Most readers of the Journal are familiar with Jesus’ parable about the prodigal son (see Luke 15:11–32), who, after squandering his inheritance on “riotous living,” realizes the folly of his ways and returns to his father’s house, willing to become one of his hired servants. His father sees him from a long way off, comes out to embrace him, and rejoices that his son has returned.
However, the older son and the latter part of the parable are perhaps not so well known. He’s upset when he hears the rejoicing and festivities while he’s busy working in the fields. After all, he’s the one who stayed home, a dutiful, responsible, loyal son—while his younger brother was out wasting his inheritance. Yet this older sibling never received such a feast for his labors. He’s clearly jealous at what he perceives to be the injustice of the situation.
It’s so easy for us to recognize the younger son’s experience: his youthful foolishness in succumbing to the allures of the world, and the penalties such activities inevitably bring. And there’s his subsequent change of thought—a change that brought about repentance, humility, regeneration, and a true reward in his father’s household. It’s something that maybe we’ve all experienced to some degree in our lives. I know I have.
But the lesson to be learned from the older brother’s response may not be so obvious. He exhibited arrogance instead of humility, a sense of entitlement instead of gratitude, and an unwillingness to embrace reformation and growth. It’s as if he’s raising his fist at God and saying, “I stayed home and did everything I’m supposed to do. You owe me!” And, maybe—just maybe—we’ve all been there, too.
Yet isn’t this kind of self-justifying mentality a form of victimization? He blames his father and his younger brother—or perhaps some other outside force—for not recognizing that he deserves his reward. In his own eyes he’s done everything required of him. But where in all of this is there any sort of self-examination? Any willingness to go beyond the dutiful—to reach for the heights and plumb the depths that all true spiritual growth requires of us? Being just a “good person” simply isn’t enough.
And this leads to a sobering question: Do we sometimes find ourselves inadvertently identifying with the older brother’s sense of victimization? Do we sometimes feel unappreciated, misunderstood, mistreated, or unhealed? This often comes with a sense of bewilderment—that we’ve done everything we can possibly do, followed all the “rules” as we apprehended them. But, if we’re honest, we’d have to admit this mental attitude includes a big helping of unwillingness to wake up—to turn fully and unreservedly to God to awaken us from this mesmeric state.
The leap from the darkness of the elder son’s selfishness into the light of discipleship is essential if we are to witness and participate joyfully in our brother’s salvation.
A sense of victimization can even follow us where we least expect it—into our churches. Maybe we’re involved in church activities, doing everything that needs doing. And yet there’s a feeling of being dissatisfied—not getting one’s reward, not seeing progress and healing the way it should be happening. This is the perfect opportunity to ask ourselves—as the prodigal’s older brother could have done—have I been thinking more about what I’m entitled to, rather than seeing the “me” nature of the complaint?
The criteria for progress and healing aren’t about how many years we’ve been going to church, the positions we’ve held, or how many citations we’ve cumulatively read in the weekly Christian Science Bible Lesson. It’s far more about how close we are coming to the devotion and understanding that Christ Jesus, the disciples, Mary Baker Eddy, and other pioneers of Christian Science have shown us—purely and simply—in their love for God and humanity.
It’s the difference between Christian discipleship and human victimization, which are two entirely different paths—one leading to healing and the other away from it.
Nowhere does Mary Baker Eddy make this distinction clearer than in this passage: “One kind of faith trusts one’s welfare to others. Another kind of faith understands divine Love and how to work out one’s ‘own salvation, with fear and trembling.’ ‘Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief!’ expresses the helplessness of a blind faith; whereas the injunction, ‘Believe … and thou shalt be saved!’ demands self-reliant trustworthiness, which includes spiritual understanding and confides all to God” (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 23).
Blind faith encourages a sense of victimization because it relies on the behavior of others instead of God. In stark contrast, “trustworthiness” is working out our own salvation, and by its very nature includes one other fundamental component that goes far beyond just our own apparent benefit. And that is to learn to express the Father’s love through healing our fellow man—to love our neighbor as Jesus did, and as he required all of his followers to do.
Working out our salvation and healing others go hand in hand. Otherwise, they become a form of selfishness in which we unwittingly take on the older brother’s thought.
The leap from the darkness of the elder son’s selfishness into the light of discipleship is essential if we are to witness and participate joyfully in our brother’s salvation. Eddy summed it up in just a few words: “We crave the privilege of saying to the sick, when their feebleness calls for help, ‘Rise and walk.’ We rejoice to say, in the spirit of our Master, ‘Stretch forth thy hand, and be whole!’ ” (Miscellaneous Writings 1883–1896, pp. 369–370).
And therein lies our only true and indestructible inheritance. It can never be taken away. It’s an inheritance which blesses us—and all of humanity.
