Reflections Upon the Prodigal Son
It’s no
use to ask the Prodigal Son just how he ran away. He probably couldn’t tell you
how he ended up in the swine world, a sullen existence that stretched as far as
he could see.
Life was
tough now. He had left home to “find himself” -- a mentally ill message the
world has always fed its population. He had wandered into the place waving a
lot of cash around. Things were great. It was lollapalooza 24/7, rock around
the clock and party like 1999.
He took
lots of selfies with other prodigals.
He got
friended by thousands of people on fb. His instagram account blew off the
charts.
Then the
market crashed. His house was foreclosed on. The area suffered the worst
drought in history.
There was
no more cash to wave around. His fellow prodigals vanished.
His was
all by himself, no reason to take a selfie anymore.
In trying
to find himself, he lost himself, his heart broken into tiny eggshell pieces
like Humpty Dumpty, fallen once and for all.
How did
he run away? How did he get here?
It just
happened. He wasn’t “paying attention” to the real things, to nature, his own
human nature, the things of the spirit, and to the signs of beauty and truth.
The
Prodigal Son never “ran” away. He shuffled off, away from his Father’s House.
He was dazzled by the carnival of entertaining fantasies, the cardboard fronts
of exciting desires. The hall of mirrors and pretty lights that covered up the
reality of the place where he had drifted off to.
Which was
here, the Swine World, so far away from his Father’s House.
So far
this is a sad script. Human beings have only one home, one space of the heart
that is real. That place is a spiritual place, the Father’s House where there
is more than enough bread and wine, more than enough shelter, and best of all,
more than enough feeling and knowing that one is home with the Father and given
rest.
But human
beings, to a man, let their minds wander off like a prodigal, and sooner or
later, their bodies also wander out of the House and into the world of crashing
markets, droughts and famines, disillusionment, disappointment, broken
friendships and despair.
There is
a cruel, cruel irony about passions. When any of the passions call — whether
greed or gluttony, pride or despair, anger or lust or despair — they advertise
with promised comforts. Anger promises revenge. Despair promises a protective
shell. Lust promises an easier husk of love. Pride promises self-godhood.
Gluttony and greed promise satisfaction and fulfillment.
And the
moment a prodigal falls for the advertisement of a passion, an amnesia sets in.
The prodigal forgets the way to his Father’s House, which is the way of the
heart. He forgets that he belongs to the caring God Whose Name is love.
He
forgets that he is human.
He
forgets that other people are human, images of the Trinity, and instead calls
them blasphemous names, merely functional objects of his own passions. If the
passion is anger, then another person is called an enemy. If lust, then just
sexual object. If despair, then merely a source of impossible expectations. If
pride, then only a convenient underling, an extension of one’s own ego -- which
has become an entire world that is very sick..
He
forgets that his Father cares for him, and God is then seen only as angry and
condemning.
He
forgets about beauty, truth, goodness and love and the day turns to gray,
sunsets become foreboding and night belongs to terror.
He
forgets what is real because he is blind to Christ, and instead he willingly
believes in the false darkness that rejects the light.
And that
is why every prodigal — son or daughter — ends up exchanging their Father’s
House and their own noble human nature for the Pig Pen of Life, and a life of
falsehood — where the famine-lands call you, instead of the noble name of
“human,” merely just an “individual,” or a “consumer,” or a “number,” or a
“likely voter,” or a “marketing segment,” or a point in the 68% area in a
normal distribution, or a diagnosis, or a predictable opinion-holder in an
election survey. Or just a packet of desires that can be manipulated to try
anything more transgressive, anything more thrilling, anything more
individualistic, just to avoid the knowledge that the Swine World is just that,
a cage with a feeding trough, filled with cheap trick grime and the modern mud
of despair.
Don’t ask
how the Prodigal Son ended up running away and slopping around in the domain of
pigs. A sinner falls into sin in a fog of forgetfulness and amnesia. Human
beings cannot rationally apostasize from their human nature -- the inheritance
of the Father. They must become irrational and stultified first. They must
forget their Father's House in order to shuffle off to the Swine World.
Always.
So there
is no way for him to remember just how he got here.
But he
doesn’t need to.
All he
has to do is open his eyes, look around at the reality of the Pig Pen of Life,
and remember how things were in his Father’s House … how the Bread tasted and
how the Wine glowed with sweet light … how the arching roof of the Father’s
love gave shelter from the storm of existence … how the pure white robe felt
clean and pure, for once, on the heart that had tired so much of the dirty,
leaden burden of the passionate world … and how the ring gave shining warmth --
of kindred-spirit to a cosmic family -- to his right hand.
Remember
your true human nature, and Whose you are, and Whose you should be.
No one
remembers how they became a prodigal.
But
everyone remembers how they came to their senses, dusted themselves off from
the grime of the Swine World, and decided to walk in beautiful repentance back
to the House of the Father, and go in peace on the journey home, in the way of
the heart, fasting, praying, giving alms, reading and thinking about the Word.
Ask any
Prodigal about that, and he or she will be glad to tell you, for the memory is
clear and bright.
For once,
he is dressed and in his right mind, because he’s walking back home.
Source: http://janotec.typepad.com/terrace/2016/02/walk-away-from-the-swine-world.html
