personal. That, of course, is why personal relationships are so important to us. The experience of human love points to an ultimate relationship. It reflects a greater destiny for which we were made, which is to be in fellowship with God. But no human relationship, no matter how deep, real and long-lasting, can ever really satisfy the hunger of our soul. We delude ourselves if we think it otherwise. It's simply one more route to disillusionment if we invest that kind of ultimate importance in a boyfriend, girlfriend or spouse. Such an expectation is bound to let us down, no matter how wonderful that other person is. No-one can sustain that weight of significance in our lives, for it's a weight only God can carry.
Jean-Paul Sartre, the French philosopher, was an atheist. How perfectly he spoke for modern men and women when he wrote, 'That God does not exist I cannot doubt, but that my whole being cries out for God I cannot deny.'
Sitting in his pigsty, the boy in the story appreciates his true identity as the son of his father. That's where he had gone wrong. He had tried to run away from that identity; he had sought an impossible freedom, failing to realize there are some freedoms that are simply not accessible to us because they contradict who we are. Jesus would have us reach the same conclusion. Our bid for moral autonomy is doomed to failure. We can't run away from God; the hole inside us will still be there—aching with a spiritual hunger only he can meet.
The first thing this boy has to face up to, then, is that he's lost. The second is that he is guilty. 'I will... go back... and say... : Father... I am no longer worthy to be called your son,' he says to himself. At this key point in the story Jesus is reminding us that the root of our folly is our moral decision to try to be independent of God. This is how we have got ourselves into our confused mess. We've flouted God's rules, and as a result we have
