The Character of the Prodigal Son - Glenn Conjurske

The Character of the Prodigal Son

Introduction to the Doctrine of Discontent

Because I have so many books, some people like to accuse me of having learned my doctrines from books instead of from the Bible. No matter if that were the case. Truth is truth, whether we learn it from a book, a preacher, or directly from the Bible. If there is anything wrong with learning the truth from a book, then it must be equally wrong to learn it from a preacher, and I ought not to preach, nor anybody else to listen to me. Nor ought any man to write, nor anybody to read what they have written. But the fact is, the charge is false. I have learned very little of my doctrine from my books—almost nothing, really. I have often been delighted to find those doctrines, which I held from the Bible, to be taught in the books of the old men of God, but I learned them from the Bible, before I read the books. The case is different, however, with what I have to say here—at least with the kernel of it. This I learned from the old evangelist Bob Jones—not from a book, but from a recorded sermon. The parable of the prodigal son had been one of my favorite scriptures for years, but I had always begun with the prodigal in the far country, regarding the early part of the parable as only setting the stage. But Bob Jones gave me a nugget of truth which I had never seen, by pointing out that the prodigal was no good while he yet remained in his father’s house. He had no character, and the proof of it lay in the fact that he was discontented in a good place.

The Roots of Discontent: Lust, Pride, and Ingratitude
There are various reasons why a man will be discontented in a good place, and none of them good ones. Three things usually make men discontented in a good place. Those things are lust, pride, and ingratitude. The lust which hankers for something which the good place does not afford us, the pride which thinks this place does not give us our due, and the ingratitude which fails to appreciate the good which we have, or those who have provided it for us. All these we see in the prodigal son. These three things made him discontented in a good place, and these three moved him to leave it.

First, lust. There were no harlots in the father’s house. There were no rollicking, frolicking good times. There was no drinking to excess. There was no freedom from restraint. For such things he lusted, and after them, he must go. The lusts of others may seem more noble than those of the prodigal, but may be as base in fact. There is no opportunity for ministry here—that is, no place of distinction, no opportunity to shine in the eyes of men. Base lusts often parade under noble professions.

Next, pride. These discontented souls always feel horribly slighted. No one gives them their due. They are overlooked and passed by. Nobody makes anything of them. Nobody asks them to preach. Nobody puts them into office. I have known some who were discontented in a good church for no other reason than this.

Finally, ingratitude. The prodigal son is the prototype of an ungrateful soul. He owed all that he had to his father, yet he cared nothing for him. He cared for nothing but his own personal advantage, and in order to procure it, he would despise and forsake his father, and break his heart. His father was nothing to him but the means of his own advancement, and if his father failed to advance him as he thought he deserved, he would leave him in a moment.

Dealing with Discontented Souls
I intend to further develop the character of the prodigal a little further along, but first I must turn aside and speak a little of how we ought to deal with such souls, for it is certain we shall have plenty of them to deal with. Discontent runs rampant in modern society, and as much in the church as in the world. How ought we to deal with such souls? There are two courses open to us. We may either pamper and humor them, in order to keep them from flitting off to the far country, or we may deprive and deny and thwart them, and so precipitate their departure. The modern church seems largely given to the former of these ways. Give the discontented soul an office, and he will be happy. If you thwart and cross his pride, he will depart for other climes, but if you feed that pride, he will stay, and thus you may keep him on your membership roll, to swell your numbers, and avoid the reproach which is generally cast upon a church when people leave it. If you deny his lusts, he will depart for greener pastures, but if you feed those lusts, he will stay. Therefore the churches must bring in modern music, and games and recreations, and parties and movies and dancing, and who can tell what the end will be? And so by humoring these discontented folks, we destroy not only their own souls, but the work of God also.

The plain fact is, the father did nothing to keep the prodigal at home. He gave him, of course, all that was good, but he brought no harlots or gaming tables to the house.

The Prodigal’s Audacity and Presumption
But I return to the character of the prodigal. His pride and lust and ingratitude—indeed, his real moral worthlessness—are all manifest in the audacity of his request. “Give me the portion of goods that falleth to me”!! Was ever presumption greater than this? The plain fact is, “the portion of goods that falleth to me” was a pure fiction. No goods fell to him while his father lived. He had no right, no claim, no shadow of a title to anything his father possessed, until his father died. But pride is always presumptuous. It always supposes itself slighted. Give a proud man just exactly what he deserves, and he will be incensed at the indignity offered him. Neither does it ever enter his head to consider whether he is worth any more than he is given, but he will always blame and censure and resent those who fail to give him what he fancies his due.

Neither does it ever enter his head to wait upon God for his desires. Of patience he knows nothing. He must demand his due, and if that fails, he will compass sea and land in search of it, and treat every man with contempt who fails to minister to his purposes. He never stands on the ground of faith, any more than of patience, but must grasp what he desires now, and grasp it himself. And the blame for every failure to attain his ends will be laid on other shoulders than his own.

“Give me the portion of goods that falleth to me”! Such was the presumption and audacity of the demand, that this prodigal ought really to have been ashamed to look in the mirror. We dare say his betters were embarrassed to be associated with him, yet he felt no shame. He was only asking his due. Such is the pride, and such the audacity, of discontented souls.

The Father’s Response and God’s Generosity
The father’s response to this audacious request may seem strange. “And he divided unto them his living.” No earthly father with a grain of sense would do so, but the father in the parable represents God, not man, and his action represents the ordinary way of God, in giving abundance of good things to the worthy and the unworthy alike. “For he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.” This world is the scene of man’s trial and probation. God therefore gives them rope enough to hang themselves, and abundance enough to squander in riotous living.

The Prodigal’s Departure and Shamelessness
The shamelessness of this discontented soul next appears. “And not many days after the younger son gathered all together, and took his journey into a far country.” This was doubtless his intention from the beginning, but he must wait a few days after his audacious request, to give a little appearance of decency to his departure, like the man who procures the death of his wife, and waits two or three weeks before he marries his lover. All of this shamelessness and audacity is the natural fruit of the pride which lies at the bottom of his restless discontent.

His ingratitude appears at the same time. He was happy enough to receive his father’s goods, but he cared nothing for his father. He would spend his father’s goods in riotous living in the far country, and never waste a thought on the broken heart of his father back home. Pride and ingratitude are bosom companions, for the more a man values himself, the less he values others. I have studied discontented souls, and I have seen pride and ingratitude and unbelief and impatience growing rampant in their hearts, all aiding and abetting each other.

The Vision of the Far Country
And wherever these evil passions prevail, “The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence.” These passions warp the vision, and the man who is controlled by them sees only the evil in the good place in which he is, and only the good in the evil place to which he would go. This was obviously the viewpoint of the prodigal ere ever he left his father’s house, and it is the view of many another discontented soul in a good place.

But the case of such souls is actually worse than this. They not only see the evil where they are, and the good where they would go, but they always magnify them both. They magnify the bad where they are, and slight the good, while they slight the bad over there, and magnify the good. But even this is not all. It helps but little to magnify nothing, and they must therefore imagine evils in the good place, and imagine good in the other.

Justifying Their Departure
Nor does this process end when they take their departure. Having left a good place, for no better reasons than pride and lust and ingratitude and impatience, they must now justify their leaving. Their own conscience is doubtless uneasy with their place in the far country, and with the motives which brought them there. It must require something resembling a miracle for the prodigal to leave his father as he did, and dwell as he did in the far country, and yet have no qualms of conscience about it. To quiet the misgivings of his own mind, therefore, concerning his own position, it must become a passion with him to make the far country look as good as he can, and his father’s house as bad as he can. I have seen the same in discontented souls in the present day—so much so that I have learned to predict that this would be their course. They leave the good place praising it, acknowledging that all they have they owe to their father, affirming they would by all means stay if it were not for such and such little difficulties, but in a few months or a year their tune is changed, and the longer they remain away, the more evils they find to condemn in the place they have left. Strange that they never saw all those evils when they were under their noses, which they can now see so plainly from a distance, but then their mind was stifled by the evil influence of that place, and now it is enlightened. Yet the real fact is just this: having left a good place for a bad, they must justify their move by making the good place look bad, and the bad place look good, and so they are compelled to call good evil, and evil good. All this I have seen in these discontented souls, in some measure before they take their departure, but much more so afterward. The whole business is nothing but the most glaring hypocrisy, but dear self must be justified at all hazards.

The Fundamental Error of Discontented Souls
And this may bring us to the fundamental error of discontented souls. The evils with which they ought to deal lie within themselves, but they will never dream of dealing with those. Their pride moves them always to blame something outside themselves. The fact is, they are discontented entirely because of their own pride and lust and impatience and ingratitude, but they attribute all their discontent to the place they are in, and especially to the persons who are over them in that place, whose authority determines their lot. These must therefore become the objects of their continual censure, while their dear self is never censured at all. They are oppressed, denied, deprived of their due, slighted, undervalued, mistreated, and they must be off to better climes, where people know how to value them as they deserve.

The Best Course of Action for Discontented Souls
Now as a general rule, the best thing to do with such discontented souls is to let them go. We ought not to drive them away, but we may do well to hold the door open for them. The far country will cure them better than ever the father’s house can do. They may spend the days after their departure praising the far country and condemning the father’s house, but this is hypocrisy—much more on their tongues than in their hearts—and unless their pride knows no bounds, they can hardly help but feel the reverse of what they speak. There is at any rate a good hope that when they are perishing with hunger in the far country, they may come to themselves—come to reality, to see things as they are, and see themselves as they are. And then how changed! The boy who a while ago thought himself too good for the father’s house, who thought himself slighted and undervalued and oppressed, can now think of nothing but “I have sinned, and am no more worthy to be called thy son.” And with a right view of himself comes a right view of other things also. Now the far country and the father’s house are reversed. Now there is “bread enough and to spare,” even for the lowest servants, in that oppressive house, under the roof of which he could not bear to abide. Now that glorious far country is but “perishing with hunger.” Now it is “I will arise and go,” not from my father, but “to my father.”

The Change in the Prodigal and the Father’s Constant Love
And yet observe, there has not been one iota of change in the father, nor the father’s house, nor in the far country. They remain just what they were. All the change has taken place in the prodigal himself. His pride is turned to humility, and he who felt himself slighted and oppressed before is now willing to take the lowest place. His lusts and impatience and ingratitude are all banished. His audacity is all gone, and in place of his shameless presumption, in demanding the portion of goods which he fancied to belong to him, he is now a humble suppliant, begging for the privilege to earn a little of what he before expected as his right. “Make me as one of thy hired servants.” Now he thinks only, “I am no more worthy to be called thy son,” when in fact, for the first time in his life, he is worthy to be called a son.

The Incurable Discontented Soul
Would that all the proud and discontented souls would thus come to themselves. Alas, some of them seem utterly incurable. Though they perish with hunger for years, yet they never come to themselves. They learn no more lessons from their failures than from their disappointments. The blame always belongs to somebody else. They flit from place to place in the far country, ever full of hope for greener pastures in the next place, always condemning the place for which they lately expressed such hopes, as soon as they have tried it, and usually treating with contempt the persons who made that place what it was, but never dreaming of finding any fault with themselves, nor of returning to the place which they never should have left. They are just what the prodigal was ere he left the father’s house, and such they remain.

Glenn Conjurske