QA with Christian students 3 – Does the Prodigal Son parable correlate with the fall of the soul?

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Question. Does the prodigal son story correlate with the concept of the fall of the soul from the spiritual world? Answer.
Again, it’s a rough parallel. More importantly, even within the Christian theology, the prodigal son story’s emphasis is not so much on the fall as it is on God’s selfless love. So, when Jesus tells this story, this parable, the point is there are two sons and of a wealthy patriarch and the son, one son, the younger son, leaves, not only leaves but demands that what is to come to me by inheritance, give it to me and I want to be on my own and enjoy.
Now, it’s an extremely rude and insensitive thing. So, basically, normally one gets one’s inheritance after one’s parent dies. So, to demand the inheritance basically is to say that I wish you would die so that I could get what I want.
It’s extremely normal convention also to be considered very offensive to say such a thing. So, this is not really compared even in the Christian theology with say Adam and Eve’s taking the forbidden apple, although it can, it may be, but that’s not the stress. The stress is on how the person rejects, how a person does or fails to reciprocate with God’s love and still God keeps loving.
So, then the son squanders away all the wealth and then the prodigal son eventually comes back and father runs out to welcome the son. That is also extraordinary because normally in a patriarch, in a family, in a patriarchal family where the patriarch is there, patriarch is the male head of the family. So, everybody is expected to come and meet whoever wants to meet.
They are expected to come and meet the patriarch. It is not that he goes out to meet anyone. So, for the father to rush out to meet the son also is indicative of the love of the father for the son.
And then after there’s a joyful reunion between the two, then the father says, let there be a celebratory feast now that my son has come back. And at this point, his elder son who has been there with him all along, he becomes resentful and he says, I have carried out every one of your orders. I have never disobeyed you and yet you never had a celebratory feast for me.
And he respected you, he rejected you, he squandered his wealth and yet for him you are having a celebratory feast. Why is that? So, at that time the father replies that, oh, it is as if my son was dead and now he has come to life. Therefore, I’m having a celebratory feast for him and you, you were always with me and whatever is mine is yours.
So, the idea is that here it is not the good son and the bad son. If you look at the parable of the prodigal story fully, it is rejection of love and love because of obligation. Neither of them are commendable.
Of course, obeying simply out of obligation may in some ways be better than reject rebelling entirely. But the prodigal son story is stressed to talk about firstly, the selflessness and the exaltedness of God’s love that even if you reject him, still he keeps loving us. And then further, if one serves God out of obligation, then when there is not the reward that is expected, then one may become resentful.
So, here that means the father’s selfless love is compared with the with the insensitive rejection of that love by one’s son and the conditional love of the other son. So, this is a very different story from the idea of any soul’s primeval fall or anything like that. It is basically meant to talk about, to demonstrate through example, pure love and impure love or the rejection of love.
So, essentially, now if you look from the bhakti perspective, from the perspective of bhakti theology, yes, the soul is always with God or rather God is always with the soul. That means that it is not that the father just waits for the son to come back and the father welcomes the son back. Rather, the father goes with the son and guides the son.
That the super soul is present in the hearts of all living beings and the super soul guides the wanderings of all living beings. That means that if we consider the bhakti theology, God is not just there in the spiritual world waiting for the soul to come back and welcoming. Yes, that is definitely there and the soul welcomes that when the soul returns back, soul attains the spiritual world.
At that time, Krishna embraces and welcomes the soul. That is definitely true. But at the same time, it is not that the soul is on one’s own in this world.
The super soul is already there with him. And in that sense, we are never separated from God. So, the stress rather than comparing, rather than talking about the fall and comparing the prodigal story with the son’s story with the fall, the story itself is very complicated and the whole idea of fall, of course, has its own complications with it.
So, the stress is on knowing that God never rejects us even if we reject him and that God always welcomes us. That is what the prodigal son story stresses. Whereas bhakti theology says, God not only welcomes us, but God always accompanies us and guides us, inspires us.
In 10.10, Krishna says that, in the Gita, he says that he will give the intelligence by which we can attain him. So, we are all, in a sense, like prodigal sons or prodigal daughters and we all need to connect with God and attain his abode. And we should know that he is always welcoming us.
He is always waiting for us and not only is waiting for us, he is working for our return and redemption from within our heart as it is said in the prayer by Bhajendra. So, he says, my dear lord, you are liberated. You are supremely, you are extremely merciful and you never tire.
You tirelessly strive for the elevation and liberation of the soul. So, the theme which is similar in both the Christian theology and the bhakti theology is that God’s love is selfless and even if we reject him, he doesn’t reject us. But the extent of the is revealed much more with the understanding of God’s eminence as the super soul, as he is accompanying us as the super soul.
It is revealed much more in bhakti theology. Thank you.