The Prodigal Son 1 - Luke 15:11-14

The parable of the prodigal son is probably my favorite because I relate to it so much, I truly feel like this is my story. The parable as recorded here in Luke is pretty limited in detail and there is actually a Living Scriptures movie that I had watched many times as a child that put more detail in the situation that helped me understand more. For instance, the parable begins with a man that has two sons, and the younger son says, “Father, give me the portion of goods that falleth to me. And he divided unto them his living.” An article in the National Catholic Register tells us that in ancient Jewish law, the handling of inheritance was strictly regulated. In this case, because there are two sons, the first is to be given a double portion of the estate when the father dies, and the second son is to have the rest, so basically, the older son gets 2/3 of the father’s estate and the second son gets 1/3.

It’s perplexing to me that the father would sell off part of his estate and give it to the younger son when he’s confident that he’s going to use it poorly. The father can’t tell the future, but there are clues to indicate that the son doesn’t have the maturity to deal with this situation. First is the impulsiveness, the lack of patience and foresight. The article says, “this is a truly astonishing request, and it would have been even more astonishing in the ancient world. In a society that highly reverenced parents, it would have been equivalent to saying: ‘Father, I can’t even wait for you to die. Give me 1/3rd of everything you have right now.’” The IM comments, “The son’s request would have been seen as a rejection of his father, his home, his upbringing, and even his entire community.”

He doesn’t present his father with a well researched business plan, he doesn’t come respectfully and say that he would like to start his own family and needs his share to support a wife. Not only does he want to enrich himself without doing any of the work to earn and build an estate, but he’s asking his father to do so at his own expense. That property was still owned by the father, and would only be available to the son after the father’s death, and then there is still his mother to think about. What if there was a famine and the father had to sell some of the property to feed his people, what if there was abundance and the father could buy more property? By asking his father for his share of what the father had at that point, the son not only asked the father to risk his own livelihood, but also rejected any gain that could have been made with his property in the time between when it was sold and when the father actually died.

Despite the breathtaking- and insulting- audacity of the younger son’s request, the father grants it! Amazing! This reflects the amazing indulgence that God shows towards us. Even when we are acting as selfishly as the prodigal son, God indulges us. He yields what is his and allows us to misuse it out of respect for the freedom that he has given us. But he knows that the misuse of our freedom will have no better results than it did with the prodigal son’s misuse of his freedom, and God trusts that we will learn our lesson and come back to him.” The key to that last sentence is that God doesn’t just trust us to learn and repent, we need to learn and repent, to make mistakes, that’s how we learn and grow, it’s the whole purpose for us being here. In the cartoon movie, the father hems and haws about it for a while, having the son badger him relentlessly before he gives in which makes more sense to me.

The father gives his young son his 1/3 of the estate, and “the younger son gathered all together, and took his journey into a far country, and there wasted his substance with riotous living.” From an outsiders perspective, this statement could mean anything from the boy left his father’s camp and went to the closest city, to the boy left his father’s suburban home and went across the planet. The article says, “In context, this means that he abandoned the Holy Land to go, voluntarily, into exile into a gentile, pagan country where he could live loosely without being censured by fellow Jews living all around him. He wanted to get out of God’s land so that he could live in sin and fund his sinful lifestyle by what he took from his father.” The IM comments that going to a “far country… reflects the extremity of the younger son’s rebellion.”

Unlike the parable of the lost sheep, who was lost because of a lack of diligence on the part of the sheep to stay safe, and the parable of the lost coin, which was lost due to neglect by the woman, the parable of the prodigal son features one who was lost because of willful rebellion. There was no gentle pulling away from what he grew up with, there were no questions that led off into nowhere, it was an outright, “I hate this life and I refuse to live it.” Even though parts of the parable doesn’t really apply to me, much of it does. If I consider the father’s estate to be the gospel, I did leave it, twice, and both times I did so out of contempt and anger. Mine wasn’t so much of a “give me money and I’ll be on my way,” I recognize that instead of money, I took my agency, and spent my time in riotous living for many years. I left my home and went hundreds of miles away, but it doesn’t have to be just that. The IM quotes Elder Neal A. Maxwell as teaching, “Like the prodigal son, we too can go to ‘a far country,’ which may be no further away than a vile rock concert. The distance to ‘a far country’ is not to be measured by miles but by how far our hearts and minds are from Jesus! Fidelity, not geography, really determines the distance!”

We don’t have to move away or start smoking or join a satanic cult to be in rebellion against God. Even when I’m doing my best, I still have times when I know I’m supposed to do something, but I struggle with understanding, and sometimes I even think to myself, “you need to be doing this,” and I will say, “no I don’t want to.” That is rebellion, and I have to work on that more. How do we guard again these little rebellions? It’s important to be always in contact with the Holy Ghost so that we can work on ourselves at the level that we are at all the time. This is the best way to know how we personally can become more compliant with God’s will and commandments.

As I’ve learned all too many times, money doesn’t last forever and it surely doesn’t grow on trees, and because this guy was so concerned with having a good time, the money ran out. “And when he had spent all, there arose a mighty famine in that land; and he begant to be in want.” He had no skills that he could use for gainful employment, he hadn’t invested anything, he hadn’t prepared himself for this day. In the movie, it shows a couple of friends that “helped” him navigate the party scene in the new city, and once he was out of money, they walked away. I found this to be pretty accurate in real life. There are plenty of people who want to be your friend when you have an abundance, but there are not as many when you’re the one in need.