Am I really “The Prodigal?”

Barack Obama just secured the most delegates for the Democratic Nomination for President.  Hillary Clinton hasn’t thrown in the towel as of yet.  But, Barack, the media is saying, will be the nominee.  Either one winning would have been historical.

This got me reading tonight and thinking about Obama’s life.  This is an excerpt from an article tonight.  It’s from Michael Powell in the New York Times from tomorrow’s edition.  A link is here:

One of the curiosities about Mr. Obama is his professed lack of interest in the writers who pore over that life, trying to deconstruct his fractured family and geography. He claims not to read profiles that pile high in his plane.

“It just encourages the narcissism that is already a congenital defect for a politician,” he says. “I find these essays more revealing about the author than about me.”

The same might be said of Mr. Obama’s autobiography, which is less a straightforward chronicle than a carefully framed coming-of-age narrative. He describes himself as a young man adrift, although few friends recall thinking him so lost. And he just might have overstated his youthful experimentation with marijuana.

I had read about this before, after his last book came out, about how he pictures himself “adrift,” concerned that he was going to end up becoming a crack addict, or something like that.  Yet, those around him never really thought things were that bad for him.  I don’t think people believed he made it up to sell books, but it seemed like his self-perception was different than what those around him perceived.

When I read the story of the Prodigal Son, I immediately am drawn to the Elder Brother — the one that stayed by the Father, doing all the responsible things that were expected, and yet feeling bitter when generosity is shown to the “black sheep” of the family, the younger son.  I, more or less, have been like that…responsible, played by the rules, obedient.  I never had a profound period of theological wandering.  I was raised in the church and stayed in the church.  And, I think most people who know me best would say that’s me.

And yet, there is some insecurity, some needing to find a grace I can’t seem to find on my own, some real sense of lostness in my life, there is some sense of wandering away — maybe if I never left home.  I remember a counselor I worked with at a Summer Camp for a week or less.  He had been through a rough patch and had gotten addicted to drugs and once, when high, he chewed on broken glass or something horrible and needed a whole lot of stitches to fix his tongue.  He would show his now-healed tongue to the kids as some graphic warning to not fall as far away from God as he had…and that if they did our God would welcome them back.  My wandering, my distant country, is, perhaps, more subtle.  Just like the Elder Son’s.  And yet the elder son still stands in need of the prodigal grace of the Father.

So, even if (like Obama) I may be overstating far off country, I do have times that I become acutely aware of just how far I’ve moved away from God’s will for my life.  Perhaps, in fancying myself The Prodigal Son, I remind myself of the grace and mercy that God offers me and that he longs for me to return.  When it comes down to it, aren’t we all The Prodigal Son?