Inside the Mind of a Younger Brother

Jesus tells a story (Luke 15:11-32) about a father who had two sons.  One requested his inheritance up front, long before his dad’s death.  No doubt, when people heard this opening portion of the story, they shook their heads.  Nobody makes such a request.  It can be interpreted as wishing your father dead.

What was the younger son thinking?  How could a person be so bold and rude?  Let’s see if we can get inside his head...

Maybe he wasn’t as malicious as it seems.  Sure, his request was awful and largely unheard of.  But what if he was simply entrepreneurial, and was looking for some venture capital from his dad?  Let’s go with that for a moment.  So, he heads out toward the big city with a massive wad of cash in his pocket.  His plans were to get his business going.  But along the way he gave into some compromises that took him in unexpected directions.  He started networking with his bankroll, attending the right social gatherings, picking up the tab of the right people.  Then he got sucked into a lifestyle he never imagined he would find himself in – eventually all-day drinking, prostitutes – simply out of control.  This seems more likely to me, and I think more common.

Instead of a villain, the young son becomes much more human, and more relatable to our experience.  How many people start out with good intentions, only to find themselves surprisingly off track down the pike?  How many of our country’s heavily-indebted credit abusers began with a plan to rack up enormous credit card bills?  How many people set New Year’s resolutions to get their health back under control by carefully monitoring what they eat and making sure they get their cardio in, find themselves in no better shape in February?  How many teenagers make a covenant to keep themselves pure until marriage, only to find their commitment fading under pressure?  How many struggling addicts start their sobriety afresh today, only to found out tomorrow they’ve succumbed to the power of their drug of choice?  Sometimes it’s the smaller, seemingly insignificant turns along our course of life that end up getting us most off track.  One degree of separation initially seems like nothing, but the chasm becomes massive the longer the journey goes uncorrected.

This makes more sense to me.  This scenario makes the father’s choice to cash in part of his estate more reasonable as well.

Of course, I am thinking about this from a Western, capitalism-driven mindset that did not exist 2,000 years ago…

Adding to the picture, Keller suggests that part of the reason the younger son was the way he was may be related to the older brother’s approach to life:

"When we see the attitude of the elder brother in the story we begin to realize one of the reasons the younger brother wanted to leave in the first place. There are many people today who have abandoned any kind of religious faith because they see clearly that the major religions are simply full of elder brothers. They have come to the conclusion that religion is one of the greatest sources of misery and strife in the world. And guess what? Jesus says through this parable - they are right. The anger and superiority of elder brothers, all growing out of insecurity, fear, and inner emptiness, can create a huge body of guilt-ridden, fear-ridden, spiritually blind people, which is one of the great sources of social injustice, war, and violence." Keller, The Prodigal God

Was the younger son an entrepreneur gone awry or a younger brother simply reacting in polar-opposite fashion to his older sibling?  The fact is that whatever he believed at his core motivated what he did, and that got him where he landed.  Seen in reverse, what he did shed light on some core issues at work in his life.  What we do is one indicator (among others) of our core beliefs.

Keller also notes in his book that the two sons represent two basic kinds of people.  One type – the younger son – is the sort of person that wants to call all of his or her own shots.  Ultimate freedom to chart one’s own destiny is the way of life all people should embrace.  No serious concern for what others – including God – think about it.  However good the plan sounded in the beginning, the core orientation toward life emerged for the younger son.  The result was not what he had hoped, and he discovered the hard way what mattered most – relationship with his father (and all it meant) – and it seemed out of reach because of the distance he created.

We all have younger brother blood running through our veins.  Especially in our Western world, where mobility is so prevalent, and “relationship” so undervalued.  Most folks don’t go out of their way to offend God, I don’t think.  But I do believe that many people – myself included at times – do a good job of neglecting their relationship with God so effectively that they don’t even wonder if their way resembles the Way spoken of and modeled by Jesus.  In this mode, we naturally lend ourselves to a view of God-made-in-our-image, and not the other way around, which allows us to interpret everything we do as probably okay with God, since God is just like us.

Keller gives an insight for identifying older-brotherliness tendencies that I think applies to the younger, too: if our prayer life is dry (or non-existent), we’re probably headed in a direction that will eventually lead to a veritable pigsty.  How is your prayer life?

Getting unstuck from younger brotherliness.  I wake up out of my younger son stupor when life catches up to me.  Like a 2X4 to the head, I can’t miss it when things fall apart and I’m left in whatever pigsty I’ve created.  Sometimes that’s the only way we pay attention to what matters.  Are you in a pigsty right now?  While it sure is fun to blame others for your painful circumstances, what is your share of the reason for your current location?

At other times, I cannot ignore the ugliness that looms around us, and it stirs me from my slumber.  Seeing what’s going on in Furaha (slums of Nairobi, Kenya), is like getting sprayed with ice cold water to me face.  I am moved to change when faced with such great need.  What has moved your heart recently?

Sometimes, I am moved by the good I see and it draws me in.  I became a sold out Jesus follower because I saw the beauty of the God-human relationship at work in a close friend’s life.  I saw “better” and wanted it.  Are there any witnesses to the better around you that are compelling you to seek out a stronger relationship with God?

Sometimes, when I am quiet enough to listen to God, I am shown potential growth areas in my life that I would otherwise avoid or deny.  Issues of ego and arrogance, insecurities and frailties.  The beauty of getting this kind of coaching from the Holy Spirit is that it is skinned-knee free.  If I get the heads up from God, and heed it, it means I avoid learning the same lesson the hard way.  How have you carved quiet moments into your life so that you have the opportunity to hear the Spirit speak into your life?  How has God been encouraging you to grow lately?

How are you like the younger son?  How do you know when you are operating in those tendencies?  What does it take for you to come to your senses and journey back toward your Father?  Have you experienced enough pain to stop?  Have you witnessed enough ugliness to be part of the solution?  Have you seen the “better” worth pursuing?  Are you quiet enough to hear the whisper of encouragement that helps shape you toward your best?

May you recognize your younger-brotherliness, and may you come home.

I pray that God, the source of hope, will fill you completely with joy and peace because you trust in him.  Then you will overflow with confident hope therough the power of the Holy Spirit.  Romans 15:13