The Prodigal Sons

It's taken me a little while, but at the end of November I was challenged by a set of talks given by Richard Brewster on our church weekend away about the parable of the lost son. Particularly, it was suggested that there were actually two lost sons, as the elder son who gets upset when the younger son returns and is welcomed, is also lost to his father.

The parable points thus to two sinful sons. The younger is foolish, impatient, aberrant and blows his wealth enjoying the world and all it offers. The elder though is self-righteous and also has a substandard relationship with his father because of this, throwing a strop because the younger son is forgiven, and revealing in doing so that he also doesn't have a good relationship with his father either.

What struck me during these talks was the parallel with the welfare state. The elder son essentially rails on about the deserving poor, wondering why generosity is afforded to those who do not deserve it. It sounds quite familier - a lot like what many are saying about benefits recipients at the moment. The elder son is in the same boat as the folk that complain about the level of benefits: They are forced to live in a system that takes from them and redistributes to others who they see as undeserving of that.

But does the parable really mean that we should thus submit to a government that redistributes? Is the role of the father in the parable, and hence the Father that the parable points to, really to be taken up by governments, or should it just be the role of individuals giving voluntarily? After all, God loves a cheerful givers. I'm not a theologian, so I don't want to push the theological links any further and appeal to those who know much more than I.

My only concern with the privatised situation is that charitable giving, by definition, has positive externalities. This means that the free market outcome will yield a level of giving that is socially sub-optimal, even though it is privately optimal, because private individuals don't realise the full benefit of their giving. Of course though, the solution is not necessarily that we totally nationalise the redistribution system - the optimal solution would be some kind of subsidy to the process, in theory. I haven't really thought fully through whether that would work, nor even bothered to look into what people have written on this in the academic literature. But it intrigues me.

Are those that moan about the excessive levels of benefits simply elder sons, and just as estranged from their Father as those who frivolously waste the Father's good gifts?