If you’re a person that pays attention to the stars and planets, you’ll know that when I say I’m a Libra (both sun and moon), it’s an indicator that fairness is a value to me. The sign of the libra is literally a scale.
I’m a 4 on the enneagram. And as we 4s tend to do, when I’m in a healthy place, I exhibit the best of the 1 in a search for justice and equality. When under stress and more reactive, I take on the worst of the 2: angry martyr.
As I move about in the world, this sense of what is right and just is like that classic angel/devil on my shoulder. I’m critical of when people don’t uphold their responsibility. I would say with disgust in my work life, How can that phone interviewer just dish their slots to their CRM? They were scheduled! Or, in public, How can that person just jump to the open cashier when clearly the next person in line should be the one to go first? Even though I teach my kids both verbally and with action that fair does not mean same I still tend to have a lot of sameness in my parenting approach.
Also, I’m an oldest child.
The parable of Luke 15 is a tough one for me. If you’re not fresh on your Biblical addresses, it’s the one where the younger son asks for an early inheritance and frolics about the cities until he runs out of money. He decides to come home and his dad celebrates his return.
The typical teaching on this story is about how much grace God will show us when we’re stupid. And it’s true. I’m down with this teaching, I find it compelling. Also, the idea of spending any money without conscious forethought and practical consideration puts me into a panic attack, let alone when it’s spent on things of only enjoyment rather than utility. So it’s not the “application point” I’m looking for.
So, no. I don’t identify with that part of the story. I like that part of God, but I’m not the classical screw-up who finds peace in such extreme forgiveness.
I’m much more the type who likes to earn her grace.
So when I read about the older son sulking in the barn while the party music is playing much too loud, thank you, I get it. He did the right thing. He took care of the family farm. He met and likely even exceeded expectations.
And he was brutally unhappy.
“…he answered his father, ‘Look, these many years I have served you, and I never disobeyed your command, yet you never gave me a young goat, that I might celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours came, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fattened calf for him!”
Luke 15:29-30
For a certain number of us people in the population, this attitude feels righteous. This story about doing the selfish thing and doing the right thing ends on its head. It makes you ask the question: why would I ever want to do the right thing?
And then I catch myself saying it out loud, and it reveals the problem. Why would I ever want to do the right thing? Gee, I don’t know Michele. Because it’s right? It’s good. It adds beauty and structure and it moves the world in the direction of wholeness.
Even when it’s hard. Even when others don’t. Even when it feels unfair, doing the right thing for the sake of goodness is still a good thing. Nearly all spiritual traditions agree that living a life focused on little efforts but big rewards is a shallow existence. I have a hunch that those of us with Effort and Reward ScorecardsTM are living the shallowest, even when we’re putting in more than “our share” of the efforts.
In the story, the father has a graceful response to the eldest, too.
“‘Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours.”
Luke 15:31
First: you are always with me.
The older son was so wrapped up in his sense of duty that he missed the delight of spending his life alongside his treasured father. He was caught up in the reward of doing good being more than the goodness itself.
Perhaps we miss joy because we’re bogged down by the duty and it suffocates the delight. We say that we “have to” and not that we “get to.” We begin to believe that other endeavors would be better because they seem easier, when really all endeavors require effort and energy and work. Wouldn’t it be best to put forth those efforts in the company of the ones you love most?
Then: all that is mine is yours.
Baked into this passage is a shift in perspective from scarcity to abundance. It begins with dividing an inheritance, but what it’s really about is favor and love. If you love him this much to forgive such ignorance, will there be enough for me? You already gave him his half, are you going to give him mine? How can we both fit into your heart?
As a mother of many, I know that your heart doesn’t divide with more children, it multiplies. Loving one child doesn’t decrease the love for another. Love isn’t a fresh peach pie which needs divided into slivers and doled out based upon who gets there first or who worked the hardest.
But in a world that asks you to produce, perform and perfect, hustling for worthiness, that simply doesn’t make sense. As an oldest child with a master’s in practicality, such an abundant existence isn’t my nature. It’s a perspective I have to stencil into my skin and recite every day.