Mercy Always Runs Faster Than Judgment
Mercy Always Runs Faster Than Judgment
Does the Lord God hate LGBTQ people?
Does He not love them—those first made in His image? Does divine love somehow curdle into hatred because some asked for their inheritance early and went out into the world to live licentiously?
Does the love of a father—of a good father—turn to hatred because of a child’s choices?
Good fathers are patient. And good sons and daughters, raised by good fathers, though they may not initially understand that patience, often come to recognize it in time. They remember the words spoken in love, the mercy offered without explanation, the inexplicable affection that remained even when they wandered far from home—whether that wandering child was a son, a daughter, or a soul that refuses simple categories.
Anyone who still reads their Bible will recognize the pattern being invoked here. This is the parable of the prodigal son—so often thrown like a weapon, rather than received as a mirror.
A Necessary Digression: Why the Prodigal Son, Not the Daughter?
It is worth pausing to ask why our Lord chose a son for this parable, and not a daughter. A daughter who went away to live licentiously in first-century patriarchal Israel would have had no clear path back. She would not have been met with feasting and song. She would have been deemed dishonoured—perhaps even marked for death. Only men were afforded the cultural luxury of failure followed by redemption.
I am not certain this digression is strictly necessary, but I am a bondsman to the pen, and this is the work it requires of me.
Back to the Son
Now imagine the prodigal still on his wayward path, still flush with enough money to live as he pleased. Suppose he came to harm at the hands of another—seriously injured, perhaps even killed—and the news reached his father.
What do you think that father’s response would have been?
Here, the earlier digression begins to illuminate the story. In the imagined case of a prodigal daughter, the father might have been bound by the customs of his time. He might have sent men to erase her from memory. But in the case of a son, he would have sent men to avenge him. They would bring his body home for burial. He would be mourned. He would be honoured.
(As for the daughter’s body—please, do not ask.)
Now imagine again: the son, reduced to feeding from a swine trough, broken and hungry, killed by cruel hands. If the father had sent ten soldiers the first time, in his wrath he would now send a hundred.
Why?
Because to kill a man already crushed by life would be, in his eyes, an unforgivable act—one that cried out for retribution. The father would hate those who harmed his son, even though the son had willingly left the household.
The sin of the son, after all, was against the father alone—against his dignity, his comfort, his security—and against himself. It harmed no one else. But those who raised a hand against him would face the full weight of the father’s wrath.
The Samaritan Re-Imagined
Now imagine the parable of the Good Samaritan differently.
Suppose the man beaten and left for dead on the roadside was none other than the prodigal son himself, on his way home after wasting everything. The priest passes by. The Levite passes by. But the Samaritan stops.
You know who the Samaritans were—those not carried off to Babylon, those who intermarried, those despised by the returnees. Outsiders. Compromised. Unclean.
The Samaritan tends the wounded man, takes him to an inn, and pays for his care. The next day the prodigal awakens and tells the Samaritan his name, and where he is going—to his father’s house.
Now imagine the father seeing his son from afar, running toward him, robe flapping, dignity forgotten. Imagine the tears, the joy, the feast prepared in haste. And then imagine the moment the father learns who brought his son home.
A Samaritan.
Can you picture the father’s gratitude? His reverence? His love for the stranger who showed mercy when others would not?
Mercy Always Runs Faster Than Judgment
This leaves each of us with a question we must answer honestly for ourselves.
How many prodigal sons and daughters are scattered across the world, hungry not for approval but for grace? How many have you helped bring home?
How many fathers, bent with grief over their wayward children, have you sent running down the valley in joy—robes flapping, dignity forgotten, tears streaming as they rush to embrace a returning son or daughter?
That is the measure.
I rest my case.
Don Kenobi
#MyFrancisEssays
#OldManInTheMolue
#MercyNotJudgment
#MercyAlwaysRunsFasterThanJudgment
#MercyOrJudgment
#TheProdigalSonMeetsTheGoodSamaritan
.png)
