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Kerygmania: What if the Older Brother is right? Rethinking the Prodigal Son in light of Addiction
Anglican Brat
Shipmate
A few years ago, a priest of mine preached on a different take on the Prodigal Son, from the lens of addiction. He stated that the older brother has a point, if looking at the parable from the lens of addiction. If the younger son returns, and there is no evidence for repentance or changed behavior, then any "celebration" would be enabling his bad behavior. The father then is seen as irresponsible and indulgent, rewarding the younger son's bad habits.
This interpretation came back to me, last night as I watched the movie "Beautiful Boy" on drug addiction, a modern take on the Prodigal Son IMHO.
This interpretation came back to me, last night as I watched the movie "Beautiful Boy" on drug addiction, a modern take on the Prodigal Son IMHO.
Comments
That said, I've always identified with the older brother, not the younger. The person who doesn't step way out of line never gets a party.
Yeah, it almost sounds as if the priest wished the story had been written in a different way(ie. no repentance, and the younger son has the means to continue his debauched life), so he could have an excuse for inveighing against the erroneous values contained therein.
Not to diss the gentleman, but it really does sound like an odd sermon.
The point is not "Some of you might think that the father should tell his son to get lost, but really, he should forgive him". It's "Just as the father did the right thing in welcoming the son back, so God does the right thing in welcoming back sinners".
I also heard that the Son's asking for forgiveness was manipulative and not genuine, simply saying "I'm sorry" to take advantage of the father's kindness.
So, what would be the point of Jesus relating a story in which the son behaves that way, and the father is apparently deluded enough to believe him?
"We're all just a bunch of liars, tricking God into accepting our fake repentance, and he's so dumb he forgives us."
But for Jesus, this "foolishness" is proof of God's unconditional love.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-1F8pI7nqU
Okay, but then, there's no real need for us to ask for forgiveness, sincerely or otherwise, at all.
If God will accept a sinner who lies about being repentant, why wouldn't he just as easily accept a sinner who doesn't bother with the lie? The latter is really no worse than the former.
If Jesus had been trying to convey the meaning you suggest, he'd have the son come home with booze on his breath and hookers in his arms, and say "Screw you old man, I'm gonna keep partying 'till the day I die!" And then the father says "That's okay, son, I still love you."
He's not completely genuinely sorry, but he has mixed motives. It is almost like a child, when a child says he is sorry, is it because he or she knows they did something wrong, or that they fear the punishment, or is it because they know that saying sorry is a polite thing to do?
The reading might be that in our confessions, to be honest, there is a little bit of each. Are we repentant because we screwed up, or are we repentant because we fear God's wrath (and some segments of Christianity truly admit that the whole point of hell is to make people fearful to drive them to repentance), or are we repentant because that's duh "christian thing to do?"
God sees all of this, and loves us anyway.
It is also pointed out that this is what the father offers the older son as well. The question is left as to whether the older son goes into the banquet. We do not know if the older son does.
And I agree with others that recasting this story in terms of addiction on the part of the younger son is recasting it into a different story altogether. It's no longer the story that Jesus told, and it no longer means what Jesus pretty clearly (I think) intended.
What a strange interpretation your priest offered. Is having family celebration meant only to be a reward for good behaviour? Must birthday parties be "earned"?
Both sons were dicks, but in different ways. Neither of them got it right. But the father is patient with both of them and trying to lead each of them out of their own versions of dickishness.
I wonder if the priest in question had experience working with addicts, and had heard once too often "Come on Father, sure, this is the fifth time I've blown my entire paycheque on cocaine, but you still gotta help me out. Y'know, prodigal son and all."
And then the priest tried to dispel the misunderstanding of what the story is about ie. "No, it's actually NOT meant as a rationale for incurable screw-ups to continue sponging off of their benfactors."
Which, in that situation, would be a valid point to make, as long as you make it clear that the screw-up's interpretation of the story was wrong, and you're rebutting it. Rather than saying it's possible that Jesus meant the son to be read as one of those screw-ups just using forgiveness as a means to pursue his own self-interest.
So, when the younger son came back, the father who might have assumed that he was killed in an accident or worst, believed that his son came back from the dead in the sense. What do you do if the child you think has died, turns up alive? Well you then go all out, in celebration.
All have logical issues but that's missing the point: the key concept is how the 'searcher' feels about finding that which is lost. The father was looking for him and whilst he was still a long way off...
The three stories are ALL about God's love.
I have preached on this a while back in 2 parts. The first focusing on the younger son and the extravagant grace that is lavished on the son who wished his father dead. And don't forget how great a sin patracide would be to the original audience...
The second part focused on the self-righteous hypocrisy of the older brother with the title 'the truly lost son?' If he was really his father's son as it were, he too would be rejoicing at receiving his brother back from the dead... it reads quite a lot like Jonah 4.
AFZ
To my mind this is a parable that contrasts the economy of Justice with that of Grace. From the perspective of Justice the relative treatment of the brothers is blatantly unfair, as is the treatment of the labourers in the vineyard, where those who laboured for only an hour received the same as those working all day, and were paid first. Justice is a scarce resource, only available to those who have earned their righteous status, but Grace is infinitely extended to all, and, therefore, counter-intuitive to our notions of fair play. Jesus is suggesting that both the sons are recognised by the father not because of what they have done but because of his nature and what they are to him. No wonder the parable ends with an almighty row in the farmyard between the old man and elder son, whose hard-earned righteousness has been so discounted. A lot of Christians have similar issues with their maker.
Regarding the initial post, this parable is not about how to treat addiction, anymore than the labourers in the vineyard is about the best way to run a business, or chasing after the lost sheep is the best way to be a shepherd.
Which is all very well, but you've already had your inheritance you little shit and you just pissed it up a wall. Where do you get off with this play-acting that you are oh so sorry and come crawling back here for yet another payment. You'll be here just about long enough for your poor family to get you cleaned up, then when you get bored you'll disappear in the middle of the night with the cash from everyone's wallets and anything else that isn't nailed down that you think you can sell for a couple of gs. Away with this bullshit that you can work as a hired-hand. You haven't done a stroke of work in years. Away with this idea that anyone here owes you a damn thing.
The fact is, chum, that you wandered off with the cream of the profit from this farm and ever since we've been working out arses off to stand still. Farm hand?! What is wrong with you? We can barely pay the ones we have. We are up to our necks in debt, we are down to our last calf, we are working all the hours to keep this thing afloat.
What's that? You can help? What do you mean, help? Where were you last summer when our animals needed working? Where were you every day of the winter when we had to get up at 5am to feed them? Where were you when they started to die?
Because there is damn-all you can do here. There is nothing left to give you even if we wanted to. We don't have time for lazy snivelling druggies. Go back to your crack-house. You back to whichever hole you crawled out of.
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The parable is using a terrible example to make a point - and the point is about the celebration at finding the lost. That's how parables work - the stories are ridiculous. Who would leave 99 sheep to the mercy of wolves and the weather to find 1 lost sheep? Nobody.
Who would praise an employee who is marking down the debts of creditors without discussing it with the owner? Who would praise incredibly risky business ventures over safely putting money in a savings account? Who would send their own son to a vineyard when other employees have been beaten up? Who would pay to put up someone in a hotel that they'd just found beaten up on a road - not only risking oneself but also risking that the guy just ups and leaves without a word? Why would you do that for someone who if he wasn't beaten up would probably spit at you?
None of these are meant to be models to follow. They are supposed to shock.
This.
I mean, I agree with all you said but especially this.
AFZ
The difficulty with your somewhat kierkegaardian reading of the Lost Son is that the father's actions aren't entirely as shocking as all that. The story DOES make it clear that the older son is getting the entirety of the estate, thus indicating that the old man still retains a strong sense of rational justice: the older son did all the work, so he's getting all the land.
And I think you take a few liberties in your(admitedly enjoyable) alternative monologue eg. there doesn't seem to be anything in the original narrative to indicate that the farm has fallen on hard times, and in fact, "all that is mine is yours" would be a pretty laughable promise if the business was swimming in debt.
I know things were different back in the 1st Century AD, but I'm gonna speculate that, for the average person, seeing a vanished child for the first time in years would be about the same sort of experience then as it is now, and prompt pretty much the same sort of reaction, ie. joy. I think we're meant to view this as an understandable response. and then extrapolate from that to an understanding of how God regards repentant sinners.
We are told that God is good. We are told that we should want to be like God.
So what is God like - cue the parable.
And here is a family struggling with their son's addition. He regularly steals. He regularly lies. He regularly breaks down in tears and is a master at putting on an emotional scene.
What is God like? He is so forgiving that he opens his arms to the person who asks forgiveness.
It isn't a stretch that this family feels pressure to do likewise.
We've lost the shock value of parables. It would be so much better if we started them like this -
There was once an IS guerilla walking through an Syrian town when he saw a man lying in the street. The body was so obviously booby-trapped that even the religious people shrank to the side of the road for fear of their lives..
The way we often talk makes it sound like the "other brother" is being unreasonable and the "priest and scribes" are being too ultra-spiritual to help the man in the road to Jericho.
But I don't believe that is the point of the stories at all. And yet this is the message that is often projected.
I don't think that's right because it was addressed to a Jewish audience in the context of 'lost and found' parables, and should be seen in terms of Christ's stated mission, in Luke, 'to seek and save the lost sheep of the house of Israel.' Unlike a gentile, the prodigal is (or has been) part of the family.
Yup! They are deliberately counter-intuitive because, I would argue, that the gospel of Grace is offensive to a religion based on Justice. As I understand it, Christians believe that they are saved by the righteousness of Christ and not their own goodness. Sympathy for the elder brother indicates how difficult it is to believe that. After all, virtue deserves to be reward and vice punished.
I see it as directed to members of the church and the attitudes to new members they should avoid, (and also I like tcluene's take on it). The elder brother's attitude is in direct contrast to the rejoicing of the shepherd, the coin owner, and the father.
These days I would recontextualise it to disgruntlement over LGBTIQ people being accepted as members and ministers in the Church. (I understand that others would disagree with this.)
Interesting that the Lukan lost sheep parable and the Matthean strayed sheep parable have similarities, but are used for completely different purposes.
The priest in the OP may have a valid point to make, but IMHO it cannot be drawn from the parable as used by the Lukan author/redactor.
But then Jesus takes it a stage further in the third: what if it wasn't a sheep wandering off because it didn't know any better, or an inanimate object like a coin? What if it's a person? What if what's lost is someone who's decided deliberately to wander off, to consider his father as good as dead by asking for his inheritance now, and has gone off to lead a terrible life, wasting all his money on wild living? Would God receive back someone like that - what do you think?
I don't know if this fits with the situation in the OP, but I do think there's a sense of asking the people he's with almost to think the unthinkable in terms of God's grace, by asking them to imagine God welcoming back someone who, it seems, has deliberately gone off the rails - just like the people Jesus is eating and drinking with.
Many unreserved apologies, tclune, I should have checked the reference, which, of course, is a from Matthew 10 and 15. I also agree with your comments on the universal thrust of Luke. The confusion is all mine!
I do, nevertheless, stand by the view that the prodigal should not be regarded as a gentile, given the structure of the parable.
Having said that, though, I am going to stick my neck out and apparently contradict my own words, though I don't think I am doing. @LatchKeyKid you say, and then go on to say of the drug addict version, .As neither interpretation fits either C1 Judea or the sitzimleben of the gospel of Luke, I'd have though that either both you and this unknown priest are recontextualising or neither is.
I also think, though, that the contemporaries might well have picked up 'older brother' = good, observant Jews, Pharisees etc'; 'younger brother = bad Jews, publicans, sinners etc, and once the gospel had started to leap the fire wall between Jews and Gentiles (remember Luke actually set this down at least a generation later) = Gentiles as well'.
I think saying the narrative can speak for itself overlooks how the reader or listener contributes substantially to the interpretation of the text. I think the intended audience brought its own culture and experience etc to the text and we are very distant culturally from them. If the narrative could simply speak for itself we would not need commentaries or all the resources of scholarship, and we would not take different meanings from the text. We metaphorically have a conversation with the text to find a meaning or meanings, and the heart or essence of what the text is conveying may be applied in new ways to our own situation.
So I am certainly recontextualising (some of) the message(s) of the narrative to my own situation, in the knowledge that the application of what I perceive to be the motivation for the text in Luke's intended audience is different from how I can apply it to my community as an audience. The Word that we may hear from the narrative today differs in its instantiation from the way it was instantiated to its intended audience.
So we must make a judgment of whether we are being true to the narrative or doing violence to it.
Also, both the LGBTIQ recontextualisation that you've mentioned and the recidivist drug addict one in the OP involve bringing quite a big extra that's not in the original narrative. They all right if one is honest with one's audience that this is a recontextualisation which they are free to be persuaded by or not, 'what this might be saying to us now ... ' or 'a possible relevant interpretation for us here today might be ... '. They're not if one just says 'this is what it means for us'.
We don't know what was in the gaps, so we fill them in with whatever we have - that's basically the non-conformist preaching tradition after all. Nobody gave a half hour sermon on a single verse without doing their own filling in.
There is no "plain reading" or "un-contextualised" or maybe even "true" reading. I'm not even sure that the way that material was recorded was supposed to be read as having a single meaning.
As far as I understand it, Jewish rabbinical tradition was to think through all possible meanings and argue about the relevance.
That seems to me to be a perfectly acceptable way to use the text.
Is there an entirely functional family anywhere in Scripture? There can't be many.
Is there an entirely functional family anywhere in reality? There can’t be many.
You may be right, but that is not, one is pretty certain, an intended presumption by the narrator.
Well I suppose because different people hear different things and take away different thoughts.
I agree.
Incidentally, Martin54, I thought your earlier comment, to which nobody responded, gets to the core of the issue.
Also how does that fit within the context of the "finding of lost things" parables?