Who Reaches The Prodigal Son?

According to this page, it’s illegal to carry a Bible or talk to someone about Jesus in Singapore. That can’t be right, can it? What would M0ses Tay say?

ask8 pointed out something interesting at church yesterday: in the prodigal son story, no one “reaches out” to the prodigal son. His return home, moving from lost to found, is not initiated or stimulated by any person. And in our conversation, that was really interesting, and to be honest, totally confusing to me, because the question was what model of evangelism we see in Luke 15. There’s some model in the preceding parables of the Lost Sheep and Lost Coin. But in the parable that composes the bulk of the chapter, after hearing ask8’s comment, I didn’t see any model of evangelism at all. Thanks for confusing things, ask8.

I found myself surprised that I’d never noticed that before, but I think it’s because I’d always interpreted the Prodigal Son story as a message for myself and as a lesson about how heaven reacts when the lost are found, not necessarily how the lost get found. I think I still see it that way, and that other passages speak more about the how. But I find it interesting that such an important story about lost being found doesn’t have a human intermediary.

As a SN, ask8 says he heard the point about there being no one who reaches out to the prodigal in some sermon, where the pastor claimed that the reaching out was the older son’s responsibility, one he failed to live up to. ask8 was unsure whether he agreed with this claim, as am I, but it’s interesting to think about. Or not.