# The Prodigal Son **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [November 15, 2002, 9:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-prodigal-son/136931 "2002-11-15T21:42:55Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![jayjay](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jayjay/32/6765_2.png) [@jayjay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jayjay)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2002, 12:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-prodigal-son/136931/21 "2002-11-18T12:44:03Z")
I don’t really want to hijack this thread into a debate on the basic premises of Christianity, so I’ll just note that I disagree strongly with those basic premises and leave it at that. I wish to clarify that while I disagree strongly with the basic premises of Christianity, this does not mean that I have contempt for Christians in general. ---
**Author:** ![lekatt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lekatt/32/7269_2.png) [@lekatt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lekatt)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2002, 1:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-prodigal-son/136931/22 "2002-11-18T13:08:04Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Freyr \* > > * * * > > Not in that exact way. After my original baptism in the early 60s and then making a concerted effort to become a practicing Christian again in 1980, I felt like the long lost son. The initial joy was lost when I started asking for specific answers to the issue of homosexuality. It went downhill from there very quickly. > > \*\* While I would follow Jesus anywhere, I am not Christian. I don’t want people to confuse what I say with what passes for “Christianity” in today’s churches. God is unconditional love, He never condemns, but His followers do and don’t realize they are not following Jesus’ teachings. Near death experiencers see a God of compassion and love, which makes it hard for them to go to church. Most quit their churches and go to spiritual churches or not at all. Some start their own centers of love and healing. In the spirit world sex doesn’t exist. No body, no sex. Not hard to understand. Most people can’t see further than the rules of religion, certainly not into their spiritual existence. Suggest you don’t give up, there are congregations that don’t condemn. Love Leroy ---
**Author:** ![Typo\_Negative](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/typo_negative/32/484_2.png) [@Typo\_Negative](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Typo_Negative)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2002, 2:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-prodigal-son/136931/23 "2002-11-18T14:35:45Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by smiling bandit \* > \*\*This parable is about forgiveness, not rewards. \*\* Well, it’s a pretty stinky parable. It _does_ make it seem like bad behaviour is rewarded. Or at the very least, some are loved more than others. In my (somewhat skewed) moral code, hard work should have rewards. And those who work harder get more of the rewards. There seems to be justice in that, at least to me. In the prodigal son story, the older son probably should have followed his younger brother’s lead and left home and squandered the family fortune. I always got the feeling that the younger kid was loved more, even beore he came back. ---
**Author:** ![Joe\_Cool](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ecb155/32.png) [@Joe\_Cool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Joe_Cool)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2002, 2:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-prodigal-son/136931/24 "2002-11-18T14:45:19Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by lekatt \* > **While I would follow Jesus anywhere, I am not Christian. I don’t want people to confuse what I say with what passes for “Christianity” in today’s churches.** Don’t worry. > [@](#): > > **God is unconditional love, He never condemns, but His followers do and don’t realize they are not following Jesus’ teachings.** Really? The first part I’d agree with. God’s love is unconditional. But, please tell me how you explain Jesus’s teaching in John 3:18? Is that me condemning somebody? It says everybody is already condemned, unless they accept the atonement that Jesus made. > [@](#): > > Whoever believes in him is not condemned, **but whoever does not believe stands condemned already** because he has not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son. ---
**Author:** ![xenophon41](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xenophon41/32/253_2.png) [@xenophon41](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/xenophon41)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2002, 4:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-prodigal-son/136931/25 "2002-11-18T16:11:25Z")
> [@](#): > > _ **spooje** (in response to **smiling bandit** ):_ > > Well, it’s a pretty stinky parable. It _does_ make it seem like bad behaviour is rewarded. Or at the very least, some are loved more than others. I think this point is key to the misgivings many people have about this parable, and illustrative of both the power and the difficulty of Jesus’ parables. The difficulty with the Prodigal Son is that, if read as a family melodrama, it’s troubling in its appearance of cynical manipulation of the father by the “bad” son, and if taken as an analogy for God’s forgiveness, the story seems clumsy and heavy handed. The _power_ of the parable is that it illustrates the irrelevance of a human frame of reference to one’s relationship with God. The story is _intentionally_ jarring; Jesus was using the device of a wealthy family, with properties and land bestowed upon an heir by the father, not to show the way things are between people and God, but to show the way things _aren’t_. This story isn’t about good behavior, and it isn’t about punishment and reward. Forget about merit and proportion (Jesus is telling us), scale is meaningless. Consider instead that the kingdom is open to the man who hurls dung at the king and it is open to the man who sings the king’s glory. Both need only come in. The significant aspect of the prodigal’s return is not that he’s done anything praiseworthy; he’s merely turned back to the father. The significant aspect of the good son’s loyalty is not that his fidelity is meritless, but that it is immaterial to the question of love. Proud or humble, obedient or disdainful, the father’s love exists regardless. Taking the parable as analogy isn’t a mistake, though; it’s supposed to be considered first in a literal sense, with its puzzling lack of a homely “moral” rewarding virtue or punishing vice. But that literal consideration is intended to set up a paradigm which we must then reject. Turn away from what appears to be _deserved_ by each son, the teacher says, and look at what is _given_ by the father. There is no difference. (This is my interpretation, in any case. YMMV) ---
**Author:** ![Liberal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/848f3c/32.png) [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2002, 4:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-prodigal-son/136931/26 "2002-11-18T16:42:09Z")
I’m curious as to whether there are any Christians who do not like the story. ---
**Author:** ![amarinth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3be4f8/32.png) [@amarinth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/amarinth)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2002, 5:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-prodigal-son/136931/27 "2002-11-18T17:48:40Z")
It’s not a matter of like or dislike. I am more thankful than I can possibly express for meritless grace and divine mercy. It is just that I’m not as sure that the explanations of the parables (the ones that Christ didn’t explain Himself) that I was taught when I was 5 years old are necessarily accurate interpretations. I think they might be less simplistic, less pat, and more difficult. I could be wrong. By the way, I have way less difficulty with the vineyard parable than I do with this one. ---
**Author:** ![Polycarp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/82dd89/32.png) [@Polycarp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polycarp)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2002, 7:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-prodigal-son/136931/28 "2002-11-18T19:24:34Z")
While the Campbellian return-of-the-hero motif is intriguing, it’s important to notice the _context_ in which Jesus told the parable – it’s to the Pharisees, the people who mistook scrupulous adherence to the Law as sufficient to prove allegiance to God, and who considered themselves “better,” more righteous than the majority of the population for doing so. The whole point of the forgiveness extended the wastrel son when he came home and asked for only the minimum to stay alive, as contrasted with the begrudging attitude of the other son, was to stress God’s welcome to _all_ who are willing to turn to Him, and His unstinting grace and forgiveness. **Freyr** , if Jesus was to tell the parable in your presence, I feel sure He’d add in one small detail – the need on the part of the Prodigal to find it in himself to forgive his brother for his lack of love. FWIW, there were standards on how a family’s inheritance was to be divided _at the time of the patriarch’s death_ – and it amounted to dividing the estate into N+1 equal shares, where N is the number of sons surviving, the oldest son being entitled to two shares and the others to one each. That’s why the prodigal asked for “his inheritance” and got a _third_ of his father’s possessions. The remaining two-thirds were by law the property of the father but would pass to the elder brother on his death. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2002, 8:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-prodigal-son/136931/29 "2002-11-18T20:13:45Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Polycarp \* > \*\*it’s to the Pharisees, the people who mistook scrupulous adherence to the Law as sufficient to prove allegiance to God, and who considered themselves “better,” more righteous than the majority of the population for doing so. \*\* Yeah, but all other things being equal, adherance to the Law is better than breaking the Law, and the son who stayed at home and obeyed his father was a better son than the one who took his father’s money and spent it all on wine and whores. ---
**Author:** ![Liberal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/848f3c/32.png) [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2002, 8:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-prodigal-son/136931/30 "2002-11-18T20:27:02Z")
But so what? Do you love your better son more than your worse one? ---
**Author:** ![smiling\_bandit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9a140/32.png) [@smiling\_bandit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smiling_bandit)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2002, 8:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-prodigal-son/136931/31 "2002-11-18T20:40:58Z")
> [@](#): > > Near death experiencers see a God of compassion and love, which makes it hard for them to go to church. Most quit their churches and go to spiritual churches or not at all. Some start their own centers of love and healing. Cite, please. And make sure it has numbers. ---
**Author:** ![lekatt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lekatt/32/7269_2.png) [@lekatt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lekatt)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2002, 9:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-prodigal-son/136931/32 "2002-11-18T21:01:43Z")
No cite, just personal experience. Read the literature if you’re really interested. ---
**Author:** ![Fenris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fenris/32/498_2.png) [@Fenris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fenris)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2002, 10:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-prodigal-son/136931/33 "2002-11-18T22:49:38Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Libertarian \* > \*\*But so what? Do you love your better son more than your worse one? \*\* **Lib** , what I find troubling about the parable is not that the Prod. Son is welcomed back with opened arms, it’s that a huge fuss is made over him _at the expense_ of the good son. It _is_ a zero-sum game. There’s only one ring, cloak, party and they all go to the rotten kid, rather than the hard-working one. It really feels like the father is playing favorites. Saying “Hey! It’s wonderful you’re back! You’re welcome to be here!” is great. “Pull up a chair, sit down to dinner! It’s fantastic to see you again!” makes sense. Throwing a party seems like a reward for horrible behavior and a slap to the good kid who acted responsibly and _didn’t_ get anything more than exactly what the law required. It’s _far_ harder to stay on the straight-and-narrow then to waltz off and come crawling back only when you have to suffer the consequences of it. The utterly cold (IMO) behavior of the father to the good kid is troublesome to me. I’ve always had problem reconcilling this story with the story of Joseph and Jacob (where Joseph and Jacob both experience nasty times as a result of Jacob’s favoritism (in part) towards Joseph) Heck, there’e even a cloak involved in both stories! 😃 Fenris ---
**Author:** ![Liberal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/848f3c/32.png) [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2002, 11:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-prodigal-son/136931/34 "2002-11-18T23:04:36Z")
Fen > [@](#): > > " ‘My son,’ the father said, ‘ **you are always with me, and everything I have is yours**. But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’ " — Luke 15:31-32 Everything. Rings. Cloaks. Parties… I see nothing cold here. I see nothing but love. ---
**Author:** ![Fenris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fenris/32/498_2.png) [@Fenris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fenris)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2002, 11:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-prodigal-son/136931/35 "2002-11-18T23:22:43Z")
Well, hell. **Lib** : here you go spoilin’ a perfectly good argument with the facts. 😛 Fenris ---
**Author:** ![lekatt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lekatt/32/7269_2.png) [@lekatt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lekatt)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2002, 1:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-prodigal-son/136931/36 "2002-11-19T01:22:47Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Captain Amazing \* > \*\*Yeah, but all other things being equal, adherance to the Law is better than breaking the Law, and the son who stayed at home and obeyed his father was a better son than the one who took his father’s money and spent it all on wine and whores. \*\* With God, all things are equal. there is no better or lesser son. All are equally worthy of God’s love and compassion. I believe this is shown many times in the teachings of Jesus. Our egos might like to think different, but our hearts understand. Love Leroy ---
**Author:** ![JerseyDiamond](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/8491ac/32.png) [@JerseyDiamond](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JerseyDiamond)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2002, 2:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-prodigal-son/136931/37 "2002-11-19T02:23:55Z")
**lekatt** , this is probably the one and only time I will respond to anything you post, because I find you to be so far off and misled. As a matter of fact, I find the atheist to be more christian like than you. The only thing I wanted to say is that we are all equally **unworthy** of God’s love. You act as if we are entitled. Maybe I was wrong and you meant that we are not worthy. If so, I apologize. **His4ever** , don’t be swayed. You are a very strong christian. Don’t let people like the above sway you beliefs. Those books of ‘enlightenment’ are hogwash. Before you read anything like that, make sure that you have a great hold on the bible. **Bit Of A Hijack** ------ **John Zahn** , I have not forgotten you and your question. It is very complicated to explain to someone why I believe something that to you seems condtradictory in the Bible. When bible scholars explain it and you don’t except it, it makes it all the more difficult for me. I am still researching. Thus far, the reasoning behind the numbers being different is because of the amount of time gone by. **Sorry for the hijack, next time it will be in the appropriate thread.** JD ---
**Author:** ![DocCathode](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/doccathode/32/18773_2.png) [@DocCathode](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DocCathode)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2002, 2:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-prodigal-son/136931/38 "2002-11-19T02:28:21Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by lekatt \* > **Near death experiencers see a God of compassion and love, which makes it hard for them to go to church. Most quit their churches and go to spiritual churches or not at all. Some start their own centers of love and healing.** ``` Lekatt's "proof" is rather thoroughly trounced [In This Thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=131095) ``` > [@](#): > > \*\* > In the spirit world sex doesn’t exist. No body, no sex. Not hard to understand. Most people can’t see further than the rules of religion, certainly not into their spiritual existence. > \*\* ``` Wrong again. Members of the Cult Of Ecstasy have demonstrated countless times that sex is very much a part of the tertiary and secondary layers. ``` ---
**Author:** ![Neurotik](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/91b2a8/32.png) [@Neurotik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Neurotik)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2002, 2:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-prodigal-son/136931/39 "2002-11-19T02:55:03Z")
Cult of Ecstasy? ---
**Author:** ![Shade](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2bfe46/32.png) [@Shade](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shade)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2002, 2:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-prodigal-son/136931/40 "2002-11-19T02:56:21Z")
Another big difference is that God would presumably know if the son genuinely repents, perhaps better than he does himself. I don’t. If I give my son his inheritance, and he wastes it on the high life, and then he comes home and asks for some more, I have to be sceptical. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-prodigal-son/136931.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-prodigal-son/136931.md?page=3)