Reflecting on the Prodigal Son's Brother

The Story of the Prodigal Son is fascinating on so many levels.  Its popularity in Christian circles, however, lends it to easy interpretation.  We read it and, instead of trying to allow the Spirit to speak through the story anew, revert back to the many sermons we've heard on the subject, many of which draw, more or less, the same conclusions.  The assumption is always that of the three characters, the Father is good, the prodigal son was "lost and found" and the elder son "there but lost."  Oh how the Father loves his children, and how we need to run back into his arms.  But then, the elder son is also just as distant from the father as the prodigal son was.  And, invariably, the "application" beckons us to consider if we were like the elder or the prodigal son.  In the honor-shame Chinese culture, we all want to be the elder son; he was the one that did what's right after all.  But nonetheless, the elder son is assumed to "not get it."  He's ungracious, jealous perhaps.

I want to rethink how we view the elder son.  The way Luke tells the story, I think, easily lends us to jump into quick conclusions in evaluating the elder son.  I write, of course, as an elder son of a high-context family, a socio-contextual Weltanschauung that would no doubt be familiar to many biblical characters.  Without delving too much into the historical context - because I am not a New Testament or Classical Antiquities scholar - I think we can glean something new from an alternate reading of this familiar story.  What I propose to do is to retell the story anew and no, I am not translating from the original Greek, but am seriously paraphrasing.  But, I will interject with my commentary, which will be denoted in italics.  The narrative will be written in bold.

According to Jesus, there was once a boy who told his father to f*** off and then left with his share of the inheritance.  

First of all, why would the father let his son run off with his inheritance?  I mean, if I were the father, I would, right away, grab the bamboo stick hiding in the top of the bookshelf, and give that sorry lad 20 lashes right there!  Furthermore, as the story later suggests, the elder son probably was at the scene of this, since he knew what happened afterwards.  An elder son has an important social role in being an "assistant administrator" of the family, with the father being the head of the household (we must remember, the Scriptures were written within a patriarchal worldview).  If my brothers middle-fingered our father and wanted his share of the inheritance pie, I would've stepped in and told my dad, "Don't listen to them!  Keep it for yourself!  They're going to spend it on whores and more!  Why waste money like that? It's the FAMILY MONEY!"  By the way, my younger brothers never told our father to f*** off, and never extorted money from my dad; I am proud to say my dad passed away on good terms with me and my brothers.  But back to the story, what was the elder son doing?  If he were as righteous as the end of the story suggests, then I think he would've tried to talk his father out of it.  After all, he knows his younger brother will spend it all on prostitutes and wild living - why waste money like that?  Keep it for yourself!

But another safe suggestion is that the father is an elderly man.  Now we must note, if that is indeed the case, that this variable makes the younger son's actions a direct violation of the commandment to honor one's parents.  We must realize that the commandment's premise is that the elderly are easily marginalizable people.  This is biological - it is naturally inefficient to care for the elderly since their ability to ensure the continuation of the human species is very limited; it is far more efficient to care for the younger generation instead.  But I have argued in many blog posts that our faith is, in some ways, "super-biological" in that the biological is not normative to the theological.  The biological can illumine the theological, but at no point does the former take the place of the latter in authority.  Thus, biological efficiency is moot - God commanded the Israelites (and us, too) to care for our parents as a measure of respect because, at the very least, we are because of them.  Now, considering that the younger son already told his unfortunate father to f*** off, I would not be surprised if the father, already heartbroken by his younger son, acquiesced.  My son doesn't want me anymore, why keep him in the household?  Again, I would not be surprised if the elder son steps in and tells his father, "No, don't think that way!  He's young, he doesn't get it.  One day he will!  Just don't waste money on him!"

Keep all that in mind as we progress through the story.

The prodigal son left and, as expected, used up his share of the inheritance in wild living.  Left destitute, he contracted himself to a farmer, who assigned him a job feeding casino leftovers to pigs.  A few days of doing such disgusting work led him to ponder, "Even the servants in my father's household are eating way better than I am right now.  What am I doing here?  I'll go back home and tell my father that yes, I am a total jerk and I don't deserve to be thought of as a son.  I will ask him to make me one of his servants."  

As the son walked back, he was a few miles away from home when his dad came running with a bunch of servants catching up from behind.  The prodigal son immediately kneeled and said, "Father, I am a total jerk and I don't deserve to be your son."  The father, however, was barking orders to his (tired) servants, "Hurry up - what are you doing?  Grab some of the robes - the golden one, yes!  Got the ring?  Yes?  Good - son, put it on, and we'll talk later - Tell the butcher we have a party tonight, so get the calf ready!  NOW!  My son's back - no time to waste!"

As the party commenced with singing and dancing (and good steak), the elder son was back from managing the fields of his father's large landholdings.  He heard the music from the main dining hall, and the smell of steak wafted into his nose.  "What's the occasion," he asked his assistant.  "Oh, your younger brother came back, and your dad had this party put up."  The elder son was absolutely angry and refused to enter the house.  The father left the hall, went outside to his elder son, and beckoned him to come in.  "Dad," the son replied, "I've just come back from managing your landholdings, and I've done that for the past ten years faithfully, and without complaint.  But your younger son came back from ten years of having sex with whores and drinking and gambling your money away, and you throw that party for him?  You've never even had a vegetarian party for me!"  "Son," the father replied, "you've been faithful, yes, but we have to be happy!  Your brother might as well be dead, but no!  He's alive!  He was lost, but now is found!"

If you think about it, the elder son's criticism is not unfounded.  We assume that the elder son's "heart wasn't into the Father's work."  This may be a suggestion in the text, but it cannot be assumed I think.  The key is that the elder son was faithful to his father, and did everything the father asked of him.  Yes, it may be drudgery at times, but as a good elder son, he did it anyway.  If I were the elder son, I would be asking my father, "Dad, remember when I told you that little Johnny's gonna use the money on sex, booze, and drugs?  Remember?  I told you not to give the money, but NO - you gave it to him anyway. And now, what's this?  Sex, booze, and drugs, you throw him a party with steak?  You didn't throw me a party, even a tofu party - it's okay, I'm fine with no party - but what did he do to deserve this?  

I pose such a reading of the story because it places the father and the (elder) son into two interchanging roles.  I will now employ the vocabulary of the subaltern (advanced first by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak) to assert that at the outset of the story, the father was rendered voiceless - that is, subaltern.  The text tells us nothing of the "why" behind the father's relinquishing of the prodigal son's share of the estate.  After all, the father was under no obligation to give his estate to his son, particularly one who essentially displayed a middle finger to his face.  Why he would do that is foreclosed upon us, because of the way the story is told.  Perhaps it is not foreclosed to non-Western audiences, but if we interpret the story from a Western, low-context perspective, the attention quickly shifts to the prodigal son because the son is responsible for his actions.  In one sense, he is.  But in a high-context perspective, this is not quite clear.  Superficially, that is so, but there is a context by which such an action is rendered possible.

To put it differently, would I have done the same to my father?  Well, no.  Such an action is rendered impossible - that is, foreclosed - for me to execute because I was taught by my parents that I must respect them.  The why comes as a result of growing up.  That the prodigal son - we assume he might be 20+ years since he could sleep with prostitutes - had the gall to flick his father off suggests that something didn't go well with the parenting.  Maybe the father relinquished his hold to the prodigal son's share of the estate as a self-punishment for raising up a jerk.  If so, we can note that the father is just as much to be blamed for this entire episode as his child.  Indeed, I believe a study was done by some New Testament scholar, who told this story to people of varying cultures, each of them pinning the blame on different characters.

The elder son, it should be note, was also voiceless.  The text does not show that he was present, but I would be surprised if he were not - a good son is not far from his father.  Even if I were correct in asserting that the elder son fought against his father relinquishing the younger son's portion of the inheritance, the father may, perhaps, want the elder son to back off, allowing himself to suffer the full repercussions of his poor parenting.

The situation, however, changes at the end.  The elder son was proven right.  The scandal, however, was that the father seemed to have forgotten that the prodigal son was not prodigal to begin with!  It was as if nothing like that ever happened!  What was scandalous was not a matter of jealousy, but a matter of justice.  The prodigal son flicked his dad off, went away and had sex, booze, and drugs, came back with no money.  The reward for this, customarily, is not "party in the house tonight"!  When did your family or church last celebrate after a good friend came back having had sex, booze, and drugs?  You simply don't celebrate those kinds of things, back then and today!  What would the neighbors think?  What would all the Aunties and Uncles (with their children studying at Harvard) at the synagogue think?

Thus, the father had to justify his position: Thanks for being faithful.  You've been a wonderful son.  But what matters is that your wayward brother is back.  For once, I could imagine the father saying, put aside what the Aunties and Uncles think.  Put aside what the people might say in the synagogue.  Put aside all the shame that your brother brought to the family, and focus on the happy fact that he's back.  Isn't it worth it that your brother is back?

The narrative ends there, and I think it masterfully does so.  We don't know if the elder son agreed and went and joined the party, or if the son humphed away to a local bar.  The open ending suggests that this is a question that we cannot easily resolve because for some of us, no - I wish my brother went to hell and never came back, because now the Aunties and Uncles will say bad things about us, the rabbi will look at us funny, and we will have to leave the synagogue. Culture, in other words, prevents this reconciliation and forgiveness from being effected, because we either (1) see ourselves as right, and the other as undeniably wrong, or (2) the shame incurred is not worth the reconciliation.

For some of us, we want to be right, right, and oh, right, even if it meant dividing the family.  Maybe this is tolerable in the West (I don't think it is, last I checked), but this is suicidal in Chinese culture.  A divided family signals poor parental leadership, which is why "Tiger moms" exist; it is not a matter of grades, but it is a measure of how good the mom is.  What we need to recover, particularly as Christian communions worldwide become increasingly riven over many hot-button theological issues, is the notion that every Christian is our brother and sister.  Our theological opponents may be wrong in our estimation, but they are our theological opponents in Christ.  Never should they be theological enemies.  Thus, in my view, the proper response to deep theological divisions is not more theological mudslinging, or "dialogue", but joint prayer.

That problem is not unique to the East.  But that the shame incurred is not worth the reconciliation is most poignantly felt in the Far Eastern cultures where you are who you associate with.  To welcome back a wayward son without much of a punishment is culturally suspect - is the father making light of what the prodigal son has done?  No wonder the prodigal son went off like that - this is the root of poor parenting!

How can forgiveness be effected in such a situation?  In my view, it is impossible. Yet, the father in the parable was able to do it, precisely because he was able to lay aside culture and focus on the humanity of his son.  This realization is not purely biological, but theological, because we do not regard each other as predestinarian demigods, with full control of our destinies, but as normal humans caught in the vicissitudes of living in a world where sin infects its very social constitution.  Because we are humans caught in such a situation, we all have our stories to tell.  When we hear these stories, when we exchange such stories in our quest for forgiveness, we are beckoned to put aside our socio-cultural "centers" and enter a liminal place where, at the expense of possible marginalization by the community, we empathize with the humanity of those asking us for forgiveness.  Although forgiveness is not made easy, I am convinced it is made possible.  Such baby steps would go far for Asian-American churches to become communities of forgiveness.