More from the Duggar News

I preached this morning and the start came from my post on Friday about the Duggar Family scandal. Here's the manuscript....


The super Christian Duggar Family of the reality show 19 Kids and Counting was in the news again last week. Josh, the eldest son who was outed a few months ago for molesting his sister when they were younger, has now been revealed as having an affair and being addicted to pornography. He has admitted to this latest sinfulness.

My first reaction was Well, welcome to the club, Josh. The club of being human.

Being human of course includes the innate ability to be a sinner and do things we don't want to do- on a regular, if not daily- basis. This human ability also reared its ugly head when he acted as if he was "holier than thou," parading his faith and pointing fingers at others. Call it self-righteousness or grandiosity or even narcissism, it’s still the failing of human sinfulness.

When one sets oneself up as a judge and jury of others because one is better than others- more perfect, less sinful, etc.- the sinfulness is already active. I am serious when I say that even in his admission of sin, Josh Duggar continued his grandiosity- now he said of himself that he is "the biggest hypocrite ever.” St Paul in 1 Timothy claims the same for himself- the greatest of sinners.

One of the most important quotes I retain from my Seminary days was the one from the Hebrew Bible professor. The professor was liberal and progressive, but he got our attention when he said early in the course that

the longer you are in ministry the more you will be convinced that original sin is the only provable Biblical doctrine.

Yep.

I know I have seen that tendency toward sin- as much in myself as in others. Yet the self-righteousness that denies this reality can easily be found in any ideological approach to faith. It ignores our human failings, believes that all we have to do is believe the right way, worship in the right way, act the right way, have the right politics (conservative or liberal) and we will be fine.

That ignores that ever present human reality of sinfulness that is at the heart of both the Hebrew and Christian Testaments. Sadly, it also ignores something just as real- that we are not sinners in the hands of an angry God, regardless of what some people have said and still say. Both these testaments are filled with the work of grace. Grace: free and unearned forgiveness and acceptance. Grace is the reality that in the midst of who we are, there is also a God who is far greater. Yet, in spite of this free gift, it is in our innate humanness that we find ourselves in a seemingly constant struggle. It’s like we have these two voices sitting on either shoulder.

No- don’t. Sure- go ahead.

Back and forth they go.

In today’s epistle lesson from Ephesians Paul puts this in the context of a struggle- even more- a war.

There are of course different ways to describe war. The theologian-novelist Fredrick Buechner has commented that one way to look at it is a war of conquest. One way or another we all fight to conquer the world, for our place in the world. With that kind of war, Buechner says, there are adversaries of flesh and blood. They are human beings like ourselves, each of whom is fighting the same war toward the same end and under a banner emblazoned with the same word that our banners bear, and that word is of course Myself, or Myself and my Family, or Myself and my Country, Myself and my Race, which are all really MYSELF writ large.


In this type of war we wear the whole armor of man, because this is a man's war against other men. Buechner says these are things like:

• The breastplate of self-confidence because if you have no faith in yourself, if you cannot trust to your own wits, then you will never get anywhere.
• Maybe there’s the gospel of success-the good news that you can get just about anything in this world if you want it badly enough and are willing to fight for it.
• Don’t forget, adds Buechner, the shield of security because in a perilous world where anything can happen, security is perhaps what you need more than anything else - the security of money in the bank, or a college degree, or some basic skill that you can always fall back on.
• Maybe there’s the helmet of attractiveness or personality"

But there is another way to look at this struggle that we all face- and ignore at our peril.

This says Buechner is the war to become whole and at peace inside our skins. It is a war not of conquest now but a movement of liberation because the object of this other war is to liberate that part of ourselves which has somehow become lost, that dimension of selfhood that involves the capacity to forgive and to will the good not only of the self but of all other selves. This other war is the war to become a human being. This is the goal that we are really after and that God is really after. This is the goal Buechner reminds us, that power, success, and security are only forlorn substitutes for. This is the victory that not all our human armory of self-confidence and wisdom and personality can win for us- to become at last truly human.”

This is where Paul talks about the belt of truth (and perhaps we might add, honesty) a breastplate of righteousness- living right. There’s the shield of faith, the shoes of the Gospel of peace.

What this boils down to is that we need to become real and honest about who we are- sinners. Then, and this is as important as admitting our human nature- we look, as Christians, to God as revealed to us in Jesus Christ. There we will discover the storehouse of those pieces of the armor of God. In today’s Gospel, Jesus says we will live because of him, that the spirit gives life and that his words are spirit and life.

That promise is renewed every time we come here and come to the Lord's Table. We confess our sinfulness and are reminded of the presence of forgiveness. Then, in the Eucharist Jesus words in John are made new week in and week out: Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them.

Here we discover all the many ways that Jesus living Spirit is available. We may have looked in other places and in many ways, but in the moment of that discovery- and every time- we can join with Simon Peter: “Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.”

Welcome to Humanity

News: The super Christian Duggar Family is still in the news. Josh, the one who has been outed as a child molester of his sister when he was younger, has now been outed as having an affair and being addicted to pornography. He has admitted to this latest sinfulness and said of himself that he is "the biggest hypocrite ever."

Well, welcome to the club, Josh. The club of being human.

Which of course includes the innate ability to be a sinner and do things we don't want to do- on a regular, if not daily- basis.

This human ability earlier reared its ugly head when he acted as if he was "holier that thou." Call it self-righteousness or grandiosity or even narcissism, you still have the failing of human sinfulness. When one sets oneself up as a judge and jury of others because one is better than others- more perfect, less sinful, etc.- the sinfulness has already started.

I am sure I have said before that one of the most important quotes I retain from my Seminary days was the one from the Hebrew Bible professor. He was liberal and progressive, but he got our attention when he said early in the course that

the longer you are in ministry the more you will be convinced that original sin is the only provable Biblical doctrine.

Yep.

I know I have seen that- as much  in myself as in others. The self-righteousness of any ideological approach to faith is ripe with that possibility.

Let's get over it. Let's be real and honest about who we are- sinners.

Fortunately, we are not sinners in the hands of an angry God.

But more on that another day.

Capturing Earthiness

Hebrew is, of course, a very ancient language. Before it was revived in modern-day Israel, it had a relatively limited vocabulary from a time when things were a lot more down to earth. When we read the Hebrew Bible we don't really catch that sense of the language. We "sanctify" it to make it more acceptable to our modern ears. Fortunately we do have more words that we can use.

Last Sunday I was sitting listening to the Hebrew Bible text being read. I don't usually read along; I like the sense of listening to the word. Suddenly a word went skimming by. Did I hear that, as thought? Did it really say what I think I heard? I pulled out the bulletin and double checked it. Yep. That's what I heard.

Here's the passage from the Common English Bible which we use:

Isaiah 64: 5b-6-- But you were angry when we sinned;
you hid yourself when we did wrong.
We have all become like the unclean;
all our righteous deeds are like a menstrual rag. [Emphasis added.]

What an excellent example of the earthiness (and not mincing words) that one can find in the Bible!

Other translations use "filthy" or "greasy" to describe the rag in question- our deeds. Fitting and descriptive, but not with the overwhelming power of this translation. In fact, knowing the importance of "clean" vs. "unclean" in the ancient Hebrew lifestyle, the use of the word "menstrual" adds an extreme of "uncleanness" that filthy and greasy don't.

I later dug into a concordance and found that the Hebrew word is only used once in the Bible- right there in Isaiah 64. To get its translation. scholars had to look at other similar words and other ancient languages. The root and words really do have to do with the menstrual cycle- a time of uncleanness for a woman. The phrase "menstrual rag" really is a descriptive, powerful, down-to-earth, and appropriate translation.

The Power of Art

Saturday was a Guthrie Theater day. We saw a challenging and interesting drama from Britain, Our Country's Good.

Our Country's Good is a 1990 play written by British playwright, Timberlake Wertenbaker, adapted from the Thomas Keneally novel The Playmaker. The story concerns a group of Royal Marines and convicts in a penal colony in New South Wales, in the 1780s, who put on a production of The Recruiting Officer.

In the 1780s, convicts and Royal Marines were sent to Australia as part of the first penal colony there. The play shows the class system in the convict camp and discusses themes such as sexuality, punishment, the Georgian judicial system, and the idea that it is possible for ‘theatre to be a humanising force'.
--Wikipedia

I found it engaging and a play that made me think about the power of art- specifically theater and story telling. The audience seemed to be puzzled by it. It wasn't as straightforward as some might like. It is done in a “sketch-scene” way that has a more experimental style to it. The cast played multiple roles- prisoners and guards- which impacted the style. As I said I found it engaging. One scene in particular grabbed me.

In the scene and costume change the some of the cast stood still at the front of the stage while other things were going on. Several of them held the wigs that would have indicated their British persona. The character closest to me stood there with the wig held out in front of her. Then, in very deliberate action, she took the wig and placed it on her head. She went from prisoner to guard in a brief moment.

We are all both prisoner and guard; we are all just one scene change from a different life than we have been living. Whether it is a single act of crime- or the accident of birth- we are all the same.

As to the "humanizing" action of theater (and the arts, by extension)? Well, that was the whole idea. yes, in the play it works that way- or at least implies that it does. But it went beyond that. It felt like a similar story to Les Miserables. The basic debate was whether "criminals" are able to be rehabilitated. The Jaevert-types believed that this was an impossibility. Once bad- always bad. But there is always a Jean Valjean who challenges that. The playwright and producers of this play believe (like Victor Hugo) that change is possible.

Such is a debate that never goes away. Sadly. Maybe we need to continue to challenge the Jaeverts of the world who insist that redemption isn't possible and that the only way to deal with "these people" is punishment- and punishment forever.

Challenging.

I, for one, am glad Jesus didn't believe that!

Deep Theology from Lake Wobegon

Perhaps our greatest American theologian (and story-teller) of this age is Garrison Keillor on Prairie Home Companion. Hidden in his down-home stories, amid self-deprecating Midwestern humor, he drops explosions of spiritual truth we would do well to pay attention to.

Last Saturday's News from Lake Wobegon was a gem. (Note: It was a rebroadcast of one from three years ago.)

At the end of the news he is talking about the difference between Good Friday and Easter. Good Friday is where all the real, hard core sinners can be found. The people you will need someday when you are older and the wiles and energy of youth fail you. The good people go to church on Easter. It's the hardcore sinners you will find on Good Friday. It's too bad you didn't go on Friday, he said. Think about it for next year.

Oh the truth!

"While we were still sinners...."

Third Sunday in Lent: Real Temptations

This morning I thought about temptation and forgiveness. Well, actually mostly about temptation. I was listening to the radio on the way to church and an author was talking about one the characters in her novel. He was the father in the family and he did things which caused problems. But, the author mentioned, he thought he was doing the right thing. Sometimes temptations are in the small things.

I have said before that if we really wanted to be honest about the problem of sins and temptation it is not the BIG ones that we should be railing against. I think, in reality, the overwhelming focus we place on these BIGGIES gets in the way of most of us dealing with the real presence of sin in our world and our lives. Just listen to any preacher when he or she begins to rail against sin and you will often be able to sit back in relief that they are not talking about you.

But take a step back and think of the "tradition" of the Seven Deadly Sins. Here they are:

• wrath (inordinate and uncontrolled feelings of hatred and anger, including denial of truth)
• greed (a very excessive or rapacious desire and pursuit of wealth, status, and power)
• sloth (failure to utilize one's talents and gifts, seen as laziness and indifference)
• pride (desire to be more important or attractive than others, failing to acknowledge the good work of others, and excessive love of self; often seen as the original sin
• lust (excessive thoughts or desires of a sexual nature)
• envy (insatiable desire and resentment that another person has something they perceive themselves as lacking, and wish the other person to be deprived of it)
• gluttony (over-indulgence and over-consumption of anything to the point of waste) (See Wikipedia.)
  

All of a sudden the definitions of sin have changed. Suddenly my life is filled with sin. I am not blameless. When I look at that list I see that it is more than just a list of some things I might fall into someday. In reality they are things that I can- and often do- fall into just about every day. (Okay- EVERY day.)

What is the way to handle all this? Honest self-inventory. Searching moral inventory. The founders of the 12-Step movements were onto something important when they wrote Step Four: Made a searching and fearless moral inventory. In fact when they wrote their second text, Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, they talked about the Seven Deadly Sins as the list to use to think about those things. They are universal.

All this means that my life needs to be self-honest and not judgmental of other people. To use the Seven Deadly Sins reminds how easy it can be to move from good to bad, from hope to sin. I do it daily. So daily I need to remind myself that there is hope and forgiveness. That is what my faith is all about. I don't have to be a prisoner to these. I can be freed.

Thanks be to God who gives me the victory in Jesus Christ.

Quick Reflection

Sitting and listening to the Gospel lesson last Sunday this quote jumped out at me as never before:

Luke 4: 5-7 Then the devil led [Jesus] up and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. And the devil said to him, “To you I will give their glory and all this authority; for it has been given over to me, and I give it to anyone I please. If you, then, will worship me, it will all be yours.”[Emphasis added.]

All the kingdoms of the world have been given over to the devil. Think about that for a moment and it will call into question any attempt to make any "kingdom" (read: nation, government, etc.) into a realm of God. One way to see that is that any government will by nature be involved in things that are not of God.

A look at any nation's history would probably prove that point.

Back to the Garden

I know I already posted about Woodstock yesterday, but there is so much there, it deserves more. As I was thinking about it the natural tendency was for the words from Joni Mitchell to come to mind. It is the iconic song for the festival, written by Mitchell, according to Wikipedia, while she sat in a hotel room in New York watching what was happening.

The song expresses the depth of feelings that many had for Woodstock and the whole movement of the day. For some reason there was a yearning that became embodied in this event of half a million people on a New York State farm bonding into a new "nation."

It is not a surprise that there is a spiritual angle...

I came upon a child of god
He was walking along the road
And I asked him, where are you going
And this he told me
I'm going on down to Yasgur's farm
I'm going to join in a rock n roll band
I'm going to camp out on the land
I'm going to try and get my soul free
We are stardust
We are golden
And we've got to get ourselves
Back to the garden

I know there are many ways to accept or challenge this idea. This feeling of being oppressed as seen in the next verse wants to cry out against the war and the world. The feeling of alienation that supposedly drove it all was- and is- one of those underlying human drives. And it had nothing to do with Nixon or Vietnam or civil rights or the right to do sex, drugs, and rock and roll. It was in the last two lines which became the mantra of the song.

And we've got to get ourselves
back to the garden.

The biblical image is not an accident, of course. As a metaphor it is powerful. As a yearning it is deep. As a myth- it is what drives us. In the church we have always called this alienation and drive to return to Eden the result of original sin. Some of the ways that sin was affecting her (my) generation in 1969 come next..

Then can I walk beside you
I have come here to lose the smog
And I feel to be a cog in something turning
Well maybe it is just the time of year
Or maybe its the time of man
I don't know who I am
But you know life is for learning
We are stardust
We are golden
And we've got to get ourselves
Back to the garden

The poisoned environment (smog) or the basic identity crisis (I don't know who I am) become the paradigms, but are but placeholders for whatever else may come next. Also seen is the hope for growing community- the child of God as the partner that we can walk along with to this new land. It has become a pilgrimage. Did it have a real goal or was it just a pipe dream? Was it an opportunity for something new to begin- or was it just a passing fancy?

By the time we got to Woodstock
We were half a million strong
And everywhere there was song and celebration
And I dreamed I saw the bombers
Riding shotgun in the sky
And they were turning into butterflies
Above our nation
We are stardust
Billion year old carbon
We are golden
Caught in the devil's bargain
And we've got to get ourselves
Back to the garden

No, we didn't know, but many dreamed. Like Joni and most other people, I was not there in person. But it did become that same hope and celebration of peace and love with bombers turning into butterflies an ultimate example of metamorphosis, a 20th Century renewing of Isaiah's dream to turn swords into plowshares.

For one brief shining moment we hoped.

But as always in this human realm it proved to be a moment in passing. Less than four months later it fell apart as the Hell's Angels turned the "garden" into what it often becomes- a place of death. When 300,000 gathered at Altamont in California the Woodstock Nation was found to be premature. Nixon remained in office, protests continued and escalated, Kent State was less than six months away. As Neil Young would later write:

We're finally on our own.

But that was later. On that Woodstock Weekend we lived in hope while at the same time affirming some very basic ideas about our humanity and what it means to be human. Joni captured it in those haunting chorus lines:

We are stardust
We are golden
And we've got to get ourselves
Back to the garden

Am I making too much out of this? Is this just another of the countless examples of the Baby Boomers taking our experience as transcendent? Are we all making Woodstock's Three Days of Peace and Love into some world changing event?

Let me rephrase that as I see it from the vantage point of AARP land. The truth of Woodstock is not in its uniqueness but in its sameness to all that has gone before. It may be a better example of the human pilgrimage into the deeply spiritual that always fights against what is and leans to what could be. It is an expression of the youthful idealism of any era. We just had the ability to gather in New York and let the whole world watch.

• Twenty years earlier it had happened as a previous generation went to war in Europe.
• Twenty years later it happened again as another group tore down the Berlin Wall.
• Last year we saw it in the groundswell that carried Obama into the White House.

We are stardust
We are golden
And we've got to get ourselves
Back to the garden

I'm not sure we can do it all alone. I firmly believe in grace and God helping us in the project... but the Garden is there and waiting. Each shining moment like Woodstock shows us it is worth working toward.

The Irresistable Force?

Another politician has been caught with ... well, you know ... the ongoing problem of sex being more powerful than the desire to succeed. Gov. Sanford (R-SC) goes AWOL and meets up with a woman in Argentina. Didn't he know someone would find out? It's not as if he hasn't seen it happen before.

Gary Hart (D); Bill Clinton (D); Elliot Spitzer (D); Larry Craig (R); Mark Foley (R); John Edwards (D); King David (?).......

(Don't ignore preachers, either- Jimmy Swaggart and Ted Haggard quickly come to mind.)

Back in older days we cannot forget that Nelson Rockefeller, Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson and Franklin Roosevelt weren't exactly just sitting around. They just were never made public.

There are probably a number of psychological things at work, of course. There has to be a grandiosity and a certain amount of narcissism in anyone who aspires to such high offices. There has to be a sense that what they do is right, even when it isn't. There has to be a sense that they really won't get caught- they have figured out a way around it.

Or is it the game of doing something that is in some way or another illicit or immoral and trying to get away with it? Is it a power trip?

And let us not forget what may be the biggest of all- the pull of sex and sexual gratification. The pleasure centers of the brain, the powerful neuro-chemicals that flood our system when we are engaged in something as enjoyable as sex are difficult to turn off.

I am not one, however, to blame the society and the permissiveness that some say runs rampant. It is much more profound than that, and much more difficult to assign such simplistic blame. Yet it is much more basic and actually simple (as opposed to simplistic) and you have heard me talk about it before.

Human nature. Or actually, the proclivity for human nature to lead to sin. I don't mean that in any judgmental way. Original sin is, as I have said before quoting my Old Testament professor, the only provable, verifiable, observable doctrine. Just look around. Which is why it is less than helpful to point fingers and make all kinds of moralistic statements.

Gov. Sanford, like each and every one of us, yes, each and every one of us, has fallen prey to the basest part of who we are. His was through sex. Yours or mine may be in a gazillion other ways. But it is sin. And all any of us can do is get down on our knees and ask forgiveness. Whether other people forgive us or not is beyond our control. Whether we can forgive ourselves may take a while. But the good news is that God does forgive.

That's the wonder and power of grace. May we be as graceful to others as God is to us.

(By the way, do you realize how difficult it was to write this and not have any double entendres in it? Or at least I tried not to since I would like this to be no worse than a PG-13 rated blog. Okay, that reminds me of a joke from one of Garrison Keillor's old joke shows:
Did you hear about the woman who walked into a bar and asked the bartender for a double entendre?
He gave it to her.)

The Five Accepted Sins

Thanks to The Internet Monk for laying bare these difficult and acceptable sins. Now, I don't know about you, but it would appear to me that the Internet Monk has been reading my story again.

1. Not keeping promises.

2. Lying.

3. A lack of integrity.

4. Cruel speech about those with whom we differ.

5. No grace for ordinary failure.

It is hard to remember that we find so many sins "acceptable" or at least we are willing to live with and excuse them when in reality none of us is sinless- nor we will ever be by our own hard work. Nor are any of us "not as bad a sinner" as "that publican over there."

Thank God for grace.

Gaining Insight

I know that over the years folk singer and activist Pete Seeger has been criticized for his seemingly uncritical support of the then Soviet Union. He was roundly chastised for never speaking out against the excesses and then torture and atrocities of the Staling regime. As an old-guard leftist Seeger came in for many challenges.

Ron Radosh, in a special to the New York Sun, mentioned that he had recently called Seeger to task after a documentary on his life. He said at the time that while Seeger had written many laudable songs on social issues, even in other countries, he never wrote one about the Gulags and the death lists of Stalin. Recently, then he received a letter from Seeger. Radosh then wrote:

I almost fell off the chair when I read Mr. Seeger's words: "I think you're right - I should have asked to see the gulags when I was in [the] USSR." For years, Mr. Seeger continued, he had been trying to get people to realize that any social change had to be nonviolent, in the fashion sought by Martin Luther King Jr. Mr. Seeger had hoped, he explained, that both Khrushchev and later Gorbachev would "open things up." He acknowledged that he underestimated, and perhaps still does, "how the majority of the human race has faith in violence."
--New York Sun

I applaud Seeger for his words- and Radosh for the willingness to post what Seeger said in his own column. Both have showed in this a willingness to talk that is often lost in too much political rhetoric. I for one am glad that Seeger can say these things now. Pete is one of my heroes. He has been a tireless advocate for what he saw as right and true and needed for a better world. I have often disagreed with his extreme leftist, even communist stance and support of the Soviet state's dictatorship. But I have seen him stand up in music and life to do what is right. (Plus I like his music!)

But the last quote in the article amazes me- and perhaps gives a clue into why Seeger continues to work as he does. He has "underestimated how the majority of the human race has faith in violence." As a Christian pacifist myself I find that remarkable. I have seen over and over in my life the devastating truth of what Pete underestimates. Perhaps it is a hopefulness built on his own desire to make the human experience less warlike. But it surely does ignore- or play down- the depths of the human soul from which violence can spring.

Whether you believe that the Genesis stories are exact accounts of actual events or "creation stories" explaining the events that all can see, it is not a surprise that Cain and Abel, the world that brought about Noah's Ark, or the impetus for the Tower of Babel make up most of the first 11 chapters. It is the deepest sadness of the human story writ large- jealousy, hatred, greed, death. We are not immune.

As Stanley Hauerwas once said in a slightly different form, I am a pacifist so I can be reminded of what I should do when I am tempted to do the opposite. I don't know whether Pete Seeger has learned the profound potential for violence behind human nature, but I applaud that he has made some statements that challenge his own past support of such violence, if only by his silence.

One of the most dangerous things about our human political, philosophical and religious approaches is that we so easily adopt blind acceptance of things that may or may not be as true as we think they are. What Seeger fell into with the Soviet Union we may just as easily fall into with our American nationalism or Christian triumphalism or atheistic "superiority feelings." Any completely blind acceptance of a human interpretation of such things can easily lead us into places we better not go.

Doubt and honest reflection and critical thinking and analysis are requirements for our world to survive. Perhaps, with each such step of honest reflection, any of us can move to a closer walk with what is truly beyond us but which we can move closer to in honesty.

Boasting of Weakness
When I went to the Daily Text for yesterday (July 31, 07), this passage is what came up:

If I must boast, I will boast of the things that show my weakness.
2 Corinthians 11:30 (NIV)

Well, I'm here to boast that I have a weakness. I am an older brother. And there sure are times when I like to act like that older brother in what is probably Jesus' second most famous parable- The Prodigal Son (after The Good Samaritan, of course. Hmmm. They both do say the same thing, don't they?)

Anyway, my older brother stuff doesn't come out toward my biologically younger brother. No one has killed a fatted calf for either of us for a long time since our parents died when we were still teenagers. But maybe there's something about being an older brother that makes one behave like one.

Actually, it may very well start because the older brother usually has more difficulty growing up. (No- younger brothers- I will not listen to your side of it. I AM the older brother here. Anyway, it's my blog!) Parents are afraid, over-protective, controlling. The younger brother gets more freedom (or takes it, I'm not sure which) because the parents made all those mistakes of control with the older one. The younger gets away with more things. (No, I don't want to hear about how the younger brother had to put up with that silly, self-righteous whining of the older brother.)

From there it may very well grow into a pattern. Anytime someone else who is seen as less faithful, less committed, less dedicated gets credit for something- well, it is so much easier to sit on the sideline and suck ones thumb and look sour. It makes other people feel so sorry for you. They take pity on you and give you hugs and support. (Usually, if they are older siblings, especially, do they understand. Others just tell you to grow up. Imagine that!)

Remember, I am boasting about this, just as Paul suggested. Look how great I am at being a long-suffering older brother. Look at how my life has been taken advantage of. Look at how others just don't understand. Look- there's the father even trying to make excuses for treating me that way. Life sucks.

Well, maybe that isn't what Paul had in mind.

Yes, life sucks when I get caught in my own pity party- and no one else wants to attend. That's lonely. Life sucks when I fall into my older brother humanity and want it my way- notice me- see me- love and support me.

But you have been loved and supported, is what I hear in return. Why do I waste what I have in order to feel sorry for what has happened and how someone else has gotten what I would have liked? Wait a minute, wastefulness? Isn't that what prodigal really means? I have been so blessed and cared for and even led through my own valleys as dark as the very shadow of death- and I haven't been abandoned.

Perhaps I can only boast that I am nothing more than a prodigal myself. Of course that means that there is also a fatted calf waiting for me- a celebration of my ongoing presence with all that has been given me. All I have to do it get my hands off my eyes, pretending I don't see, and reach out.

All I can boast of is the power and support of God. As for me, well, maybe I can't learn a little better how not to act like an older brother quite so often.

And to stop wasting my life, my time, and God's love on what I don't have.