The Quietness of the Abandoned Parent
The Gospel of Luke (15:11–32) recounts Jesus' parable about a father with two children. The younger asks for his inheritance and leaves the country to squander it. When he unexpectedly returns, his father welcomes him. The older child is angry, but the father reassures him of his love and that they should welcome his brother's repentance and restoration.
Most people think the parable is an allegory for the reconciliation of someone estranged from a loving and forgiving God. The prodigal son is remorseful for his mistakes. Most recognise the clear themes of moral disobedience, selfishness, jealousy and injustice. The parable is indeed all these things and more besides. Who can fail to have some sympathy for the older child, who is angry that his father's money has been squandered and his good nature taken advantage of?
The story concerns repentance and a parent's refusal to let anger, bitterness, and fear contaminate his life. While the transformative emotion of remorse is vital, a core underlying message concerns one man's ability to overcome anxiety induced by traumatic absence.
In September 2022, Newsweek covered the rise in family rifts. It was reported that 7% had cut ties with their mother and 27% with their father. Research indicates that one in four adults are estranged from either or both parents. There can be little doubt that in most Western societies, parents rejected by children attract precious little sympathy. Yet adult children are free agents and must take full responsibility for their actions. This is precisely what the prodigal son does. Such self-awareness is, after all, essential to mental well-being. In the Gospel, the father tells his hurt older child to say, ‘Take responsibility for your feelings towards your younger brother as I have done.' The father leads by example, but the prodigal son demonstrates courage in returning home and overcoming his pride too.
It does not matter in this context if an adult child feels they have good reason to break ties with parents. Even if there is a good reason, it is not entirely true that the parent is solely responsible and should engage in repentance. This is because adults are always responsible for their feelings. There are, in truth, only two core emotions: fear and love. Where love fails to master fear, then anxiety and depression take root. As likely as not, there will be negative dynamics in the parent-child relationship, but an adult child's desire to cut ties with a parent indicates the conquest of love by fear. In the parlance of today's younger generation, the estrangement may have been to escape “toxicity" and "conditional love". For all we know, the prodigal son may have been angry at his father and not solely motivated by the desire to enjoy life independently of him. At least the prodigal son did not have his head filled with the warped reasoning of victimhood found on social media, an issue of growing concern in our day and age of high technology, and why so many parents of estranged adult children today feel more isolated than ever.
The father in the parable would have been embarrassed and felt ashamed about the situation. A family rift is an open sore for everyone to see and is rarely hidden from prying eyes and gossipers. Indeed, he could not change his child's plans, nor did he desire to. This is not because of the absence of love but because of its ascendancy over his fear. The father's love was demonstrably not conditional, as his child mistakenly thought. With his inheritance, the estranged son at least stood a chance of survival.
Tellingly, it is implied that the advanced inheritance placed his father in financial distress since his "property was devoured" by what the prodigal son regarded as his birthright. When the younger son left him, to whom did his father turn? We do not know - and are not told - what emotional turmoil he endured or how this darkened his relationship with his older child (who probably carried the emotional load during that time). We know that the father almost certainly felt loss and grief, which are natural emotional responses.
We may notice something else concealed within the parable. This is the father's acceptance of the situation. He pays his son the money yet believes he may never see him again. Like all good and loving fathers, he wants his child to have a happy and fulfilled life, albeit it is not the future he wants. The father put his son's wishes before his own, recognising perhaps that he had no control over his decision to leave anyway. Nonetheless, this permitted the father to find acceptance and conquer his fear. The grief was dulled from that moment on., and he learned to live with it and let go of the vision he had for his child.
So it is with God, who accepts the decisions men make to turn away from him. Does the Maker of Worlds exist in bitterness and anger about this? No, he does not. But he certainly patiently awaits the return of all his estranged adult children. However horribly we may behave and deserve to suffer the consequences of our actions, the Creator never loses hope of our return and the fulfilment of his vision for us. This is only possible because God accepts our decisions and reconciles them.
This article is the copyright (c) of M.R. Osborne, 2022