About two weeks ago, one of my band members tells me about the new book he's reading -- The Prodigal God. I couldn't help but feel semi skeptical at first but I considered it a good idea to go on ahead and check it out. Of course, I ended up getting The Prodigal God - Finding Your Place at the Table, in DVD form filled with a 32 minute video and six separate sermons. On the surface, it's just the parable that we're all aware about and have a usual and typical understanding of it. Thanks to author Timothy Keller, I pretty much got something a bit different out of it.
There were several things that came to mind.
1. In a middle eastern family back in the day, to ask your dad for your share of the inheritance was like telling him to die! It would result in the kid getting physically and verbally beaten right out of the house. Shocking how the father didn't berate him and beat him out the house, huh?
2. The older brother is representative of the Pharisees and the younger (and prodigal) one are representative of tax collectors and sinners. One of them was so caught up in their self-righteousness and sense of self-entitlement while the other was caught up in their desire to a journey of self-discovery and hedonism.
3. Both brothers cared more about their inheritance than about their father. One of them wanted their inheritance right away, the other got mad that celebrating his brother's return was at his inheritance's expense (though to only a certain degree). It goes to show how much you care about people around you when you care about what they can do to/for you than for simply who they are.
4. The parable was left in a cliffhanger. All these years and I never really noticed that aspect.
Personally, it made me wonder about how we go about forgiveness and what knowing God is really like. Are we just repenting and asking for forgiveness because we realized that we've messed up on God and that we want to enjoy every aspect of Him or do we do it as a means of trying to save our skin, trying to ward off guilt about what we've done and because we'd do just fine unless otherwise?
This kind of reminds me of something I once heard about the difference between praise and worship -- how praise is just the surface. There's a difference between people that thank God for what He's done for them and those who thank Him for who He is. I know what I'm taking from all this. I wonder what others will take from it?
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