Prodigals: Finding Home When We’ve Lost the Way

By Greg Ross Taylor

The most famous story of Jesus retold

Prodigals digs deeply into each line from Jesus’s famous parable about the prodigal son, inviting all readers―those down on their luck or high on their horse―to identify as prodigals. A prodigal is anyone who accepts they have a sinful human nature and turns toward the love of home, the place where we find a deeper relationship with God.

Rather than divide the world into prodigals and nonprodigals, Taylor invites readers to find themselves in the teaching of Jesus as either younger or elder siblings. The life-changing power of the book comes when readers begin to identify with the characters in the story and join in the prayers and calls for transformation that conclude the chapters.

-Proceeds from the book benefit 1256movement.org.
-The author has lived and traveled internationally and relates the greatest parable Jesus ever told to his experiences across the United States and countries such as Israel, Uganda, the Netherlands, and Honduras.
-The author has set up an email account to receive prodigal stories from readers for possible inclusion in future editions of Prodigals: [e-mail].

• Language: English
• Publisher: Leafwood Publishers
• Release date: May 2, 2023
• ISBN: 9781684268757

Greg Ross Taylor

Greg Ross Taylor is a home builder in Northeastern Oklahoma and president of 1256Movement.org. Taylor is author of several books, including a coauthored work with Randy Harris titled Living Jesus. He and his wife, Jill, have three adult children and a dachshund named Hershey.

Book preview

1

Sons

There was a man who had two sons.

My Grandpa Ross was a man of few words. He figured Grandma Grace had used their family’s daily allotment of words by breakfast. One day at their barn, I was breaking the ice for the cows and horses. But I made a mistake: I left the gate open. Two horses wandered out and onto the road. One horse bolted toward the nearby state highway. Grandpa grabbed a bucket of feed, and with the help of neighbors, we coaxed the horses back to the safety of the corral. When Grandpa was aggravated, he whinnied like a frustrated horse. He neighed at me a few times that day.

Our neighbors called my grandparents Amazing Grace and Old Rugged Ross. I loved Grandpa Ross and Grandma Grace, who lovingly helped raise me and teach me to ranch, garden, and sit on the porch swing listening to the birds sing while twiddling our thumbs.

My grandparents fell victim, however, to a narrow and harmful interpretation of this beloved parable of Jesus. Many churches, preachers, and teachers have told the greatest story of Jesus in such a way that hearers like my grandparents were ready to divide the world—even their families—between the faithful and the prodigals. Could it be that the most popular interpretation of this parable has been badly bungled? Here’s how such an interpretation of the parable impacted my family.

My grandparents had two sons, my dad and my uncle Rudy. One day when Rudy was an adult, he used a new translation of the Bible to teach a class in the small Kansas-town church where my grandfather was an elder. The other elders decided this version was not authorized and took over Rudy’s teaching responsibilities. One elder’s way of teaching the class was to say that the old half of the Bible did not matter. The takeover of his class and the misleading teaching led my uncle and his family to attend a church up the road.

The fallout was swift: my grandpa, humiliated, resigned as elder, believing he was no longer qualified because his youngest son had left the truth. Many families understand what it is like to have conflict with their relatives. When my uncle would visit his parents, tension filled the air. Normal things that would ordinarily be reasons for celebration—like the time he told his parents he had baptized his children—became awkward. My grandparents could only return blank stares, silence, and whispers of grave concern. They were now worried not only about their son’s eternal state but their grandchildren’s as well.

Meanwhile, Uncle Rudy and Aunt Kathy served for decades at that church up the road. A woman at their church once told my uncle he could be thankful his parents cared enough to take a stand, even if wrongly handled. He said he holds no grudges—just grief for what was lost. There is much lost in many families that take an excluding line against prodigals in their own families. I am not claiming my read on the parable is the only one or even the right one. But I want to excavate and reexamine interpretations of the Bible in general and this parable in particular that do harm to people.

The story Jesus tells opens with the classic line, There was a man who had two sons. The first surprise of the story is that Jesus calls neither son prodigal. Prodigal does not appear in the text of the parable. Someone titled the story The Prodigal Son as a heading in one Bible translation, and it has since appeared in others. Prodigal is a mysterious word, because it can mean wasteful, lavish, and excessive in negative or positive ways. Most often, however, rule makers use prodigal to describe those they think are stinkers.

Luke is the only biblical writer who tells this story of the man who had two sons. Luke puts the story together with two other parables. One common theme in each of the parables is lost and found things.

My wife’s grandmother, Ma Rudd, went to Russia and brought back wooden nesting dolls. You open two halves of the large doll, and there is a smaller doll inside. Repeat this a half-dozen times until there is the tiniest doll that cannot open. Like Russian nesting dolls, Luke nests these three parables inside the context of Jesus interacting with religious opposition, and that subplot nests inside the life story of Jesus.

Interestingly, it was people who knew they were sinners who had gathered to hear Jesus tell stories. The religion teachers muttered under their breath, This man welcomes sinners and eats with them (Luke 15:2). Jesus decided the religious people needed to stay for story time and began telling a series of three parables.

The first of the three stories is about a shepherd who loses a lamb. He has a hundred sheep, and the shepherd leaves the ninety-nine to search for one lost lamb. When the shepherd finds the lamb, he calls his friends together and they celebrate. To the stubborn religious folks with folded arms, Jesus brings the message home: In the same way there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent (v. 7).

The second story is about a woman who has ten coins, and one goes missing. Can’t we all relate to the stress of losing a wallet, phone, keys? She wastes no time and lights a lantern, sweeps the whole house, and, whoa yeah, she finds it! Can’t we all relate to the joy of finding those lost keys?! She calls her neighbors over and says, Let’s party! I had lost a coin but have found it! A second time Jesus says, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents (v. 10).

These two parables set up the longest of the three stories, the one about a man who had two sons. An important thing to remember for now is that these opening words signal that the story is not only about one son, not about one prodigal. There are other visible and off-screen characters in the story who are also