“Meanwhile, the older son was in the field. When he came near the house, he heard music
and dancing. So he called one of the
servants and asked him what was going on.
‘Your brother has come,’ he replied, ‘and your father has killed the
fattened calf because he has him back safe and sound.’ The older brother became
angry and refused to go in…” – Luke 15.25-28a
We hear a lot about the prodigal son growing up in
churches. We even hear a lot about the
brother, maybe about how big of a prick he was. And we’re often told that the older brother often times gets
ignored because, well, he had it all together and stuff. In a lot of ways, I think most people relate
more to the prodigal son than the brother, but I think I share more
similarities with the brother than the guy who ran away…maybe.
I get jealous pretty easily. It’s something that I’ve always struggled with when it comes to
most of everything. If you’re more
athletic than I am, I probably envy your abilities. If you sound smarter than me, I hate you. And if you get more attention from the girl
that I like than me, the passion in me grows beyond my control. I get bitter. Sometimes I secretly hate you.
Sometimes it’s bad. It doesn’t
usually happen that often but… okay, it may not be passion… passionate
jealousy.
And I grew up in the church. I grew up in a Christian home – as Christian as it was able to
get. I wore the t-shirts. I toted around my Bible in high school
though I didn’t have a hard enough heart to actually beat people with it. I went to youth ‘group’. I even spoke Christianese, throwing around
words like: Jesus, salvation, Easter, and eternal torment. When I got to college I was able to draw out
the Trinitarian-Incarnational paradigm.
It was sweet. So you can only
imagine that my testimony is, well, not that powerful…
That’s right – I didn’t come off of any incredible sexual
addictions, seven years of life embedded in detestable sin, drug dealing,
etc. I wasn’t a runaway although there
were times I probably would have wanted to.
I didn’t struggle with depression.
I’m not an orphan. I didn’t even
run from God. So I used to get really
jealous of all these people that went through crap like this. They had amazing stories to tell about how
they came to Christ, about how God called them out of all their mess.
I grew up with God, at least thinking I knew Him. How boring, right?
As the older brother you find yourself pleading with your
father, “All these years I’ve been slaving for you and never disobeyed your
orders. Yet you never gave me even a
young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours who has squandered your property with
prostitutes comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him!”
It’s situations like these that, as the older brother, you
want to intentionally create problems for yourself. You want to put yourself in a situation where you leave God with
no other choice than to pull you out.
Why? Because you want the
attention… you want people to see how ‘changed’ you really are… you want your
Father to notice you. The only thing
is…
It doesn’t work.
Instead of turning yourself into a prodigal, you turn
yourself into a fool. You look like an
idiot. At least that’s what I do. You realize that the people you never knew
looked up to you actually look up to you and so you fall and as a result become
a stumbling block to them. It’s not
humbling… it’s humiliating.
Maybe we’re all prodigals in one way or another. We all run from what the Father has given
us, is offering us, because even though we’re like the brother – we still get
jealous and want what the younger son now has… and then we fall into sin. The father says to us, “you are always
with me, and everything I have is yours.
But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was
dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.”
And so grace continues to astound us… or me at least. I can only sit and marvel. There’s so many times in my life, even
though I was a goody-goody, that I intentionally tried to create problems for
myself because, well, I wanted a ‘powerful’ testimony. I just succeeded in making myself look
stupid and like every other sinner, which is probably a good thing. I think the point is that we’re all lost
whether we want to admit it or not and our Father is desiring for our hearts to
be ‘found’. Even though the brother was
always with the Father, maybe he just didn’t realize it until his brother came
home. Seems to me he took advantage of
it, much like myself.
Maybe I really don’t know what I’m talking about. I’m still a prodigal. I’m still the prodigal brother I was seven
years ago. And I’m still searching
desperately to find myself.
Edit: I might
clear things up a little bit. I’m very thankful for the upbringing
that I had. I couldn’t thank God enough for it. I’m rather glad that
I wasn’t a ‘bad’ kid or anything like that. I know a lot of the ‘bad’
people regret being bad… or wished they had had someone like I did to
show them the right way. And, for my sister, I know that my testimony
is powerful. It really is. In fact… my sister’s a big part of it
whether she realizes it or not. I’ll probably follow up with a post of
my actual ‘coming to Jesus’.
When I say that my testimony isn’t powerful, I realize I’m limiting God in a lot of ways. I’m limiting myself as well…
And
I guess I do sort of want a “cool” testimony to glorify myself in a lot
of ways. I really wrestle with that. The change in the ‘bad to good’
people is so night and day. I often forget how many people aren’t like
that – including myself. My testimony often speaks to a different
crowd. It doesn’t ring volumes with the guys on the street. It
doesn’t make kids in the skate park jump up and down. It doesn’t even
cause old people to flinch in their pews. But it does speak directly
to those who grew up like we did. They often wrestle with the same
things, or so I’ve come to find. A lot of kids that grow up in the
church I’ve noticed struggle with the same feeling: they don’t have a
CRAZY testimony. God didn’t necessarily ‘clean them up’. They’ve
always been like the older brother. Always there. Always taking it
all in without even realizing what they have.
So
yeah, I do get jealous when people pat others on the back and say,
“good job! Welcome to the fam.” I struggle with inviting them in
because, well, how come I never had that attention? I frequently
forget the role that I have in the kingdom. I’m not as hospitable as I
would like to be, you know? It’s something I’m trying to change, but
it’s often times hard to fight. I’m still so into myself and I’m
trying to find my way out of it. I want to challenge people to live
outside themselves and I can’t even do it myself. I don’t understand
why it’s a battle I’m always in.
