The most giving person I ever knew was someone I would never want as a role model in any way shape or form. She never worked (even to the neglecting her kids), but generously gave money away for everything that served her interests. She bought friends and eventually, with the help of her husband's money, caught the attention of another man, who became her next husband.
This lady was self-serving. Everything she did with her money served her own self-interests; and yet she was very generous with what she had. In fact, she was so generous, that some people mistook her generosity for Christian benevolence. It wasn't.
The Prodigal Son in Luke 15 was like the lady I am referring to. His story is set in the context of a book that tells us to let go of money, to give generously to those who do not have, and to buy a position for the coming kingdom. The Prodigal Son generously shared the money he inherited, but his generosity was self-serving.
The Prodigal Son wanted friends and he wanted them fast. He had just left home and needed to cover his lonlieness with fun and with friends. He didn't have time to make real friends, which would take months if not years, so with the money he got from his father he was able to get friends to join him in his newfound freedom. He felt comradity with these new strangers. They drank, partied and had fun together. His money was able to get that; but when his money ran out, his friends did too, leaving him alone.
After living in poverty, the Prodigal Son came to his senses and returned to his home, like a dog with his tail between his legs; where his father welcomed him back with celebration.
Because of jealousy and the injustice of it all, the older brother, who was always faithful, endangered his own position in the family by rejecting his father's invitation to celebrate. What was his problem?
1. The older brother felt entitled to his father's inheritance and to most of his father's love and attention. He deserved it because he was faithful to his father.
2. The older brother saw injustice. His father seemed to love his brother more than him. And his brother dishonored his father. His brother did not deserve the attention he got, he deserved a strong lashing.
This is a parable that focuses on the injustice of God - injustice from a human point of view. God unfairly rewards people. The same lesson is found in the parable of the laborers in Matthew 20. In Matthew 20, people who worked only one hour were paid the same as those who worked the whole day. Furthermore, the ones who worked only one hour were paid first. If you don't see the injustice of this, put yourself in their feet and think it through. You work 12 hours for a day's wage and someone else comes in and works 1 hour for the same job you do and gets paid 12 times as much per hour as you. Is that fair?
The point of these parables is to drive home that God's generosity is unfair from a human point of view. And this is the main point of Luke 15.
Back to Luke 15. The Prodigal Son was as generous as Jesus taught us to be, but his generosity was self-serving and self-destructive. In the next chapter of Luke, Jesus will teach us to buy friends with the mammon of unrighteousness (money), but while Luke 16 tells us that the friends we buy with money can welcome us into a better world when money runs out, Luke 15 shows us that there are people who will receive our generosity, but in return will give us nothing good when money runs out.
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