flow through us to others.«
Amen! I think doing this is also a mark of maturing spiritually. For a lot of people, it's probably intuitive, but as more and more adults seem to resist the deepening of soul that is supposed to accompany growing older. Granted, we're at a point where a lot of adults have no sense of the spiritual whatsoever - I believe Gen X was probably the last generation where, in the US, at least, probably every child at least knew somebody who "had" to go to a religious service on the weekend. So many permanent children! As a kid, I certainly heard "The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few," more than a few times, but I think what usually got glossed over was that this is hard work; those who work end up tired and end up with responsibilities and such. And yet, without *work*, there's no sense of accomplishment, and all that follows: sense of having no purpose, feeling useless, feeling like there's no point to life. And in these days, those who radically go against that shine. Yes, we have the saints in the Orthodox Church as far as those who finished the race, but we shouldn't forget those who are still with us who have decided to run that race - and who pick themselves up and keep going no matter what causes them to fall.
I don't know how Rod feels about posts on a discussion thread that are completely off topic. But I found a rather excellent talk that will interest many of you. Bari Weiss gave a very good talk a few days ago about Jews, Israel, the weird lefty antisemitism we're seeing these days in America and around the world, and other things. Here is the link.
Re the Elder Brother, and his approach, From C. S. Lewis, "Mere Christianity":
"Suppose one reads a story of filthy atrocities in the paper. Then suppose that something turns up suggesting that the story might not be quite true, or not quite so bad as it was made out. Is one’s first feeling, ‘Thank God, even they aren’t quite so bad as that,’ or is it a feeling of disappointment, and even a determination to cling to the first story for the sheer pleasure of thinking your enemies are as bad as possible? If it is the second then it is, I am afraid, the first step in a process which, if followed to the end, will make us into devils. You see, one is beginning to wish that black was a little blacker. If we give that wish its head, later on we shall wish to see grey as black, and then to see white itself as black. Finally we shall insist on seeing everything—God and our friends and ourselves included—as bad, and not be able to stop doing it: we shall be fixed for ever in a universe of pure hatred."
Which is exactly the danger of spending one's life observing with curled lip and constant commentary on how corrupt, soft, nasty, evil the Prodigal Son is. No hope, no repentance, no remorse is possible for the Prodigal (in the Elder Brother's eyes) because he is not and NEVER WILL BE WORTHY, and WHY won't the Father see that? Besides if the Father does accept him, despite his unworthiness, then the Elder Brother has been wasting his life, because love is something you have to earn, not a way of life that will set you free, even when it hurts.
The Prodigal Son is desperate to get home, but afraid of both what the Elder Brother will say (after all, they've lived together all their lives, and he KNOWS what EB has always thought of him, even before he left), and of his Father's rejection. Which is why he's constant rehearsing, all the way home, a litany of confession, subjection and servitude and hoping it will save him. Anything but trust, because who do you trust? How can he trust? How can he ever be forgiven?
Meanwhile, the Father's love is absolute, always, for both his sons. And that is the hardest thing for anyone to accept and believe and live by, without constant tests to see if it really is true. But that's the devil at work, and Jesus' response was "You shall not tempt the Lord Your God." THE FATHER'S LOVE IS ABSOLUTE, ALWAYS, FOR BOTH HIS SONS. None of us have ever known that, or ever will know that, in its true perfection until we have direct contact with the Father... but it is the truth.
Grew up in what outsiders would call a "working-class" or "blue-collar" burb in the northeast. If you wanted to become anything, you had to leave. From my teenage years, I stayed on the straight and narrow, acted responsibly in college, and turned down opportunities for adventures because I knew I didn't have the safety net to get back on track if I strayed, and given where I'd come from, my future was precarious, or at least tentative. Meanwhile I met an acquaintance from Yale who would take semester-long leaves of absence to follow his favorite bands around the UK and Australia. (With what money? I had to work every summer just to pay for basic expenses the rest of the year.) I had friends who did nothing but sit around and drink and do drugs and/or play video games for years. I would marvel at the luxury these wealthier kids had of not worrying about the future. Then later I would resent them for ending up in good jobs, having money, and continuing to live without worrying about basic stability, whereas I've had to start a side business to make sure I can retire without the burden of a mortgage. They got to have more fun, more adventures than I did, but ended up in the same place. (And now they're all progressives, so they're the ones with the yard signs lecturing the rest of us about our "privilege.")
It's a foolish thing to be resentful about, but 40 years of doing mostly the right thing feels even more tiring when people who spent 30 of those 40 years doing the wrong thing are rewarded. Sometimes the resentful Elder Brother would at least like to hear he was right all along, even though he knows in his heart it shouldn't matter.
I get it. I tried to do the right thing and can't help but notice those who made any number of bad decisions but seemingly never paid the price and ended up way ahead of me. I forget the ones who were caught under wheel of their own folly. More discouragingly, I question in an older year some of what I thought was at the time 'right'. I expect we'll find things to look quite a bit different on the other side of the Veil.
Jonah, see the account as illustrative of the Father's grace, His will to forgive. His graciousness doesn't nullify the "good works" the older brother has done. From what Paul says about the Judgment Seat of Christ, and the rewards which faithful Christians can look forward to, the older brother hasn't been a chump at all. But his understanding of the graciousness of the Father has been anemic.
I understand where you're coming from. One of the lessons of the parable, though, is that the Elder Brother had been living out his blessing all his life. He was able to live a rewarding life of order and righteousness, with the father, on his farmstead. The smallness of his heart was that he resented his lost brother for returning home to share in the goodness that he had never refused. These privileged wastrels who get on your nerves, they appear to have done well materially, but what do you think their inner lives are like? I wonder about the kinds of families they've been able to build. I don't wish them ill, and I bet you don't either, but still, I wonder if any of them look at you and think, "I wish I had what he did." I found over the weekend online, after some searching, an image of a kid from my elementary school days. He was only in our school for a year. The boy was from a working-class family, and had a serious physical disability. I don't know what prompted me to search for him, but I found a recent photo of him online, with his wife. From the way they looked, they don't have much money, and have had hard lives. But that boy -- now man -- has something I don't: a wife.
Thank you all for the replies. In no way am I saying Christ was wrong and I'm right! Only that it's hard, and we're lucky that Christ gave us the story in such a simple and stark form so we don't have much room to wallow in our own imagined exceptions. I have a lot of conversations with God about my own shameful envy.
Besides, at other times, in other situations, aren't those of us who think we're the Elder Brother also the Prodigal Son?
I haven't read Nouwen's book - in fact I had never heard of it until your post today - so I don't know how he covers the elder son, but I've seen both sons as having a wrong picture of the father. They both see him as a hard father, when he was anything but. The prodigal imagined that he would no longer be welcomed as a son by his hard father and hoped that at least he would receive him back as a servant. The older son also saw a hard father, one that he was forced to suffer under and one he imagined who never really cared about him enough to do anything for him.
Both were wrong about the father. The father abounded with joy for his son who was dead and yet came back to life again! And he would have gladly celebrated with his older son - if only his older son had not become embittered and legalistic.
And yet I don't think it is correct to say the Father has unconditional love for us. He didn't go out searching for his younger son, and He didn't come talk to His older son and show his son His love. He expected faith. From both of them. Even if just a little.
What we should learn from this is that we shouldn't be waiting for God to show us his love in some way. We should believe that our Father is filled with an amazing love for us - if we will but just come back to Him and live with Him. That, after all, is what thrills Him. To see that we desire to be with Him. To see that we understand how great His love has always been for us. To see that He isn't a hard Father after all.
Look into His eyes as He comes running out to meet the younger son. Both sons. Look! See the compassion He runs with. See the joy that sprinkles down from His tears. See who has really been your Father all along. If only you'll see Him. And believe.
That's why Jesus is so important. He opens the door so that we can return to the Father. And the Father filled with joy that we have come back to life runs out to meet us. Even though that is so very hard for all those who legalistically tried to please Him for so long.
Well, the only condition the father sets on his love is that it must be freely accepted -- and accepting it requires repentance. It's not about "earning" the Father's love, but about loving him in return. It's not love if you want to keep living the way you are, and expect him to be there to approve of everything. It would not have been love for the father of the prodigal to keep sending him money so he could keep up his self-destructive way of life. The love of the father expressed itself in recognizing the son's moral agency ... and as soon as the son showed the first bit of interest in returning home, the father didn't wait for the boy to abase himself, but ran to him to embrace him.
Me being me, I'm just like Nouwen, in that I want to argue with the Father to tell him why I'm not worthy of His love, and that He should withhold that love until I reform my behavior, and so forth. This is NOT like the father of the parable! All he asked for was his son's sincere repentance. Why is this so hard for me to take seriously? I mean, I believe it with my mind, but as I wrote in today's missive, it's hard to take up in my heart.
This comment makes me wonder - I've heard it said about a lot of people with certain disabilities - Down Syndrome, in particular - that by and large they are pretty happy and contented people. I wonder if at least part of that stems from having to accept that there are certain limitations on their lives - not only are they not going to be in the Guinness Book of World Records for athletics or what have you, but an awful lot of them are going to need some help for the rest of their lives. But if you can accept that, it's probably also easier to accept people's love and without the sense of having to earn it. My dad told me as a kid that apart from family, the only reason that people care about each other is in relationship to how "useful" they are to the other person. Even then, I knew that wasn't necessarily true, but it certainly was part of the reason that while it was obvious that I had academic gifts, there was a fair amount of pushing me into math and science and the like. I dared say, at five, that I thought I'd like to be an artist when I grew up, and he blew up at me, letting me know that that was totally unacceptable, I needed to be a doctor... That type of stuff. And so there really was a sense that I had to do certain things to "earn" my parents' love. Maybe they didn't mean it to come off that way, but it was a destructive force, especially trying to negotiate relationships outside the family. (At least with them, they were kind of "stuck" with me!) These aren't the parameters that God has put on His Love, though; it's like sunshine, and we can go outside and be warmed by it, or we can hide away inside forever, but it's not what He wants for us.
Consider John 3:16. We all read it the wrong way. We think it reads that God SOOO loved the world. But it doesn't say that. The Greek word "so" in this case means, "in the same way". You have to go back to the prior two verses to see what it is referring to. They say, "Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in Him will have eternal life."
When Moses lifted up the snake, all the people needed to do to stop from dying was to look at the snake. No works. No proving they deserved to live. No reforming their behavior. Just look.
In the same way then, all we need to do to be saved from eternal death is to look to Jesus. Such a simple thing. What does works have to do with that?! And yet it takes faith to look to Him. It takes just a bit of faith to think the Father might accept me back into His household, if only as a servant. It takes faith to look to Jesus. Like the younger son, we may not hold out much hope, but that's where we get surprised by the joy of the Father for us.
Put yourself on that dusty road headed back to the Father. And then in your heart, see Him come running to you! His love is a complete surprise to us - knowing who we are.
I love that the parable ends with us not knowing what the elder brother decided to do.
Jesus was telling the Pharisees, "come on guys rejoice with me over these sinners who are being changed!" By and large they did not, but some did, the early church in Jerusalem had a some of that sect as its founding members.
Most of us do end up playing a bit at both brothers and with God's grace a bit of the Father too.
Sinners who encounter Jesus choose their sins, sometimes forever. Pharisees who meet Him choose their self righteousness, sometimes for eternity. The Father though is constant in His love for us all, drawing us and showing us a better way.
Thomas Hart Benton, whose distinctive style stands out among American painters, presented an alternate ending for the story of the Prodigal Son. He has come home, but, alas, too late. Himself now an old man, the family homestead lies in ruins, the fattened calf but bleached bones and everyone else gone. Brilliant art, but, my, what a gut punch.
"There is nothing else for me...Most of the things I used to care about in life I no longer do."
Not denying you your situation or take on it, but there's 17,000+ subscribers who do care enough to invest time, money and commentary into your thoughts...
That's very true (though only a small fraction of that number are PAID subscribers; don't want y'all thinking I'm getting rich on this here newsletter). I'm just saying that I used to love cooking, and travel, and all kinds of things, but I really just don't leave the house much unless I have to for work. I know this too will pass, but damn, this has been such a gut punch.
The crucible strips away all but the true essence, doesn't it? I've noticed lack of motivation generally and a definite falling away of some hobbies, particularly the photography, which I miss quite a bit. I'm sure some of it will come back, and some of it is going to take some discipline to get back into if I so choose. Last spring, some of the time I was feeling particularly bad, it wasn't quite a vision, but suddenly an understanding of Jesus' pain on the Cross being excruciating, but something necessary to draw out a Love that gushes out into this world and fills it. Paul writes about being "crucified with Christ" which, considering it was Paul, makes sense, but in this moment, there was just a sense that what God is mining, so to speak, in the midst of all this suffering, is Love, Love pouring forth with abandon, and His suffering and mine are bound together in this Love. I am no sort of "model" Christian; I'm struggling through this as best I can, but it struck me the other day that when it comes to saints, I'm not so sure that it's that they are people who just happen to live in times of trial, but that pretty much any time has its issues, and it is those who are willing to stand amidst a sea of people trying to keep their heads down who do end up going through all sorts of tribulation - but they're also the ones who God will reward for their efforts. (The parable of the talents comes to mind here!)
Er, sorry I said a "two-part" reflection. I got it all in one.
Which puts you on the hook for tomorrow. You need a manager.
“One of the most important things I learned through the last decade of my marriage, culminating in the divorce, is that nobody outside a marriage really understands what goes on within that marriage.” Speaking from experience I concur. Frankly I wonder, again speaking from experience, if anybody inside a dysfunctional, or even functional, marriage really understands what’s going on. The longer I live, the more I have experienced personally, in all areas of life, St. Paul’s observation that here “we see through a glass, darkly”. I often think of the analogy of a labyrinth of distorted mirrors. I’ve also learned the truth of T. S. Eliot’s adaptation of the Heracles myth:
“Who then devised the torment? Love.
Love is the unfamiliar Name
Behind the hands that wove
The intolerable shirt of flame
Which human power cannot remove.”
Many thanks for this entry. It spoke so directly to my heart that it seems as if we just had a personal conversation.
I know right? I really enjoy his personal cathartic posts. He's so good at expressing his emotions.
Rod, you might want to read Mark Judge's recent short article on his discovering that experiencing grief can lead to an even deeper understanding of Christianity and our relationship with Jesus. It seems that you are being pulled down by your understandable grief on the fracture of your family and I pray you will find your way despite this loss. https://stream.org/the-upper-room-a-beautiful-new-christian-understanding-of-grief/
Nouwen’s book is a life-changer. It was one of the many small things that gave me the courage to begin my conversion-conversion only begins with confirmation. I’ve been struggling this Lent and been meaning to re-read it, but, mostly just staring at it. Tonight, I’ll re-read it when everyone else is asleep.
I will definitely order the Dante book as well.
Thank you for book recommendation. I look forward to buying it.
Rod, living in Europe, how come you have not done a pilgrimage to Mt. Athos? Just wondering. Seems like a great opportunity to write about it as well.
It's not as easy as you might think to get there. But yes, I need to go, and want to go.
If you cannot make it to Mount Athos, allow me to recommend this documentary, "Mysteries of the Jesus Prayer", some of which was filmed there.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=697OSC6BgTs
Personally, I have felt skeptical toward that place since learning of their attitude toward women, and even female animals. Seems a little neurotic, to put it in mild terms.
On the other hand, though, I do love the Jesus Prayer.
It is not neuroticism, but a necessity
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-CpeyJNiiDs
Hm, I'm not sure that I'm seeing the connection.
It's not that God doesn't love women or thinks they're awful or something, but as in church, there are places that only the men are allowed to go. I once was on a private tour of St. Nicholas Ukrainian Catholic Cathedral in Chicago (with a UCC VIP) and in order to show us the church, our little group ascended from a staircase from the basement to a place behind the iconostasis. I don't think I was the only woman in the group (2 of 6, maybe), but it made me really, really uncomfortable, and I made a beeline for the deacon's door to get out of there. I feel like Athos is kind of like that - there's something very holy about it, and it's a place that is separate, with its own rules.
I hope you can go there. I would love to read your reflections!
Several years ago, when Fr. Andrew Damick went to Mt. Athos, he was kind enough to take a prayer request of mine with him. If you do end up going, I'd very much appreciate if you'd say a prayer for my family.
Thanks for this wonderful post. And the book recommendation.
I remember reading somewhere, perhaps in George MacDonald, that if your picture of God the Father is not the one expressed in this parable then your picture is wrong.
Agreed.
My opinion is that God never damns; we only damn ourselves, and then blame Him for it, via the classic psychological mechanism of projection.
Yes, we send ourselves to Hell. Some of us blind as to our destination; but some there are who walk there open-eyed, laughing all the way.
I wonder if anyone could do that in full awareness, though: is it possible to choose Hell in a condition of perfect freedom and knowledge? I'm inclined to believe that in a such a condition, a person would have no choice but to choose God, and that the rejection of God thus always involves an element of constraint and delusion.
»The love and mercy that the Father has shown to us prodigals must not rest in us, but must flow through us to others.«
Amen! I think doing this is also a mark of maturing spiritually. For a lot of people, it's probably intuitive, but as more and more adults seem to resist the deepening of soul that is supposed to accompany growing older. Granted, we're at a point where a lot of adults have no sense of the spiritual whatsoever - I believe Gen X was probably the last generation where, in the US, at least, probably every child at least knew somebody who "had" to go to a religious service on the weekend. So many permanent children! As a kid, I certainly heard "The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few," more than a few times, but I think what usually got glossed over was that this is hard work; those who work end up tired and end up with responsibilities and such. And yet, without *work*, there's no sense of accomplishment, and all that follows: sense of having no purpose, feeling useless, feeling like there's no point to life. And in these days, those who radically go against that shine. Yes, we have the saints in the Orthodox Church as far as those who finished the race, but we shouldn't forget those who are still with us who have decided to run that race - and who pick themselves up and keep going no matter what causes them to fall.
I don't know how Rod feels about posts on a discussion thread that are completely off topic. But I found a rather excellent talk that will interest many of you. Bari Weiss gave a very good talk a few days ago about Jews, Israel, the weird lefty antisemitism we're seeing these days in America and around the world, and other things. Here is the link.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfjLm0-fQEg&t=486s
I found out about this on Jerry Coyne's blog whyevolutionistrue.
I wrote about it in this space a couple of days ago.
Re the Elder Brother, and his approach, From C. S. Lewis, "Mere Christianity":
"Suppose one reads a story of filthy atrocities in the paper. Then suppose that something turns up suggesting that the story might not be quite true, or not quite so bad as it was made out. Is one’s first feeling, ‘Thank God, even they aren’t quite so bad as that,’ or is it a feeling of disappointment, and even a determination to cling to the first story for the sheer pleasure of thinking your enemies are as bad as possible? If it is the second then it is, I am afraid, the first step in a process which, if followed to the end, will make us into devils. You see, one is beginning to wish that black was a little blacker. If we give that wish its head, later on we shall wish to see grey as black, and then to see white itself as black. Finally we shall insist on seeing everything—God and our friends and ourselves included—as bad, and not be able to stop doing it: we shall be fixed for ever in a universe of pure hatred."
Which is exactly the danger of spending one's life observing with curled lip and constant commentary on how corrupt, soft, nasty, evil the Prodigal Son is. No hope, no repentance, no remorse is possible for the Prodigal (in the Elder Brother's eyes) because he is not and NEVER WILL BE WORTHY, and WHY won't the Father see that? Besides if the Father does accept him, despite his unworthiness, then the Elder Brother has been wasting his life, because love is something you have to earn, not a way of life that will set you free, even when it hurts.
The Prodigal Son is desperate to get home, but afraid of both what the Elder Brother will say (after all, they've lived together all their lives, and he KNOWS what EB has always thought of him, even before he left), and of his Father's rejection. Which is why he's constant rehearsing, all the way home, a litany of confession, subjection and servitude and hoping it will save him. Anything but trust, because who do you trust? How can he trust? How can he ever be forgiven?
Meanwhile, the Father's love is absolute, always, for both his sons. And that is the hardest thing for anyone to accept and believe and live by, without constant tests to see if it really is true. But that's the devil at work, and Jesus' response was "You shall not tempt the Lord Your God." THE FATHER'S LOVE IS ABSOLUTE, ALWAYS, FOR BOTH HIS SONS. None of us have ever known that, or ever will know that, in its true perfection until we have direct contact with the Father... but it is the truth.
Man, I am that Elder Brother sometimes.
Grew up in what outsiders would call a "working-class" or "blue-collar" burb in the northeast. If you wanted to become anything, you had to leave. From my teenage years, I stayed on the straight and narrow, acted responsibly in college, and turned down opportunities for adventures because I knew I didn't have the safety net to get back on track if I strayed, and given where I'd come from, my future was precarious, or at least tentative. Meanwhile I met an acquaintance from Yale who would take semester-long leaves of absence to follow his favorite bands around the UK and Australia. (With what money? I had to work every summer just to pay for basic expenses the rest of the year.) I had friends who did nothing but sit around and drink and do drugs and/or play video games for years. I would marvel at the luxury these wealthier kids had of not worrying about the future. Then later I would resent them for ending up in good jobs, having money, and continuing to live without worrying about basic stability, whereas I've had to start a side business to make sure I can retire without the burden of a mortgage. They got to have more fun, more adventures than I did, but ended up in the same place. (And now they're all progressives, so they're the ones with the yard signs lecturing the rest of us about our "privilege.")
It's a foolish thing to be resentful about, but 40 years of doing mostly the right thing feels even more tiring when people who spent 30 of those 40 years doing the wrong thing are rewarded. Sometimes the resentful Elder Brother would at least like to hear he was right all along, even though he knows in his heart it shouldn't matter.
I get it. I tried to do the right thing and can't help but notice those who made any number of bad decisions but seemingly never paid the price and ended up way ahead of me. I forget the ones who were caught under wheel of their own folly. More discouragingly, I question in an older year some of what I thought was at the time 'right'. I expect we'll find things to look quite a bit different on the other side of the Veil.
Jonah, see the account as illustrative of the Father's grace, His will to forgive. His graciousness doesn't nullify the "good works" the older brother has done. From what Paul says about the Judgment Seat of Christ, and the rewards which faithful Christians can look forward to, the older brother hasn't been a chump at all. But his understanding of the graciousness of the Father has been anemic.
I understand where you're coming from. One of the lessons of the parable, though, is that the Elder Brother had been living out his blessing all his life. He was able to live a rewarding life of order and righteousness, with the father, on his farmstead. The smallness of his heart was that he resented his lost brother for returning home to share in the goodness that he had never refused. These privileged wastrels who get on your nerves, they appear to have done well materially, but what do you think their inner lives are like? I wonder about the kinds of families they've been able to build. I don't wish them ill, and I bet you don't either, but still, I wonder if any of them look at you and think, "I wish I had what he did." I found over the weekend online, after some searching, an image of a kid from my elementary school days. He was only in our school for a year. The boy was from a working-class family, and had a serious physical disability. I don't know what prompted me to search for him, but I found a recent photo of him online, with his wife. From the way they looked, they don't have much money, and have had hard lives. But that boy -- now man -- has something I don't: a wife.
Thank you all for the replies. In no way am I saying Christ was wrong and I'm right! Only that it's hard, and we're lucky that Christ gave us the story in such a simple and stark form so we don't have much room to wallow in our own imagined exceptions. I have a lot of conversations with God about my own shameful envy.
Besides, at other times, in other situations, aren't those of us who think we're the Elder Brother also the Prodigal Son?
I haven't read Nouwen's book - in fact I had never heard of it until your post today - so I don't know how he covers the elder son, but I've seen both sons as having a wrong picture of the father. They both see him as a hard father, when he was anything but. The prodigal imagined that he would no longer be welcomed as a son by his hard father and hoped that at least he would receive him back as a servant. The older son also saw a hard father, one that he was forced to suffer under and one he imagined who never really cared about him enough to do anything for him.
Both were wrong about the father. The father abounded with joy for his son who was dead and yet came back to life again! And he would have gladly celebrated with his older son - if only his older son had not become embittered and legalistic.
And yet I don't think it is correct to say the Father has unconditional love for us. He didn't go out searching for his younger son, and He didn't come talk to His older son and show his son His love. He expected faith. From both of them. Even if just a little.
What we should learn from this is that we shouldn't be waiting for God to show us his love in some way. We should believe that our Father is filled with an amazing love for us - if we will but just come back to Him and live with Him. That, after all, is what thrills Him. To see that we desire to be with Him. To see that we understand how great His love has always been for us. To see that He isn't a hard Father after all.
Look into His eyes as He comes running out to meet the younger son. Both sons. Look! See the compassion He runs with. See the joy that sprinkles down from His tears. See who has really been your Father all along. If only you'll see Him. And believe.
That's why Jesus is so important. He opens the door so that we can return to the Father. And the Father filled with joy that we have come back to life runs out to meet us. Even though that is so very hard for all those who legalistically tried to please Him for so long.
Well, the only condition the father sets on his love is that it must be freely accepted -- and accepting it requires repentance. It's not about "earning" the Father's love, but about loving him in return. It's not love if you want to keep living the way you are, and expect him to be there to approve of everything. It would not have been love for the father of the prodigal to keep sending him money so he could keep up his self-destructive way of life. The love of the father expressed itself in recognizing the son's moral agency ... and as soon as the son showed the first bit of interest in returning home, the father didn't wait for the boy to abase himself, but ran to him to embrace him.
Me being me, I'm just like Nouwen, in that I want to argue with the Father to tell him why I'm not worthy of His love, and that He should withhold that love until I reform my behavior, and so forth. This is NOT like the father of the parable! All he asked for was his son's sincere repentance. Why is this so hard for me to take seriously? I mean, I believe it with my mind, but as I wrote in today's missive, it's hard to take up in my heart.
This comment makes me wonder - I've heard it said about a lot of people with certain disabilities - Down Syndrome, in particular - that by and large they are pretty happy and contented people. I wonder if at least part of that stems from having to accept that there are certain limitations on their lives - not only are they not going to be in the Guinness Book of World Records for athletics or what have you, but an awful lot of them are going to need some help for the rest of their lives. But if you can accept that, it's probably also easier to accept people's love and without the sense of having to earn it. My dad told me as a kid that apart from family, the only reason that people care about each other is in relationship to how "useful" they are to the other person. Even then, I knew that wasn't necessarily true, but it certainly was part of the reason that while it was obvious that I had academic gifts, there was a fair amount of pushing me into math and science and the like. I dared say, at five, that I thought I'd like to be an artist when I grew up, and he blew up at me, letting me know that that was totally unacceptable, I needed to be a doctor... That type of stuff. And so there really was a sense that I had to do certain things to "earn" my parents' love. Maybe they didn't mean it to come off that way, but it was a destructive force, especially trying to negotiate relationships outside the family. (At least with them, they were kind of "stuck" with me!) These aren't the parameters that God has put on His Love, though; it's like sunshine, and we can go outside and be warmed by it, or we can hide away inside forever, but it's not what He wants for us.
Consider John 3:16. We all read it the wrong way. We think it reads that God SOOO loved the world. But it doesn't say that. The Greek word "so" in this case means, "in the same way". You have to go back to the prior two verses to see what it is referring to. They say, "Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in Him will have eternal life."
When Moses lifted up the snake, all the people needed to do to stop from dying was to look at the snake. No works. No proving they deserved to live. No reforming their behavior. Just look.
In the same way then, all we need to do to be saved from eternal death is to look to Jesus. Such a simple thing. What does works have to do with that?! And yet it takes faith to look to Him. It takes just a bit of faith to think the Father might accept me back into His household, if only as a servant. It takes faith to look to Jesus. Like the younger son, we may not hold out much hope, but that's where we get surprised by the joy of the Father for us.
Put yourself on that dusty road headed back to the Father. And then in your heart, see Him come running to you! His love is a complete surprise to us - knowing who we are.
I love that the parable ends with us not knowing what the elder brother decided to do.
Jesus was telling the Pharisees, "come on guys rejoice with me over these sinners who are being changed!" By and large they did not, but some did, the early church in Jerusalem had a some of that sect as its founding members.
Most of us do end up playing a bit at both brothers and with God's grace a bit of the Father too.
Sinners who encounter Jesus choose their sins, sometimes forever. Pharisees who meet Him choose their self righteousness, sometimes for eternity. The Father though is constant in His love for us all, drawing us and showing us a better way.
Thomas Hart Benton, whose distinctive style stands out among American painters, presented an alternate ending for the story of the Prodigal Son. He has come home, but, alas, too late. Himself now an old man, the family homestead lies in ruins, the fattened calf but bleached bones and everyone else gone. Brilliant art, but, my, what a gut punch.
http://browse.americanartcollaborative.org/object/dma/5303880.html
"There is nothing else for me...Most of the things I used to care about in life I no longer do."
Not denying you your situation or take on it, but there's 17,000+ subscribers who do care enough to invest time, money and commentary into your thoughts...
That's very true (though only a small fraction of that number are PAID subscribers; don't want y'all thinking I'm getting rich on this here newsletter). I'm just saying that I used to love cooking, and travel, and all kinds of things, but I really just don't leave the house much unless I have to for work. I know this too will pass, but damn, this has been such a gut punch.
It is a season. Seasons do pass and change.
The crucible strips away all but the true essence, doesn't it? I've noticed lack of motivation generally and a definite falling away of some hobbies, particularly the photography, which I miss quite a bit. I'm sure some of it will come back, and some of it is going to take some discipline to get back into if I so choose. Last spring, some of the time I was feeling particularly bad, it wasn't quite a vision, but suddenly an understanding of Jesus' pain on the Cross being excruciating, but something necessary to draw out a Love that gushes out into this world and fills it. Paul writes about being "crucified with Christ" which, considering it was Paul, makes sense, but in this moment, there was just a sense that what God is mining, so to speak, in the midst of all this suffering, is Love, Love pouring forth with abandon, and His suffering and mine are bound together in this Love. I am no sort of "model" Christian; I'm struggling through this as best I can, but it struck me the other day that when it comes to saints, I'm not so sure that it's that they are people who just happen to live in times of trial, but that pretty much any time has its issues, and it is those who are willing to stand amidst a sea of people trying to keep their heads down who do end up going through all sorts of tribulation - but they're also the ones who God will reward for their efforts. (The parable of the talents comes to mind here!)
Been there. It sucks. But there will be a day when you will most unexpectedly realize "Hey, I'm really enjoying this!" And you'll smile.
It's always good to hear you remind of us all of this!
"Always Look on the Bright Side of Life" had a profound effect on my way of thinking!
Same here! *L*