Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life

by Richard Rohr

The loyal soldier is similar to the “elder son” in Jesus' parable of the prodigal son. His very loyalty to strict meritocracy, to his own entitlement, to obedience and loyalty to his father, keeps him from the very “celebration” that same father has prepared, even though he begs the son to come to the feast (Luke 15:25–32). We have no indication he ever came! What a judgment this is on first-stage religion, and it comes straight from the boss. He makes the same point in his story of the Pharisee and the tax collector (Luke 18:9–14), in which one is loyal and observant and deemed wrong by Jesus, and the other has not obeyed the law—yet is deemed “at rights with God.” This is classic “reverse theology” meant to subvert our usual merit-badge thinking. Both the elder son and the Pharisee are good loyal religious soldiers, exactly what most of us in the church were told to be, yet Jesus says that both of them missed the major point.