I was once a four-foot-tall enforcer. I followed the rules, and I wanted to make sure other children did too. I told my parents one time that I could control the misbehaving boys in my class with just a look.
Only later, when I was fully grown, did I recognize myself in the character of the older brother from the parable of the prodigal son. Like him, my problem wasn’t that I tried to do what was right. It was that I took pride in doing what was right. It made me feel like I deserved God’s approval.
That’s why, when Ginger Blomberg’s manuscript about a preschool prodigal came across my desk, it made me squirm at first. It reminded me that no matter how well I keep the rules, I cannot earn God’s approval. But thanks be to God, that approval is freely offered to me—as well as to other “older brothers” and prodigals of all stripes—through Jesus Christ.
Charlie and the Preschool Prodigal is the newest book in our TGC Kids series. It retells the parable of the prodigal son in a modern-day, fictional setting. Whether your kids are rule keepers or boundary pushers, this is a story they need. It’s never too early to start teaching your children about God’s grace.
I interviewed Blomberg about why she wrote the book and the message she hopes will come through to kids (and parents).
Where did the idea for Charlie and the Preschool Prodigal come from?
Around the time I turned 30, I read The Prodigal God by Tim Keller. The book’s description of God’s grace changed my life, and it is still changing my life. Keller’s analysis of Jesus’s parable of the prodigal son, with its extended discussion on the older brother’s equal need for grace, reoriented my thinking on many things, including my relationships with my own siblings and my children.
Eddie, the younger brother in the story, is an amalgamation of stories about my younger siblings and my own kids. My little brother really did crash down the stairs in a cardboard box (I’m pretty sure I pushed him; although, in my defense, he was enthusiastic about trying it). Once, one of my toddlers wandered out of our front yard—near a busy street— while I was putting away some toys in the carport. He hid under a neighbor’s bush for the longest four minutes of my life before I found him. A couple of Eddie’s antics are fabricated, but most of them have some basis in personal experience.
I based the character of Charlie, the older brother, almost entirely on myself.
What was the biggest challenge to adapting the parable of the prodigal son into a modern-day story for a young audience?
The ending. The original parable’s ending is so countercultural for us. We don’t have a good paradigm for what happens when we work really hard and things don’t turn out the way we wanted. We have been taught to expect and aspire to the kind of story where people who do right actions are rewarded.
Jesus ends his parable with the older brother, the one who believes he has done everything right, feeling resentful and standing outside the feast. He thinks his younger brother has gotten away with some very bad behavior. The father comes outside to the older brother and invites him to join the feast, but Jesus does not tell us how the older brother responds.
The older brother’s intentional separation from his father and brother here shows that he needs his father’s grace every bit as much as his reckless younger brother does. It was a difficult decision, but with the advice and blessing of my editor, I left the older brother’s final choice unknown in this story, just like Jesus does in the original parable.
What does self-righteousness look like in a child’s world?
A self-righteous child might look like Luisa in Encanto, cracking under the pressure (drip, drip, drip). Or like Edward in The Prince and the Pauper, swinging between the fear of letting people down and a desire to just run away from it all. Or like Elsa, the ice queen in Frozen, who would rather live in isolation than risk making a big mistake.
It might look like Alice Wendleken, the “holy-looking” girl in The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, who keeps a list of every naughty thing the Herdman kids do, hoping to get them kicked out of the Christmas pageant and the church. Or Javert, who gave his life to pursuing Jean Valjean in Les Miserables because he could not stand the idea that someone, somewhere, may have gotten away with something.
Of course, it might look like the older brother in the parable of the prodigal son who cuts himself off from his brother and his father because of his own self-righteousness.
Each of these manifestations has the same core error; each of those characters is thinking, Everything depends on me. It might be exhilarating, but it’s also a frightening burden to feel like you are in charge of the world. Self-righteousness is lonely because very few people can measure up to our exacting standards.
In my experience, childhood self-righteousness feels like trying to do things right, not out of love but out of pride, fear, or hope of recognition. It was defined by a very small comprehension of God’s grace. It’s only when we are grasped by the astounding gift of God’s grace that we become able to extend grace to others.
How would you, as a parent, talk with children who struggle with the way Eddie’s dad lets him off the hook?
No one, including Eddie, ever really gets “off the hook.” The book does not detail the consequences Eddie might face later, but it implies that he will have some in addition to the natural consequences of fear and separation he experiences when he runs away.
It is important that we teach our kids the law by providing them with consequences for their actions. The Bible is clear that sin always has consequences (Rom. 6:23). God’s law teaches us about goodness and justice, gives us wisdom for living well, and provides instructions for making this broken world a better place. More importantly, though, the law is a road to lead us to God through grace.
Grace is the other vital part of this answer. All sin costs; the only question is who pays. Justice is when the sinner pays. Injustice is when the victim pays. Grace is when God fulfills justice by paying the cost himself. The Bible is clear that no matter how well we follow the law, none of us can follow it perfectly enough to actually save ourselves (Rom. 3:23; Eph. 2). Salvation can only come through Jesus Christ, who lived and loved perfectly (2 Cor. 5:21).
Because we are all broken, we all have a natural bent to try to either escape justice or pay everything ourselves rather than turning to God. Some of us try to save ourselves by just running away from the cost of the law, like the younger brother in Jesus’s parable of the prodigal son. Some of us, like the parable’s older brother, try to save ourselves by following the law, thinking if we can just do everything right, we can work hard enough to pay off all the costs somehow. In “older brother” thinking, God owes us something.
Eddie needs there to be consequences, but even more than that—the whole point of the consequences and the reunion—he needs to be safe in his father’s love. His older brother needs exactly the same thing. Charlie thinks he has earned the right to tell his brother and father what to do, but his self-righteous, unloving attitude is evidence that he needs his father’s grace and love just as much as his brother does.
We need a right relationship with our Heavenly Father. But as sinners, we don’t have a way to come to him. The only way is God’s grace. Without the law, grace is cheap. Without grace, the law is crushing. Praise God, Jesus has fulfilled the law and given us grace.
The Gospel Coalition