Throughout my life I have been fairly close to the Bible.

As kids, I and my brother and sister grew up going to Sunday School and church each weekend. We were involved with youth groups and church choirs in middle school and high school. We heard lots of Bible teachings.

In high school, I developed a hunger for Scripture, and between my sophomore and junior years, I discovered the Bible was more than just a collection of teachings and stories. It became a living book to me, and pored over it for a summer, and read it cover to cover.

After that time, it remained elevated in my life, because of the Gospel within it, and the wisdom it offered, and also the illumination it gave about Jesus and his Father.

Much of the Bible has always brought me comfort, because it brought me to see God as a deeply passionate and compassionate being who reveled in pouring grace and mercy over his creation, the Fount of eternal, holy love.

Parts of it at times, though, have also troubled me- passages I either could not seem to get a grip on (Hebrews 6), or that spoke to broken places inside of me.

It is said that the Scriptures are prismatic, and that any one passage can have a myriad of meanings based to a large extent on the mind of its reader.

The Parable of the Prodigal Son, despite the fact it was meant to highlight the goodness and graciousness of God, has always been one such perplexing and painful passage to me.

Also known as the Parable of the Lost Son, from the pulpit the story from Luke 15 was mainly pointed at the waywardness of one father’s son who asked for his inheritance and then left home to part for a while until his wealth was gone, and he was impoverished and homeless. Going home, he asks his dad if he could come back and stay in the pig sty, so trashed was his life and heart by his poor living. His father, in response, erupts in joy, having long thought his son was gone and in his selfish sojourn would never come home. His dad throws him a party, he is so grateful his son has return.

The less preached subplot in the story is about brother number 2, who is the faithful, diligent, loyal, meek and risk-avoidant son who did not leave his father or their familial home when adulthood came. Hearing of his wayward brother’s return after long lost years, and seeing his father’s happiness at his brother’s homecoming, brother 2 is in incensed, seeing his brother, who blew the down payment his father gave him for his future on pleasures and partying, wrapped again in his father’s liberal generosity and joy. “You never threw me a party, and I was here with you all the time!” brother 2 balked. “You were always with me”, his father told him, ” an everything I have has been yours.”

Usually, the Prodigal is held up as the lost son in this story, as he clearly was. He spurned his dad’s guidance and example and dove head first into decadence and destruction when he had resources, and he came home broken, humbled, groveling.

But son 2 poses as big a problem- and he is the one who always bothered me.

He never left home.

And he probably lived pretty comfortably off of his father’s generosity.

And he could not be happy to see his lost brother home, alive, hoping for a new start, showered with his father’s love.

There has been quite a lot in the news the last decade or so related to young people who become adults and struggle to leave home. Granted, these “failures to launch” all probably have some economic basis to them. After the market crash in 2008, it became more challenging for folks to make ends meet in the States, as well as elsewhere. But also faced within the “failure to launch” era, besides economic circumstances, has been that simple choice for young people to choose between being more children or more adult. The consequence of the reality of that choice spurred the emergence of a term that finds use today: adulting, which is making a conscious decision to accept the mantle of maturity for a time. The fact that adulting has even become a term sheds light on our culture and the struggles of individuals within it to grow up. Grown ups have to make decisions, and then accept the consequences of those decisions, whether they are good consequences or not. But adults own the decisions and consequences. They take responsibility for their lives.

And in the process of becoming adults, the young person learns how to take less and to make more. Responsibility makes one capable and self-reliant, and through trials and missteps and successes, stronger and more confident, and less dependent.

Which is why I began to shudder thinking about son 2. He was a lot like son 1, except he didn’t try to go out and find his life. You can see he’s not much different than son 1 by his reaction to his brother’s homecoming.

He was bitter.

Both sons were lost.

Both sons were takers.

And when I’d read about son 2 in Luke 15, I saw myself.

I’ve spent an inordinate amount of my life leaning on the kindnesses of my family members. They might not say I’ve been problematic, but I see the leanings in me like son 2. The taker.

I don’t want to be that guy.

I am grateful for a heavenly father, and an earthly father, who celebrate their sons regardless of how gracious they may be.

Adults love and nurture, not simply crave and consume.

I am thankful my folks have shown me for years what adulting looks like.

I’m striving to stay there, with them, and not lost, with the two taking sons.

And I always feel like I have a long way to go.