I loved telling this story every year in my class of a hundred university students. I loved the way it blew their minds. I loved the way it stirred their thinking. It was the story of the Loving Father.
We’d been invited to launch an English and international business program at one of China’s leading universities. The cohort, made up of the best and brightest of the school’s engineering students, met for several hours each weekend. School officials wanted their students to understand principles that would help them navigate international opportunities.
Others on our team were trained to teach international business principles and business English. Once a year I taught the section on business ethics.
If I were in the US and said I was an ethics professor, I’d get blank looks – or someone thinking I taught etiquette. “You have a degree in table manners?” they’d ask. But when I went to Asia, I discovered that the local term for ethics was much more readily understood even by less educated people as the field of Confucius. If I ever needed validation for my degree in ethics, I found it there.
I knew these students understood at least the basics of traditional Confucian and contemporary Marxist ethics better than I did. These principles were in the cultural atmosphere the local people breathed even if they’d never formally studied Confucianism or Marxism, which these particular students had done to a certain level, by the way.
My assignment was to bridge the gap between those schools of thought and ideologies more akin to the democratic-capitalist West. My purpose was to help the students see how foreigners, especially from Europe and North America, thought and acted. As our hosts wisely told their students, if you want to network with people, it helps to understand how they think.
But my personal goal wasn’t to indoctrinate them in Western ways. I wanted to point them to a higher way of thinking, just as I would do if I was teaching students in the US. While I was not allowed to teach religion or the Bible, I was encouraged to teach the students foundational ethical principles that could be applied in international settings.
I certainly didn’t want to alienate my students by criticizing weaknesses in their own culture – they hadn’t called me to be a prophet. And yet I knew that biblical principles have a way of confronting the weaknesses in any culture, including my own. Just as I just wrote in “3 things the Church is called to do – and one it is definitely not,” prophetic truths are omnidirectional.
I discovered how stories resonated with my students. Just as Jesus’ stories had done with the people of his time. Parables they were called, simple stories used to illustrate a moral lesson. While I packed my lectures with themes and concepts related to international business ethics and illuminated the headier stuff with real-life, modern-day examples, what really got my students’ attention was the ancient stories I had to share.
Even young Marxists in that culture had an appreciation for ancient things. This was a city after all with thousands of years of history. You could see it everywhere – the 800-year-old city wall, pagodas dating back 1,300 years, world-renowned archeological sites from before the time of Christ. 2,000-year-old coins found in the streetside dust were not uncommon and thus of little value. Ancient history was what made this city famous and ultimately prosperous.
The local culture did have much that was commendable, not the least of which was everyone’s respect for the elderly. As I’ve often said, if you want to be respected when you are young, live in the West; if you want to be respected when you are old, live in the East.
These students knew little of Western culture, and thought it much less rooted in antiquity than Chinese culture. So they were intrigued when I told stories well known and foundational to the culture in the West that were as ancient as their own. Like the story of the Good Samaritan or the even older story of David and Goliath.
Such was the case with the story of the Loving Father, told by Jesus two thousand years ago. It is well-known in the West even by non-religious people, though not by that name. We all know it as the story of the Prodigal Son. But the focus of the story really is not on that son – or even his self-righteous older brother. The central character in the story is the father.
And so I titled the story, “The Parable of the Loving Father.”
You know the story, don’t you? How a young man got restless waiting for his father to die? (Cue students gasping.) Well, what he really wanted was his father’s inheritance. (More gasping.) His older brother was going to receive a much larger inheritance, but this kid knew he’d get something. And he wanted it now, while he was young and could enjoy it.
So he went to his father and asked for his inheritance right then and there. The son’s demand broke the father’s heart, but the father, for some crazy reason, decided to oblige his son. And so he did what his son demanded – he divided his land and gave this younger son his “rightful” share.
The son then left and took all his new-found wealth with him in portable coinage. Taking your entire wealth in a money bag made sense in a society like China’s that still kept its assets in ready cash. So this part of the story was culturally relevant to my students.
The son went far away to foreign lands and spent lavishly on parties and friends, squandering every last penny until he was destitute. When he had nothing left, these “friends” left him. He got so hungry he found work feeding pigs so he could eat their scraps.
Finally, one day he came to his senses. When he realized his father’s servants were far better off than he, he mustered the courage to return home and throw himself on the mercy of his father. His prepared speech, memorized over agonizing miles of return: “I know I don’t deserve it, but can I at least be your lowliest servant?”
Meanwhile the father, who had never stopped waiting for his son to return, saw the son coming from a long way off. And so, he, the father, ran – another gasp from the students – to meet his son, embrace him, and welcome him home. Not as a servant, but as a son. (Cue a look of shock on students’ faces.)
Now when the older brother heard all this, he was incensed. (Murmurs of agreement among my listeners.) “What are you doing, Dad?” the older brother cried. My former brother doesn’t deserve this.
But the father replied, “This brother of yours who was dead is alive again. He was lost but now is found.”
My students had heard of sons abandoning their fathers, treating them as if they were dead. Which is what you do when you ask for your inheritance in advance. Every student in the room understood that, just as they thought the son’s actions disgusting.
The students also got the anger of the older brother. It made perfect sense. His wayward brother deserved nothing.
But what was beyond belief was the attitude and behavior of the father. It was unheard of. It made no sense. It didn’t fit with the filial piety of the ancient Confucian ways. It didn’t even compute in the standard Marxist ethic as these students understood it. Come to think of it, what the father did boggles the minds of most Westerners as well, especially those who live by a Western utilitarian or transactional ethic so common in our time.
I told that same story to 10 cohorts of students over as many years and never tired of seeing their reactions. Lots of conversations would follow. Most importantly, it got the students thinking. What would motivate a father to act this way? It wasn’t practical. It wasn’t right. Why did he do it?
I’d casually tell the students this was a story a man named Jesus told 2,000 years ago, a story commonly known, if not always understood, in the West. Jesus, an ancient teacher and Asian like them, had had much influence on Western thought, even if Westerners didn’t always follow his teachings. You can find his influence interspersed throughout international business practices, along with much that contradicts it.
My students got that. They didn’t always follow Confucian teaching either. But whether or not they lived accordingly, they still had respect for the ancient ways.
Even so, the story was blowing minds.
As it had done back in the first century. As it still does today. Even if we’ve grown up with the story floating around in our cultural atmosphere, it still amazes us. So many modern followers of Jesus have a hard time grasping it. We may know the story, but do we really embrace it?
It’s a fitting question for this Father’s Day. What does the Parable of the Loving Father have to say to us right here and now?
You can read the story for yourself in Luke 15:11-32. Biblical scholars say the father in the story refers to God, but I’ll let you sort that out for yourself. Lots of people have a hard time relating to the idea of a loving earthly parent – father or mother – let alone a heavenly one. But maybe that was Jesus’ point in telling the story. To show us what God is like, even if our earthly parents are not.
And yet, the parable ends with a cliffhanger. We’re left wondering how the elder son responds to his father’s statement. “This brother of yours…” the father says, pointing directly at the elder son, as if to say, “What are you going to do about it?”
This story, as it turns out, is actually an open invitation. How are you going to respond to those who have messed up, he’s asking his listeners. Maybe he’s also asking those who have, like the younger son, been the ones who have done the messing up. How are you going to respond to God’s love?
And so, I guess, I am asking you. How are you going to respond?
I’d love to hear your thoughts. Whether you’ve heard this story a thousand times or this is your first, how does the action of the Loving Father affect you? You can write me at Contact Us!
Oh, and by the way, I won’t be posting for a couple of weeks, but if you’d like to track with me on a special project I’ll be engaged in, subscribe by June 14. For subscribers only, I’ll be sending out a series of email posts updating them on my doings. You can sign up at the same link – Contact Us!
Public domain photo: Rembrandt’s The Return of the Prodigal Son.
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