The prodigal

“We call prodigal those who squander their money on self-indulgence (hence they are considered to be the worst of all characters, because they possess several vices at the same time). But they are not properly so described. ‘Prodigal’ means a person who has one definite vice, that of wasting his substance . . .” So Aristotle wrote to his son Nicomachus, to teach him the path of balanced Greek liberality.

It was not just the maddening Greek syntax that made me reread this passage. There was something startling about the insight, written nearly 400 years before Jesus told His story of the prodigal son.

I realized that if Aristotle was right, I had done exactly what he had warned about and therefore focused on the wrong part of the parable. And what was the error?

The prodigal son’s lifestyle, described as “wild” (NIV, asotos in the Greek and Aristotle’s “prodigious”), had become a narrative to me. The narrative is about parties, drunken friends, prostitutes, nightclubs and bars, leading to a downward spiral into poverty, depravity and disease. Here is the ultimate package of sins – drunkenness, laziness, sexual immorality, rebelliousness, and worst of all, at least for those who were telling me the story, the company of evil companions. This indeed is “the worst of all characters,” a kind of degenerate Everyman.

We have heard the story retold many times in the testimonies of those who have returned from forays into the world of “rebellion.” We know by osmosis, if not personal experience, that “wildness” takes one down the path to destruction. Once we are on that path, a dramatic repentance must take place to avert the inevitable calamity. The worse the tale of sin and degradation, the greater the narrative’s climax.

At one level, the narrative does fit the word “prodigal.” Jesus’ prodigal falls from high society to the companionship of pigs. Aristotle would have understood this. The prodigal is indeed the lowest form of humanity.

So what had I missed? By focusing on the imaginary narrative, I had missed the point that the prodigal son was “prodigal” for a single vice – contemptuous disregard for his father’s love. It was not the squandering of his wealth that most grieved the father, but rather that the wealth bequeathed to his children represented his love for them.

Aristotle’s indignation rises because prodigal behaviour was the ultimate affront to a philosopher’s life governed by the rule of reason. A life of irrational impulses, whether stinginess or prodigality, reduces a person to less than a beast.

But Jesus had a different lesson to teach.

Jesus used the story of the prodigal to demonstrate God’s love for humanity. In discourse after discourse, Jesus describes God’s unimaginable love. The lesson is the extension of the Law and the Prophets. God offers His love again and again, and each renewed expression of love is confronted with another prodigal story of contempt for the gift.

The benefits of God’s love are cashed in and then flung over the shoulders of innumerable sons and daughters as they turn their backs in a journey away from Him. Outside the household built for them, these treasures are squandered with impunity.

But there is another possible error if we miss Aristotle’s lesson. Not every prodigal ends up living among the pigs.

The ordinary prodigal, in fact, is a far more mundane creature, consumed with the affairs of daily life, now chasing this dream, then preoccupied with family affairs, later planning a peaceful retirement. These are not evil pursuits in themselves, but when, as they so often do, they consume our minds outside the context of the unimaginable love and inheritance our Father has meticulously set aside for us, we are profoundly prodigal. We are guilty of a solitary but ultimate vice.

The comfort we take in the fact that we have not followed the path of self-destruction only adds to our condemnation, as it did with the other son. We truly are “the worst of all characters.”

I don’t know if Jesus was familiar with Aristotle’s discourse on the prodigal but His parable fits it like a glove.

James Toews is pastor of Neighbourhood Church, Nanaimo, B.C.