Redemption

I really get into books, and sometimes I find myself connecting to characters and finding a bit of myself in them. Like, the first time I read The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, all I could think was, "Man, that Esther Greenwood is just like me. Except I'm not in a mental institution."

Another character I really relate to is the Prodigal Son. He has to be my favorite character from Jesus' parables. I guess I like him because I so often feel like him. He was so incredibly full of himself, cared nothing for anyone else, and ended up going in completely the wrong direction until he finally got over his foolish pride, humbled himself, and went home to ask forgiveness from his father. I suppose I'm not the only one who relates to the Prodigal Son. Really, aren't we all a bit like him?

The other day I was reading something, and the author was talking about how odd it is that Jesus chose to use parables to teach. Really, when you think about it, it is a little odd. As the author was pointing out, if you wanted to tell someone something very important, you would probably give it to them in a very plain form. That way, the listener would undertand you clearly.

That's a pretty simple trick from technical communication, like if you're writing a how-to manual. Consider the audience and their needs. What do they need to know to accomplish the task you're asking them to do? In what format will your directions make the most sense so that the audience can actually accomplish this task?

But, when you look at the parables, they're not clear cut. They don't give clear instructions so that an audience can clearly follow the rules and accomplish the task. In other words, if Jesus really wanted to give us a moral code that would take us even further beyond the previous law--a new law that would consider the state of our hearts, not just the ability of our bodies to perform certain tasks--certainly He would have just given us the rules straight up and plain. No messing around, no room to wonder what exactly Jesus might have meant.

But, that's not what He did. And, I have to think that He didn't do that precisely because this new law looked to the intent of the heart, precisely because Jesus wanted us to understand that sin is not just outwardly visible in the actions that we take, but that those actions we take speak to an inner state of the heart. He wanted us to see that sin affects not just our bodies but is far more pervasive, affecting our bodies, our hearts, and our souls. Because of the pervasiveness of sin, the way it works its way into all the spaces of our being, it seems the only way to truly convey that would be through stories.

Like in the parable of the Prodigal Son, the obvious story is of a young man who wants his inheritance early, asks for it, gets it, squanders it in riotous living, finds himself destitute and surviving on pig slop, wises up, heads home, and is greeted by a loving father who sticks a ring on the Prodigal Son's finger and has the fatted calf killed for a celebratory dinner. But, there's a lot more going on there. It's a story about repentance, forgiveness, redemption. It really is the story of a loving God forgiving the sins of a wandering child who finally woke up to the depths of his sins and decided to turn from them and go back to God.

But, I really have to wonder at how skilled a storyteller Jesus was when I think about this parable, because it's that image of the Prodigal Son--completely destitute, far from home, standing in this pig pen, eating pig slop--that keeps coming back to me. Really, it's the most powerful image I can think of to show what sin is really like and to tell us why we should never want to return to it, why we should distance ourselves from it and turn from it forever.

Seriously, I get this image in my head when I think about sin. This image of pig slop. You see, it's pretty tempting to return to our sins sometimes. If we're honest, we have to admit that they're sometimes fun and that they don't seem to pose much of a threat to our lives. But, if we think about sin in the way that Jesus talked about sin, we see that it's not just something that is visible in what we do; sin is an indication of the state of our heart and minds, an indication of our separation from God and our inner disregard for His commands. In this way, our sin speaks to what we are. And, what Jesus is telling us in this parable is that we have to see sin for what it is, to see that it is nothing more than a pig pen, and that, when we are in a state of sin, we are so far from all that is available to us at our Father's house, all of the wonderful foods, that all we can eat is pig slop.

That's right. Pig slop. Because there was nothing else to eat, the Prodigal Son ate pig slop. That is, he ate pig slop until he came to his senses and realized that not even the servants in his father's house ate pig slop. In fact, the servants ate very well. So, the Prodigal Son headed back to where the food was good.

So, in thinking about the lure of returning to sin, I have to think about the Prodigal Son setting down his dinner of pig slop and deciding to humble himself, admit the wrongness of his choices, and head home to beg his father's forgiveness. And, the thing I wonder is, did he decided to pack up some pig slop to take with him? Did he perhaps fill up a bucket with pig slop and take it along on his trip back home? You know, he obviosuly knew that eating pig slop was far beneath him, but what if he missed it someday? Would it be so wrong to take some for the road?

Of course he wouldn't take it with him. Why would he go on carrying a bucket of pig slop when he knew there was better food waiting if he just asked forgiveness from his father? He wouldn't.

But, isn't that just what we so often do? We may realize a greater need for God in our lives, but we still cling sins that keep us far from God. We rationalize our actions on our own terms, try to find loopholes, look for reasons the Bible is wrong. We refuse to admit the wrongness of our sins, to see how they have adversely affected our lives and the lives of those around us, how we are not greater than God and, therefore, incapable of knowing just how far-reaching and destructive the effects of our sins will be. We do all of these things, and, in so doing, we hold on as tightly as we can to a big bucket of pig slop.

Really, I know it sounds silly, but that's just what it is. We take it with us wherever we go--moving it from city to city, job to job, friendship to friendship. And, though we might be able to ignore it for a while, sooner or later we will catch a whiff of the bucket of pig slop because that pig slop has become a part of who we are. We can do plenty of things that make it seem like the pig slop isn't there--buy a nice car, move into a big house, drink a lot, dress well.

But, the thing is, the bucket of pig slop will always be there, until we finally let go. We really must set it down, turn away from it and toward God. We have to ask for forgiveness and for redemption. Without this admission and belief in our guilt, there is no real chance of turning from sin. And turning from sin is our only way to work toward a life in which we've surrendered all to God, a life in which we feel near to God. A life in which we return to our Father, after admitting all the wrongs we've committed, only to be met with love and true forgiveness. It seems well worth surrendering the bucket of pig slop to receive all of those blessings.