This is a repeat as it disappeared from my sent mail…?
From the book “Take Your Family and your Frustrations to the Lord” Dr. John L. Lund and Bonnie Lund write:
Let’s assume That your expectations for your loved ones are reasonable and in the personal best interest of your loved one. Let’s agree that the loved one knows what you expect but that he or she is unwilling to change. This leaves you frustrated because your loved one’s behavior and your expectations don’t match. Now the question becomes: how are you going to deal with your frustrations? What does your relationship look like now? If you continue on your current path, what will it look like in the future?
Life gives you two choices. You can act or you can react. You can initiate behaviors towards your loved one, and you can choose how you want to respond toward you loved one. If your objective is to change your loved one’s behavior, you need to understand your loved ones behavior and you need to understand your limitations. True change comes from within the person who changes. People will not change their behavior until they come to themselves as did the prodigal son.
It is easier to understand the parable of the prodigal son if you understand the Jewish culture of Jesus’s time. The prodigal son was a wealthy Jewish boy, but he was not the firstborn. According to Jewish law, the first born received a double portion of an inheritance so that he could care for his widowed mother and unmarried sisters. In the case of two sons, as was the case in the parable, the older brother would receive two–thirds of his father’s inheritance, and the younger brother would receive one-third of his father’s inheritance.
A few other cultural insights increase our understanding. First, it’s clear that the father was wealthy, because he had many servants, lands, cattle, and goats. Second, Jews were prohibited from eating pork—in fact, by custom, they were prohibited from even being around swine.
After wasting a third of his father’s inheritance by “riotous living’ in a gentile country with harlots, as his older brother supposed, the younger brother was reduced to feeding pigs and would “have filled his belly with the husks that the swine did eat: and no man gave unto him” (Luke 15;16). After suffering the consequences of his poor choices, he finally “came to himself” (Luke 15:17). The change had to come from inside his own mind and heart.
In many ways all of us are prodigal children. Some of us learn more quickly than others. We learn much by observation. Willingly obeying correct principles has its own rewards. However some of us learn only by enrolling in the school of “hard knocks.” We learn by things we suffer. As the Lord said, “And my people must needs be chastened until they learn obedience, if it must needs be, by the things which they suffer.” (Doctrine & Covenants 105:6) The prodigal had to learn things by suffering the loss of all his material goods. His change of heart came from within himself.
I have wondered about the conversations the elder brother had with his younger brother before the prodigal son left home. The faithful elder brother kept all of his father’s commandments and was a hard worker. The eldest son surely would have pointed out the foolishness and lack of wisdom displayed by his younger brother. The elder brother obviously would have criticized the character flaws he saw in his younger brother even as he later criticized his father for accepting his brother back home. In defense of the older brother, culturally it was not the practice to take one’s inheritance before the death of the father; the prodigal son should not have asked for his money while the father was still alive. However, this does not justify the lack of compassion expressed by the elder brother.
The younger brother did not lack knowledge. He was controlled by his pride. His attitude was impaired by selfishness and a kind of short-term thinking that says, I’m going to do what I want to do when I want to do it, and I don’t care what anybody thinks. What he lacked that prevented him making positive choices was real-life experience. It took the loss of everything he possessed, including his pride, before he came to himself.
Once he “came to himself,” what was it that drew the prodigal back to his father’s side? In addition to the prodigal son’s destitute condition, it was his faith in his father’s love that drove him home.
Independent of poor choices a prodigal child or loved one may make, there is something we can do and something the Lord can do. We can take our love to our loved ones and let the Lord be in charge for changing the hearts of those we care about most. You may ask, “Will the Lord truly intervene? Why hasn’t he done so already? What can I do?” It takes Faith in Christ along with love and patience, but there is something you can do. Above all, it requires a willingness on your part to “cease to find fault” (Doctrine & Covenants 88:124).
There is hope for your loved one to abandon a self-destructive course if you can refrain from inappropriate criticism. Uninspired fault-finding and criticism overwhelm any message of love you may send. Your ability to communicate love becomes lost when you hinder that message with uninspired criticism. The father of the prodigal son did not harp, control, or nag. ~~Dr. John L. Lund & Bonnie, “Take Love to Your Family and your Frustrations to the Lord” (American Fork: UT Covenant Communications, 2020) p.1-3 (continued)
