Elder Brother Syndrome

I've been thinking recently about the Parable of the Prodigal Son that Jesus tells. The focus, in most retellings of the story, centers either around the return of the Prodigal or the forgiveness of the father. Very rarely have I heard anyone focus upon the elder brother, and yet, the elder brother is a real religious archetype: the "good" person who rarely does anything blatantly wrong, who follows the rules, who pays his fair share of taxes, who does his homework, who does not drink and drive, who only takes calculated risks -- a person, who, in short, thinks before he acts, and who usually behaves.

It is this person, this very admirable person, who haunts the last part of Jesus' story. True the lost son, the sinner, the profligate, the reprobate, the squanderer, the petty criminal has come home. True, his good and loving father welcomes his lost son as a son and not as a failure. And the story is conceptually powerful if left just that way -- one fallen child saved by the love of a father. Why then does Jesus even include the elder brother?

The elder brother may be Jesus' attempt to address the realities of a religion and a morality that becomes a social and familial norm. There are many of us who having grown up in morally respectable homes and societies are under a certain amount of social pressure to behave well. There are also many of us who have not become reprobates chiefly because of our foresight and not because of our inherent goodness. In other words, "all we, like sheep have gone astray," but some have not gone far (at least physically). In some ways it seems as if the ones who have not strayed much may actually be less courageous, if more careful, than their freely straying peers.

It is perhaps for this reason that youth rallies and conferences that pride themselves on creating an emotional response are often forums for the testimonies of people who have lived a very prodigal life and have come back to the love of God. Sometimes those testimonies leave those of us who haven't been very blatantly prodigal feeling left out.

This feeling of alienation in the face of blatant redemption from blatant sin is a condition I would like to call, Elder Brother Syndrome. The description of the disorder is as follows:

Elder Brother Syndrome (EBS) is a spiritual disorder brought on by living a carefully regimented religiously motivated and controlled lifestyle and then being exposed to the conversion and redemption of someone who has recently converted from a prodigal lifestyle. The symptoms include jealousy, self-righteousness, a tendency to denigrate the repentance of others, and an estrangement from community.

Severe EBS can lead to religious exclusivism, complete renunciation of faith, and anger at God.

Treatment is difficult. Many people suffering from EBS know that they are in the wrong, but are unable to find a way out. Jesus told Nicodemus (a Pharisee) that a person has to be born "anew" (also translated "by the spirit") in order to enter the kingdom of heaven. I suppose that is really the only answer. We can only get rid of our ugly pettiness and jealousies by letting ourselves be transformed into the likeness of his love.

But for most of us elder brothers, such abstractions are nice but not compelling. So in addition to asking for transformation from above (the ultimate cure), let me offer some other ways in which the effects of EBS may be mitigated:

1) Prayer - Pray that God will remove your jealousy and allow you to rejoice in the salvation of a lost person.

2) Perspective - Realize that your life of right living has laid a foundation which will allow you to live life with less regrets than your more phenomenally saved brothers and sisters. For example, if you avoided having children outside of marriage, or taking drugs, or having extra-marital sex, you also avoided the lasting physical consequences of such actions like estrangement from your children, liver, kidney and brain damage, and sexually transmitted disease. One has to remind oneself that it was not simply cowardice that kept you from walking into darkness; it was your own foresight, the controls placed upon you by a protective community, and the protection of God.

3) Pride - Don't hold on to arrogant self-righteous pride that wants everyone to acknowledge you as the best example of Christianity. Instead take pride in the fact that God has called you out of darkness into light, too. One way of conceptualizing this is as follows: We are often struck by the poignancy of the tales of conversion told by Prodigals. Compared to their stories, those of us who were "brought up in the church" seem to have nothing to say. Part of this is because modern humanity (and particularly the US) has devalued the power of generational legacy. When we think of legacy we often think of it as simply being about money and property. But there are greater legacies. I think that our EBS could be mitigated if we only knew and could pass down the powerful conversion stories of our ancestors. You may have been "brought up in the church," but someone, some when was converted and did make the prodigal's leap into the arms of the Father. We are all recipients of his mercy. These stories should be told so that later generations do not feel they need to reinvent the Fall.

4) Penitence -- One other necessary treatment for EBS is to look realistically at your own sin. You may not be a blatant and profligate sinner, but "all have sinned and fall short of the Glory of God." In our weakness, we can see our need for His Grace and in turn can bless that grace as it flows to others.

One of the hardest things to do is to come in and celebrate for someone who we do not feel is getting what he or she deserves. We have to give up all of our notions of fairness, swallow our pride, take the first step, and pray for the father to run and greet our prodigal hearts.