Thread by @Delafina777

Christian parable interpretation is an antisemitic Mobius strip, a thread:

Christians: Jesus told the parable of the Prodigal Son as a rebuke to the Pharisees because they hated the idea of forgiving sinners, as evidenced by the fact that they objected to him dining with tax collectors.

Jews: no...? that's not how ANY of that worked?

The Pharisees most likely were objecting to the fact that Jesus was extending forgiveness to people who hadn't actually shown any sign that they were even sorry for doing something that harmed their neighbors.

like, the tax collectors hadn't quit being tax collectors?

okay, so that's the setup

Christians are claiming that the Pharisaic insistence that people demonstrate, through behavior, that they were trying to stop doing the harm in question before being forgiven for it was evil

ok.

So along comes Mary Ann Beavis, a sorta-feminist Christian scholar, who's like, hang on, this parable causes a lot of problems.

Because it's really easy to read this parable as saying God favors a repentant abuser over the abuser's victims.

It also gives a lot of cover to people in power who knowingly harm the vulnerable, and then position themselves as the prodigal son, and therefore somehow morally superior to the vulnerable people they harmed who have never "strayed"

and, like, yup

that's one of the issues I've always had with the positioning of this parable as having The Most True, Compassionate Message Ever

and most Christian commentators that cite her elsewhere ignore her commentary on this particular parable

but lo and behold, Craig Blomberg (author of one of the more popular textbooks on the parables for evangelical seminaries) actually addresses it

Wanna guess what his response is?

"[A]busive individuals who take no substantive steps toward changing their behavior have not even begun to 'return home' and thus dare not be treated like the younger son in this story."

So just to review:

when challenged on how to make sure this parable isn't used as a shield for abusers, a major Christian commentator's response is to endorse exactly the same position he, earlier, claims Jesus was rebuking the Pharisees for holding

so I guess "don't forgive people who aren't sorry" is only a problem for Christians when it's a position held by Jews

anyway, maybe your entire read is wrong when the most obvious challenge in the world immediately makes you endorse the position you claim a story is criticizing