In Reply to: Re: Reality Check? posted by Mr. Don on May 02, 2006 at 18:12:24:
I spent some time thinking about that possibility that I over-analyzed the updated parable after I posted. Or maybe I used the wrong analytic framework to talk about why the updated version of the parable of the prodigal bothered me.
On the simplest level, I think this is what bothered me about the particular version of the parable of the prodigal that you shared: It may hold true to the original in its teaching about God's love and forgiveness, but it isn't faithful to full teaching in the original parable.
In the original parable, the young man squanders his inheritance. I believe this contextual detail says something important about the meaning of the parable. Perhaps the young man in the parable isn't just anyone or any man, but a particular type of person in a specific kind of situation, and these conditions are what the joyous celebration of repentence applies to at the parable's conclusion. If that is the case, can we faithfully update the parable by making it apply to completely different type of person in a completely different type of situation?
If the only teaching of the parable is one of God's love and forgiveness, then perhaps we can say the updated parable "works." But what if the parable has another, equally important teaching, such as the nature of sin and repentence when a man fails to live up to the expectations of his birthright? What if the parable applies to someone who was raised to know right from wrong, given much and greatly blessed, yet he deliberately chooses the wrong path in defiance of the Father because he does not value his inheritance & kinship in the Kingdom of God?
Under those conditions, would repentence and the resulting forgiveness look different than under conditions where 1) the person did not truly know right from wrong, 2) the person did not deliberately choose anything, but made a bad decision under conditions of duress, and/or 3) the person never started out with an inheritance & kinship in the Kingdom to begin with?
OK, so maybe I've overanalyzed again. Bottom line is this: I'm not convinced that the updated parable you shared works successfully as an hermaneutic for the parable of the prodigal son.
But I'm still glad you shared it, because it made me meditate on something I might not have otherwise thought about. I went back and looked up the parable in its scriptural context, and noticed that it appears in a series with the story of the widow & the lost penny and the good shepherd & lost sheep. This tended to re-inforce my notion that the parable of the prodigal says something very specific about the nature of being lost as having wasted something of great value.