The Older Brother

Sunday morning we started a new series called Unchristian. It's based on the book by the same title and it's about the negative perceptions that 16-29 yr old outsiders have of Christianity. At the end of the message I referred to the story of the Prodigal Son. I said something along the lines of "If this research is right then there are a lot of younger brothers in our world today. How will we respond? Will we be the loving Father who welcomes them home with open arms or will be the older brother who sits and sulks with arms folded?"

Then last night I ran across this bit in a book written by Henry Drummond nearly 135 years ago...

The truth is there are two great classes of sins--sins of the "body," and sins of the "disposition." The Prodigal Son may be taken as a type of the first, the Elder Brother of the second. Now, society has no doubt whatever as to which of these is the worse. Its brand falls, without a challenge, upon the Prodigal. But are we right? We have no balance to weigh one another's sins, and coarser and finer are but human words; but faults in the higher nature may be less venial than those in the lower, and to the eye of Him who is Love, a sin against Love may seem a hundred times more base. No form of vice, not worldliness, not greed of gold, not drunkenness itself, does more to un-Christianize society than evil temper. . . Look at the Elder Brother, moral, hard-working, patient, dutiful--let him credit for all his virtues--look at this man, this baby, sulking outside his father's door. "He was angry," we read, "and would not go in." Look at the effect upon the father, upon the servants, upon the happiness of the guests. Judge the effect upon the Prodigal--and how many prodigals are kept out of the Kingdom of God by the unlovely character of those who profess to be inside?