THINK ABOUT THIS: Five Signs You’ve Become A Prodigal Son Or Daughter

Jesus’ Parable of the Prodigal Son is among the most widely known in the New Testament, but it’s much more than a memorable ancient tale about a young man who abandons family and upbringing to live a life of self-centered pleasure before hitting bottom in a far-off land.

This parable may very well be about you, just as it was about me many years ago. Is this you today? You were raised in a good family that attended church often, and you may well have made a profession of faith in Christ, read your Bible, and been baptized.

But then when you left home to be on your own, and one by one, you started leaving behind those values that had previously guided you. Now, you began seeking out things that pleased you, that provided immediate pleasure, that gave you a temporary sense of satisfaction or exhilaration.

After a while, you became an entirely different person from what you were. Have you become a prodigal?

Here are five signs that the answer to that question is likely in the affirmative, especially if you work as a congressional aide on Capitol Hill:

1. Self-centered: The first two words we read from the young prodigal son in Luke are “give me …” Is your first thought in the morning what you want, what your needs are, how you can do something that makes you feel good?
2. Ambition: Is how to advance yourself in the office the subject to which you devote most of your mental energy and thought? Do you look for assignments or offer advice that you think will make you look better, compared to colleagues?
3. Conformity: Are you conscious of what is accepted and what is frowned upon by your boss and by colleagues in the office? Do you shape your opinions and actions to reflect the expected?
4. Instrumentalism: Do you practice, either consciously or otherwise, the idea that “whatever it takes” is pretty much what you will do to get ahead? Do the ends you seek justify any means — evasions, lies, half-truths — to achieving those ends?
5. Relationships: Do you scan a roomful of people seeking those who can be most helpful to advancing your career? Do you value a relationship first by what you get out of it?

When the Prodigal Son had exhausted his inheritance, he found himself feeding pigs and starving because he could no longer provide for himself. It was at that point that Luke tells us in verse 15:17 that the Prodigal Son “came to his senses.”

And that’s when the Prodigal returned home and confessed to his father that he had blown his inheritance and acted unworthy to be called his son. That was his realization that he had been living contrary to what he had once known to be right. The New Testament calls this “repentance,” and it means turning to the opposite course.

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