tell. And for that reason, it's easy perhaps for the scandalous nature of what this boy is suggesting here to lose its impact on us. Even today in a middle-eastern context, what this boy was asking of his father was scandalous and preposterous. To demand his inheritance in advance amounted to saying that he wished his father were dead. Indeed, I suspect, for Jesus' audience the impertinence of this boy's request would have been exceeded only by their astonishment at the father's acquiescence. 'So he divided his property between them.' What sort of parent is this, who accedes to his children's reckless demands for truant independence?
The answer is, of course, a divine parent, for this is a parable. Jesus is drawing a picture for us here of how human beings, made in the image of God, find themselves alienated from him as a result of their moral rebellion. We say to God, 'I wish you were dead.' While we like the material things which he can give us, we don't like him. We want them, but we don't want him. We wish him to get out of our lives, to stop interfering with us.
Ironically, as the story goes on to point out, we are the ones who lose out every time we say that.
Not long after that, the younger son got together all he had, set off for a distant country and there squandered his wealth in wild living. After he had spent everything, there was a severe famine in that whole country, and he began to be in need. So he went and hired himself out to a citizen of that country, who sent him into his fields to feed pigs. He longed to fill his stomach with the pods that the pigs were eating, but no-one gave him anything (Luke 15:13–16).
What was this young fellow looking for? 'Freedom' is a word we often bandy around: freedom from moral inhibitions, freedom from the shackles of outmoded
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