Father, I have sinned against heaven, and in your sight. I am no longer worthy to be called your son, make me as one of your hired men. Luke 15.18-19

The strategy of the prodigal son to be accepted again at home has always appealed to me. I do not use the word “strategy” in the sense of manipulation, but to mean a considered course of action best suited to achieve a goal. He had insulted his father in a manner that was worse than patricide. Beyond that, he had wasted what his father had worked hard to provide. When he hits bottom he “comes to his senses” and knows what he wants more than anything is just to go home. He is not a man scheming to get some more cash for another bender. He just wants to go home, but home is where he no longer deserves to be.

The speech crafted above is brilliantly stated in that it admits unworthiness, communicates that an understanding of wrongs done is genuine, realizes that relationships can not be resumed on the old terms, and asks for an act of grace that is limited, small. If there is any ember of paternal feeling still glowing somewhere, how can such a request be refused. And then, over time, as the father sees the son work hard, act respectfully, live admirably, that ember will, perhaps, grow into a flame again. I am in awe of his genuineness, and his brilliance.

"Le Coeur a ses raisons que la raison ne connait pas", Pascal wrote, and that observation is certainly supported by experience, and now, hard science. The heart has reasons which reason does not comprehend. We know that. We know that sometimes we think with our heads and sometimes with our hearts and that the seat of decision-making determines the actions we take.

Researchers at Princeton University, cited recently in the Spring 2006 Wilson Quarterly (pp.90-91), now believe they can explain why. Our brains are made up of at least two “minds,” two places where information is interpreted and decisions are made. Decisions made in the frontal lobe seem to be based upon reason, but there is also a decision making area in the limbic brain that relies on instinct. Researchers found that they could pose the same ethical dilemma: “Could you kill one person to save 20 other persons”, in different ways and get different answers from the same person. The reason was that some scenarios were sent to the frontal lobe for consideration, and some scenarios were sent to the limbic area. Most people will flip a switch to kill one and save 20, but virtually no one will push a single person off a bridge to save 20 others.

The brilliance of the Prodigal’s plan is that it allows time for his father to evaluate their relationship in the paternal, instinctual part of his brain, and not the just and reasonable part. When, eventually, reconciliation occurs, either in small gestures, or in some Hallmark Hall of Fame moment with the violins swelling, it will be a moment the Prodigal will have worked for. Although he will never be worthy of his father’s love, the return of it will be a fitting denouement. Their reconciliation will be the appropriate thing to happen.

But the appropriate thing doesn’t happen. He isn’t allowed to work his way back into his father’s heart. He isn’t even allowed to finish his sentence. He has never left his father’s heart, and the overwhelming, and astonishing welcome home he receives does not permit, for a moment, his strategy to work. Grace, immediate and absolute, has no time, makes no space for the incremental gesture, the furtive first steps. Grace, immediate and absolute, hugs and kisses and cries and throws a party.

This is all uncomfortable, awkward. It makes unworthiness, gratitude, and awe (all three of which are most unsettling) our permanent state in both parts of our brain. That is the prodigal’s reality, our reality.

I thank Christ Jesus our Lord, who has strengthened me, because he considered me faithful, putting me into service; even though I was formerly a blasphemer, a persecutor, and a violent aggressor….It is a trustworthy statement, deserving full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, among whom I am the worst of all. And for this reason I found mercy in order that in me as the worst, Jesus Christ might demonstrate is perfect patience, as an example for those who would believe in him for eternal life. Now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever, Amen. I Timothy 1.12-13a,15-17