The father, from the mentality of temple, takes another approach. We see the father accept his son by reproviding for the son's needs. We see the father once again providing clothing to his son by providing the son a robe. Not just any robe, but the best robe. Not just any protection from the natural elements, the best protection from the natural elements. The robe represents the true covering of our heavenly father upon our nakedness and shame to keep the once cold and hardened heart warm. Adam and Eve attempted to cover their nakedness and shame after their sin was committed with fig leaves. But their attempt was poorly contrived out of the enactment of taboo that caused them to be banished from temple (Garden of Eden) and experience the wages of their new sinful nature leading to death (totem). I find it very amazing that in many celebrations of paganism and the dancing around the totem pole, the people are generally naked. Some wear the minimal clothing to cover their brests and genitilia but most dance naked to the forces that drive them into deeper paganism and deeper into the grip of death (totem). They see their nakedness as "freedom" and "liberation" and not as the shame and humiliation it is. In Christianity, we are encouraged to wear spiritual clothing not only to cover our nakedness and shame, but we are encouraged to wear the armor of God to protect us when we have to fight.

We see the father place a ring on the son's finger. This ring shows covenant between father and son. In the times of Christ, the ring was usually a ring that had the engravings of the family's symbol. Therefore, one who noticed the symbol on the ring and correlated the symbol on the ring to the family symbol recognized that that person belonged to a particular family. The ring showed the value and high esteem the father had towards the son. The next thing the father placed on the son was sandals. Why sandals? The significance of sandals shows two very important points. The first thing is that it shows the father's detailed attention to provide for his son. As the robe protected the son's body from the natural elements, as the ring protected the son from being distinguished as a bad character, and as the sandals protected the feet of the son from the rocky terrain, the second thing shows the distinguishing features of a son from a slave were completed and it shows further the father's true forgiveness and unconditional love of the son. Slaves did not own nor wear robes, rings, nor sandals. Therefore slaves did not possess covering, covenant, and protection. Slaves worked for the masters under the conditional philosophy of "if you work, I will provide for you". What we have seen is a father unconditionally providing physical protection from the natural environment of cold, heat, rain, etc. showing us a parallel picture of our heavenly father unconditionally providing for us the resources needed to be spiritually protected from the spiritual elements from Satan, the prince and the power of the air. The scriptures say the "best" robe and "a" ring and sandals. The father had plenty of robes, rings, and sandals for his sons because he was so blessed by God by living out the lifestyle of holy temple in his own life.

As we have seen physical and spiritual protection of the son unconditionally demonstrated in the previous paragraph by the father, we see the next course of unconditional action the father provides for his son is to address the physical and spiritual needs of nourishment. We saw earlier in the story about the prodigal son that the son was starving to death in the foreign land (taboo/totem). The son was hungry for something that the wild living in the foreign lands did not quench. Not only was this son physically hungry from the malnourishment of not eating, but this son was spiritually malnourished from his diet of a sinful lifestyle. The malnourishment almost led this son to death by personal choices of taboo/totem until he came back to the lifestyle of temple. The father instructs the servants to bring out the fattened calf, kill it, cook it, and celebrate. The son was hungry and the father was going to provide the nourishment needed to become strong again. The corn husks the son was content to only have a little bit of does not compare to the calf that the father provided. Here, there is a huge difference between a little husk of corn and a calf. The son would have eaten only part of the husk only to have remained hungry or become hungrier. It is similar to working in your yard and getting some lemonaide and drinking it to remain thirsty until you drink some water that quenched your first. From a logical sense, could a partially emaciated young man of average weight eat an entire three hundred pound calf? Of course not. That shows that there is plenty to eat and some left over for others to partake in if they choose to. Some choose to "hoard" the blessings and not giving it away leaving the excess to rot and spoil. Some choose to "give" the blessings away to those within their fellowship and state of temple in need or to those in the grips of taboo/totem in order to bring them into life to experience temple.

Unfortunately, there are some who just simply refuse to come out of their darkness of taboo/totem into the light of life in Jesus Christ (temple). They actually think that they are free when they are bound up. They portray themselves as happy when inside they are miserable. We weep and grieve when they refuse life and temple and we see some of these people turn into the death and totem that ended up consuming them. Yes, this is tragic but there is something in the church more tragic and grieving to God today.

Click here for part four of Taboo to Temple.