The tragedy that is prevalent in many churches today is when a fellow brother or sister in Christ refuses to celebrate with their heavenly father and join in the festivities as the son and fellow brother who was once lost is now found. The son that was once thought to be dead to taboo/totem has now come back to life in Christ to experience temple. Unfortunately these older sons show their true colors when the attention is diverted from their works and good deeds to the one who squandered his blessings and comes back with a repentant spirit to receive unconditionally the gifts of the heavenly father. We see the same mentality in this "elder brother" as we do in the Pharasees. We see a man who was proud of the passion and precision he displayed in performing the outward duties commanded by his father to perform. We see the "elitist" mentality manifest as though his actions and external deeds made him one of "God's favorites" in heaven. Like the Pharasees, this elder brother was also indiginant when people celebrated over the actions of a lost and sinful man coming home. To many of these people who act with the same attitudes, the concept of being the "elder" son fuels their actions and deeds. Many of the elder sons adore and brag about their title of "elder" in order to use it as a way to show a "higher position and authority" over someone else. Some go as far as to abuse the "elder" title to make other people submit to them and manipulate their submissions by assuring that if they do not respect their "eldership" bad things will happen.
In fact, the "elder brother" also can describe a Christian who has been around religion for a long period of time. Because of his "time", the elder brother feels like he is entitled to special priviledges and sneers when the sinners come home to a big feast. In fact, these elder brothers see this as an injustice based on their warped legalistic system of do's and dont's and right and wrong. Many elder brothers love to justify their concern for injustice like the elder brother tried in verses twenty-nine and thirty. They pride themselves on their obedience and their perceived state of holiness. In fact, if you were to look at the Greek translation of verse twenty-nine, the translation (better explained in the NIV and CEV Bible) has the elder brother saying to his father "Look, I have toiled for many years working like slave labor for you". We finally get to the root problem here. We have a son who did not fully understand his rights as a son of his father. This elder brother thought that by working all these years entitled him to the possessions of the father. He thought that in order to be a good son, he had to be a good slave. In other words, in order to be a pure and acceptable temple to his father, he had to create upon himself a system of legalistic laws composed of his own taboos and totems to follow when the father had already established and provided mercy, grace, healing, and atonement to distinguish temple from taboo/totem in order for us to experience the lifestyle of temple. The son was so incensed that the father did not follow the concept of entitlement by not giving him a goat to share with his friends while the prodigal got the fatted calf. The elder son tried to justify his entitlement of the fatted calf and the son's right to nothing through his warped sense of self-made taboos while trying to use both his self-made and God ordained taboo to justify his reward.
I find it very confusing and tragic that the elder brother (verse 30) knew that the younger brother had spent his money on prostitutes and other forms of debauchery. How did this elder brother know this information? It's apparent that the brother knew about his younger sibling but the father did not know that the younger son was alive because in verse twenty-four, the father had pretty much presumed his younger son to be lost and dead. Heresay, rumors proven to be fact, or did the elder brother spy on the younger brother to keep account in order to justify his self-imposed taboos/totems to make him appear more holy? We have elder brother's today in God's kingdom who feel like they have to "spy" on people knowing their every action, words, and deeds in order to use these actions, words, and deeds for their advantage. What kind of brother was the elder brother? A sick and dysfunctional brother. If the father would have known that his younger son was still alive and was living in this foreign land fulfilling taboos leading to a totemic death, the father would have been like the shepherd in Luke 15:1-7 and left his "ninety nine" percent of his valued possessions and went after the one percent that mattered to him above the ninety-nine percent of his possessions, his son. The father would have tried to apply the principles stated in Jude 22-23 to rescue the younger son from the grasps of totem. The elder brother, caught in his own rules, regulations, and legalisms (his self-imposed slave mentality) saw the brother's state of well being and concluded through his own legalisms and not the father's atonement that "the younger son deserved this lifestyle for the poor choices he made". In other words, this elder son did not love his younger son and was so bound to his legalism to make an attempt to talk the younger son out of the lifestyle of totem.
If the elder brother had just asked his father for a goat, the father would have given him a fatted calf also because the father emphasized in verse thirty-one that everything that belongs to me is yours. You are not a slave, you are a son. In fact, God told Isaiah in chapter forty-three verse one that "I have called you by name, you are mine". When a father adopts a child, he may not be the biological father but he now becomes the provider of the needs for the son. The father looked at the elder son and stated that the elder son was, is, and will always remain his son. Therefore it was time for the elder son to quit being a slave and to take his rightful place as a son and experience the benefits that sons are entitled to.
If the common Biblical interpretation and analogy of the elder brother to the Pharisees is true, I doubt that the elder brother joined the party and celebrated his brother's arrival. How tragic that is, but we see it everyday. I also find it amazing that Jesus does not re-mention the concept of angels and citizens of heaven rejoicing over one coin or sheep in the story of the Prodigal Son. Why? Do Christians with Pharisee attitudes value material possessions more than human souls? We spend numerous amounts of time, money, and energy to find a lost material item that is ours but when a brother or sister of ours has left the temple for the taboo and totem. We do not spend the time, energy, and money to find him or her. Are we like the elder brother who is caught up in fulfilling the rigid laws of his new holy totems that he calls God to the point that we feel like that lost brother or sister in Christ "got what they deserved". Or has our man made legalistic totems we boldy call "of God" drive us to the point of looking for evil in everything.
Many Christians today are like this elder brother. Instead of living by the Bible, we have instituted our own system of legalistic laws composed of our own taboos and totems that we follow. Instead of knowing that we are sons to the father, we act like slaves and enforce our man-made rules to the point where we are under bondage to these man made rules. Where this man-made system of legalism becomes dangerous and explosive is when we decide to use many of the same taboos and totems prohibited in the Bible to compose our own legalistic system. Because we have mixed God with this legalistic mentality of what we have determined is acceptable / rejectable, we think that our values and our personal standards that we have made into taboos and totems are automatically blessed by God himself. We therefore add to the commandments of God and because it seems to fit what God says, we call it "of God". Instead of telling others about the true lifestyle of true Christian temple living, we give people the newly-formed legalism concocted in our fleshly thinking and say "It's God, and God said that (substitute anything here you think is wrong because you don't like it) is evil and will send you to hell". Legalism, in a nutshell, is the quest for an impossible, costly, man-made religious perfectionalism focusing on performance and avoidance of certain behaviors (taboos) to obtain spiritual acceptance instead of accepting the free gift of love, hope, peace, and acceptance Christ provided for us through Calvary.
We love to take the latest and newest things that affect culture and "look for evil" within that culture. We then take our man made totems we call "of God" and use them to either point out a sin or we "make it a sin" because we do not like that new style, trend, movie, etc. We warn others about the thirty-nine cuss words, the two scenes of nudity, the three scenes of violence, and the two scenes of "hidden mysticisms" in the latest movie as if we did God a big favor to receive another jewel in our heavenly crown by exposing the enemy. We did not expose the enemy, the enemy exposed himself because it is his nature to expose himself and his nakedness openly. In fact, Adam and Eve tried to use fig leaves as a physical attempt to cover their sin which left them naked. If you look at Indian or other pagan rituals involving totem poles and so-called atonement for taboos, we find that the celebration of open nakedness is present. People dance naked around their idoltry celebrating their idoltry. However, when we look for evil, we are not discovering some secret plot and conspiracy theory to brainwash the youth of America and use fear to scare people to promote our viewpoint. The sin and the filth present is obvious even to many of the unsaved people in the world. Even the unsaved come together in order to stop shootings in our schools, domestic violence, or explicit homey-boy rap lyrics about 'gangsta life'. However, when it is time to be like the shepherd, the woman, or the father to find the lost, we tend to take the elder brother Pharasee attitude and choose not to search for our lost brother and sister in Christ in the name of misinterpreting 1 Thessalonians 5:22 by "Avoiding all appearance of evil" and not going into the highways and places where the runaway brother is. By "avoiding" evil, we think we look good and justify our good deeds when our heavenly father asks us to celebrate a sinner who has come home from the foreign lands. We even go as far as to ask others about their sin-stricken condition without asking and visiting the sinner himself in his dysfunctional spiritual state. Even though he is still your spiritual brother in Christ. We may live in this world but we are not of this world. We live in a world where evil is prevalent, but many Christians are not of the prevalent state of evil. Therefore, we decommission the Great Commission and turn from living a lifestyle of being a son of Christ to a slave of our man-made taboo/totem we called "of God" and focus on the internal world we have created.
Click here for part five of Taboo to Temple.
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