Prodigals, mountain climbers and you (me)

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The story of The Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32) is familiar to every practicing Christian, I presume. It’s one of Jesus’ most powerful parables, an allegory illustrating important truths. We may not always agree on what truths are most important there, but the allegory popped up again for me when I read that hopes are high for rescue personnel and helicopters to search again for three missing climbers in very difficult terrain. (CBC News, June 08, 2024)

Put crassly, how much risk and effort do we owe others when in self-inflicted danger? The obedient other son in the parable is appalled at his father’s embrace of the one whose demise followed his own—eye’s open—bad choices. His, “All my life I’ve been a model son, and you’ve never thrown a banquet for me!” is an eminently logical accusation. Nobody has ever staged a celebration to honour me for not climbing precarious precipices, never taking illicit drugs, not abusing alcohol or disobeying driving rules either.

We know by now that deviance, self-indulgence, ill-advised glory-seeking (and any other of the many ways in which humans derail to their own peril) are endemic. Many will navigate the human race well because they’re able to clear the hurdles; some will stumble and the resulting self-loathing will divert them into an alternate competition. The hurdle for the prodigal son might well have been the perception that he could never measure up in the father’s eyes to the piety and obedience of his brother. (Forgetting for a moment that it’s an allegory, not a history.)

Like the lost sheep allegory, (Mark 15: 3-7) The Prodigal Son parable reinforces the core and thrust of the entire gospel: reconciliation. It’s not—in the end—tit for tat “justice” that defines being in the right lane in the human race: it’s the capacity in all of us to believe redemption is possible, and that reconciliation (as Paul puts it) is our “job.” (II Corinthians 5:18) Love, not law motivates our responses to even the deviant, the seemingly hopelessly lost. As Christians, we are the father in the parable, not the obedient, pious brother.

Unfortunately, Christians are not immune from the cultural trend toward individuation, the crumbling of community-think in favour of me-think, if you will. The allegories of heaven and hell and the acquisition of a ticket to a blissful afterlife being the gospel core (the formulaic “born again” misapplication) has left little room for the redemption and reconciliation projects. It’s tantamount to declaring that we want to be the other brother in the allegory, not the father.

Come to think of it, the fact that the rescue of the three stranded or lost climbers goes without saying shines a ray of hope that we do have a helping of father’s love in us. Eh?

To respond directly, email: gg.epp41@gmail.com.

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