Instead of the Friday Random Ten: Blasphemy!
Fun though the Random Ten is, I decided a)
regular patterns are a trap; 2) I'm doing a disproportionate amount of music
maundering, and c)I have something more
interesting.
My cover-to-cover reading
of the Bible is still with me: and one of the things I got was this sneaking
sense of a personality in the words of Jesus Christ, at least in the synoptic
Gospels (don't know about John): I get a flash of sardonic with when he talks
about the prayers in public: "verily, they have their reward;" and a flash of
wry weariness in "The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but
the Son of man hath not where to lay his
head."
This may be just me, and is of course
dangerous, for having a Messiah with a sense of humor, or orse, a sense of
irony, and who knows where you'll end
up?
But a reference to the Prodigal Son
got me thinking: It's a pet peeve of mine that, thanks to the story, people use
'prodigal' to mean 'wandering' or 'errant', when it means 'spending'. (Along
with the one that everyone but everyone misuses, and for which I fight, alas, a
losing battle: the use of 'the lion's share' to mean 'most'. It's a terrific
little Aesopian fable we get it from, and the whole friggin' point of the story
is that the lion's share is not
most
of it--the lion's share is
ALL of
it!)(*pant pant pant*)
The other thing
about the Prodigal Son story is its structure: the story doesn't end with the
return of the son and the celebration--there's the sequence where the son who
never left is ticked off that the prodigal is being fêted in this way, and
the father reassures him that all he has is his, and that he should rejoice for
the resurrection of the son (!)(More about THAT some other time.) It's a part
that gets ignored by the Bible teachers who say that the point of the story is
that God will forgive you--it also adds a nice barb against the self
righteousness of those who have never strayed (or think they have never
strayed.) All in all a much subtler story than the way it's taught most of the
time.
But...
Since
the title is an economic one, let's look at it from that perspective. The father
has an estate that, upon his death, is supposed to be divided between his two
sons (with a little set aside for the pet hospital). The younger son can't wait
for the old man to die, so he asks for his portion now so he can make his way in
the world. (To be fair to him, he doesn't simply blow the money and come
crawling back: there's a famine in the land, and he gets a job feeding pigs (not
a great job for a Jew, you understand) and nearly starves to death. So
'prodigal' doesn't in this story, mean 'wastrel' either: he simply did not set
aside reserves.)
But here's the
interesting part: The son returns, the father is overjoyed, and the other son
pissed off. And the other son grouses, and whar does the father say? "All I have
is yours."
Which brings up the
question: does the Prodigal, welcomed back into the family, get put back into
the will?
The story seems to say no.
All the father has is the elder son's--which would not be the case if Junior
were written back in. It also clarifies the exchange (which always struck me as
a bit odd and unkind on the father's part when I was being taught it) where the
elder son complains that Dad never gave him diddley when he wanted to party with
his friends: the response 'all I have is yours' seemed not to speak to the
complaint. But it would if the father were distinguishing between the estate and
everyday expenditure. It might be that the father, in those few words were
saying "I am playing fair by you: the distribution I made still stands: you get
the entire remainder of my
estate."
That's a considerably sharper
story than the one taught in sunday school--and a little less of a simple happy
ending. It's also masterful: a story told with extreme economy, that looks
simple, but isn't.
What might this new
knottier Prodigal Son story be saying? Here's one thought: the sunday school
version has everything back at the end like it was at the beginning--and it
gives out the dangerous impression that the son can do all manner of bad and
foolish acts, and all you have to do is repent and boom! Everything's erased as
if it never had been. (And we've seen the nasty results of that in Christian
behavior down the centuries.) WE do pretty much assume that old P.S. gets
written back into the will, don't we?
But
maybe Jesus is saying something different here: it might be that, no, all the
wrongs are not simply forgotten--the older son is now the full heir of the
father's property, and the younger son has blown it. But that doesn't mean that
he shouldn't be shunned or treated with scorn: it does not erase him as a family
member. And this may be the clincher in this version: the father bids the elder
son to join in the celebration--to exercise the same joyous generosity as he,
the father, is demonstrating.
It may very
well be, in fact, that the Prodigal may end up working for his keep on his
father's estate: that offer, if you'll notice, is not dismissed by the father
when the son offers it. It's just turned aside by
joy.
I realize that I'm setting myself
up against thousands of years of Biblical exegesis, and this would anger pulpits
from Colorado Springs to the Vatican. But this seems to make more sense than the
simpler story. It also avoids the troubling aspect of forgiveness of sins. The
arch heretic Emo Phillips put it elegantly. "I wanted a bicycle. I prayed to God
for a bicycle, but didn't get a bicycle. That's when I realized how this
religion stuff worked. So the next day I went out and stole a bicycle and prayed
to God to forgive me." By distinguishing between inheritance and generosity, it
does say that repentance and return will be greeted with joy and love
forever--
--but you don't get to keep
the bicycle.
That Jesus seems to be a
pretty smart guy after all, maybe
Posted: Saturday - March 31, 2007 at 05:03 PM