The Shame of a Prodigal Daughter

Several years ago my wife and others hosted a Valentine’s Day outreach for local women. As a part of the event, they read the story of the prodigal son from Luke 15, and led a discussion about its meaning and implications.

Surprisingly, when they asked the local ladies what they thought about the father’s response to the return of his wayward son, these ladies responded that the response was right and good. “That’s what a father should do for a son.”

Either my wife or one of our teammates then posed the question differently. “What if it had been a prodigal daughter rather than a prodigal son?”

At this question, the mood of the room shifted dramatically. Everyone knew that a prodigal daughter should never be welcomed home and forgiven like that. No, if it had been a daughter rather than a son who had dishonored her family by wasting her inheritance on prostitutes in a far country, she would be a dead woman. She would never be welcomed home with joy and celebration. Instead, if she showed her face again the men of the family would have to kill her in order to restore their honor in the eyes of the community.

In this situation, because of their own culture these local women didn’t feel the shamefulness of the younger son’s actions, even after it had been explained to them. But when the connection had been made with an equivalent example from their own culture, then the weightiness – and the scandalous nature – of the father’s actions sunk in.

Much has been made of the connections between contemporary Middle Eastern/Central Asian honor-shame cultures and the cultures of the New Testament era. And there are many similarities. These cultures are certainly closer to one another than they are to the modern west. Yet there are also some very significant differences that mean a direct understanding or resonance with New Testament era culture shouldn’t be assumed.

One major difference would be the way in which our Central Asian culture places the burden of the family’s honor almost entirely on the conduct of their women (at least in part a downstream effect of Islam). The honorable reputation, community standing, and future prospects of the extended family all hinge on whether the community believes the young women and the married women are sexually pure and faithful. If I had to quantify it, I’d say it’s something like ninety percent of family honor that comes down to this. The other ten percent is made up of whether or not the men are hospitable, loyal patrons and clients, not thieves, not drunkards, not gamblers, and if they come from a line of honorable fathers.

The men do have a small part to play in maintaining the family honor, but in general they are given all kinds of grace and freedom to go out and sow their wild oats. At the end of day, they are the beloved sons who will be welcomed home by mama and papa and all will be forgiven. The same cannot be said for the daughters of the family. One misstep – or one nasty rumor – can spell disaster for them. This is why the women of our people group are so much more observant in their Islam. It’s also why believing women are outnumbered by believing men by about ten to one. If you feel that this is terribly unjust, you are right. 

So, what does the gospel laborer do in this kind of situation where the culture means the locals do not understand and feel the point of the parable? In our telling of the story, should we replace the son in the parable with a daughter? Not at all. Though it may be tempting to do something like this, we must remember the proper roles of the word and the culture when it comes to communicating God’s truth. The word of God is where all the authority and the grounding of our teaching comes from. The culture, on the other hand, is what we use to illustrate.

Rather than replacing the prodigal son with a prodigal daughter upfront, instead we need to explain what this parable would have meant and felt like to the original audience. Then, we use a comparable example of shamefulness and scandalous forgiveness from our target culture to help our hearers wrestle with the offensive grace communicated by Jesus in this parable. In this way, we are being faithful to God’s powerful word as it was originally revealed, and we are also doing our best to help our audience understand it with both their heads and their hearts. This is in fact just what the ladies on our team did during their Valentine’s outreach.

Any of us reformed-types who scoff at the study of culture out of a professed trust in the word of God are missing something important here; namely, that effective teaching and preaching requires more than faithful exegesis of the text and argumentation. It also requires faithful illustration and application. To do all of this you must study the text first, and then study your people.

As with any culture, the honor-shame dynamics of our Central Asian culture contain both hindrances and helps when it comes to making sense of God’s word. Though they are wrong to place the burden of family honor almost solely on the shoulders of their women, they are not entirely wrong in their belief that sin means that someone must die in order for honor to be restored.

From the very beginning, sin deserves death (Gen 2:17). This divine law has never changed. Their culture simply needs to universalize it. Instead of just women who have allegedly shamed the family, every single individual deserves death because of how he has fallen short of the glory (the honor) of the Father. The amazing good news is that a perfect Son has been killed so that we don’t have to be. He has died in our place and has taken upon himself the righteous anger of the shamed Father. By doing so, he has also satisfied the demands of divine honor (Mark 10:45, Rom 3:21-26).

The local women at the Valentine’s outreach shuddered when they thought of the forgiveness of a prodigal daughter. But such a daughter’s shame is not any greater than their shame, or my shame. The sacrifice of the divine Son means that we no longer need to kill our children to restore the family honor. Someone else can cover that shame and restore honor in the only court that really matters, the eternal one. Whether prodigal sons or daughters or prideful older sisters or brothers, we must all turn from our futile attempts to deal with our sin and shame and trust in him alone.

For any of those local women, to let go of their hard-fought honor and to admit their true shame is a terrifying thing. How could it not be when your conformity has been enforced all your life at knife-point?

But some will. And those who do will know the amazing warmth of the Father’s welcome – and the wonder of his undeserved honor.

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