[Vision2020] The Prodigal Sons

[Nicholas Gier]

The Prodigal Sons

FEB. 17, 2014, *The New York Times*

*David Brooks
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/opinion/editorialsandoped/oped/columnists/davidbrooks/index.html>*

We take as our text today the parable of the prodigal sons. As I hope you
know, the story is about a father with two sons. The younger son took his
share of the inheritance early and blew it on prostitutes and riotous
living. When the money was gone, he returned home.

His father ran out and embraced him. The delighted father offered the boy
his finest robe and threw a feast in his honor. The older son, the
responsible one, was appalled. He stood outside the feast, crying in
effect, "Look! All these years I've been working hard and obeying you
faithfully, and you never gave me special treatment such as this!"

The father responded, "You are always with me, and everything I have is
yours." But he had to celebrate the younger one's return. The boy was lost
and now is found.

Did the father do the right thing? Is the father the right model for
authority today?

The father's critics say he was unjust. People who play by the rules should
see the rewards. Those who abandon the community, live according to their
own reckless desires should not get to come back and automatically reap the
bounty of others' hard work. If you reward the younger brother, you signal
that self-indulgence pays, while hard work gets slighted.

The father's example is especially pernicious now, the critics continue.
Jesus preached it at the time of the Pharisees, in an overly rigid and
rule-bound society. In those circumstances, a story of radical forgiveness
was a useful antidote to the prevailing legalism.

But we don't live in that kind of society. We live in a society in which
moral standards are already fuzzy, in which people are already encouraged
to do their own thing. We live in a society with advanced social decay --
with teens dropping out of high school, financiers plundering companies and
kids being raised without fathers. The father's example in the parable
reinforces loose self-indulgence at a time when we need more
rule-following, more social discipline and more accountability, not less.

It's a valid critique, but I'd defend the father's example, and, informed
by a reading of Timothy Keller's outstanding book "The Prodigal God," I'd
even apply the father's wisdom to social policy-making today.

We live in a divided society in which many of us in the middle- and
upper-middle classes are like the older brother and many of the people who
drop out of school, commit crimes and abandon their children are like the
younger brother. In many cases, we have a governing class of elder brothers
legislating programs on behalf of the younger brothers. The great danger in
this situation is that we in the elder brother class will end up
self-righteously lecturing the poor: "You need to be more like us: graduate
from school, practice a little sexual discipline, work harder."

But the father in this parable exposes the truth that people in the elder
brother class are stained, too. The elder brother is self-righteous, smug,
cold and shrewd. The elder brother wasn't really working to honor his
father; he was working for material reward and out of a fear-based
moralism. The father reminds us of the old truth that the line between good
and evil doesn't run between people or classes; it runs straight through
every human heart.

The father also understands that the younger brothers of the world will not
be reformed and re-bound if they feel they are being lectured to by
unpleasant people who consider themselves models of rectitude. Imagine if
the older brother had gone out to greet the prodigal son instead of the
father, giving him some patronizing lecture. Do we think the younger son
would have reformed his life to become a productive member of the
community? No. He would have gotten back up and found some bad-boy
counterculture he could join to reassert his dignity.

The father teaches that rebinding and reordering society requires an
aggressive assertion: You are accepted; you are accepted. It requires
mutual confession and then a mutual turning toward some common project. Why
does the father organize a feast? Because a feast is nominally about food,
but, in Jewish life, it is really about membership. It reasserts your
embedded role in the community project.

The father's lesson for us is that if you live in a society that is coming
apart on class lines, the best remedies are oblique. They are projects that
bring the elder and younger brothers together for some third goal: national
service projects, infrastructure-building, strengthening a company or a
congregation.

The father offers each boy a precious gift. The younger son gets to
dedicate himself to work and self-discipline. The older son gets to surpass
the cold calculus of utility and ambition, and experience the warming
embrace of solidarity and companionship.
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