What the Prodigal Son Teaches Us About Judgment, Grace, and Who We Are Becoming
One of the most profound lessons I take from Henri Nouwen’s The Return of the Prodigal Son is that this is not simply a story about three different people. It is a story about all of us.
Throughout our lives, at different times and in different circumstances, we can find ourselves in each of the three central characters. We are the prodigal son who wanders and loses his way. We are the son who stays, does what is expected, yet struggles with resentment and judgment. And, as we mature in love, we are called to become like the father—the one who welcomes, forgives, restores, and loves.
Perhaps we don’t even inhabit these characters one at a time. On the same day, we might welcome one person with the compassion of the father, judge another with the resentment of the older son, and quietly wander from our own values like the younger son. We may be the father in one relationship, the older brother in another, and the prodigal in some private corner of our own lives.
The three characters, then, are not simply stages we pass through. They can also represent postures of the heart that exist within us at the same time. The question is not merely which character we are. It is which posture of the heart we are choosing in each encounter.
This understanding was central to Nouwen’s own encounter with the parable. After years of reflecting on Rembrandt’s The Return of the Prodigal Son, Nouwen came to recognize himself in all three figures. He saw himself in the younger son who left and needed to come home. He recognized himself in the older son whose outward faithfulness could coexist with resentment and comparison. Eventually, however, he arrived at a more challenging realization: recognizing himself in the sons was not the destination. He was called to become the father.
That insight has profound implications for how we treat one another. If I have been the prodigal, how quickly should I condemn someone who is lost? If I have been the older son, how certain should I be about the purity of my own motives? And if I hope to become more like the father, shouldn’t my response to another human being increasingly begin with love?
Perhaps this is one reason we are called to love rather than judge: we never know which chapter of another person’s story we are witnessing—and, if we are honest, we have lived more than one of those chapters ourselves.
The Two Sons Within Us
There are times in life when we wander. Sometimes our wandering is obvious. We make poor decisions, hurt people, pursue things that ultimately leave us empty, or distance ourselves from our values, relationships, faith, or even from the person we once hoped to become. Other forms of wandering are much quieter. A person can remain in the same home, workplace, marriage, community, or church and still become emotionally or spiritually far from home.
Most of us, if we look honestly at our lives, can identify moments when we lost our way. We made decisions we would make differently today. We believed things we no longer believe. We said things we wish we could take back. Somewhere along the way, many of us needed patience when we didn’t deserve it, forgiveness when we couldn’t undo what we had done, and someone willing to believe that our worst moment did not have to become our permanent identity.
Remembering those moments should create humility when we encounter someone else’s mistakes. It is easy to look at another person’s life from the outside and believe we understand their story. But we rarely know the fears they carry, the wounds they have experienced, the circumstances that shaped them, or the battles taking place within them.
That does not mean harmful choices should be ignored. Love and accountability are not opposites. We can hold someone accountable while protecting their dignity. We can establish boundaries without hatred, disagree without dehumanizing, and say, “What you did was wrong,” without concluding, “Therefore, you are beyond redemption.”
Compassion is not the abandonment of accountability. It is the refusal to abandon the human being.
Then there is the older son, perhaps the more uncomfortable character because his lostness is harder to recognize. He stayed. He worked. He fulfilled his responsibilities. He apparently did what was expected of him. Yet when his brother returned and received the father’s embrace, something that had been growing within him came to the surface: resentment.
We know that voice too. After everything I’ve done, why does that person deserve another chance? Why are they being celebrated? What about me?
The older son reminds us that we can do many of the right things while allowing the wrong things to grow within our hearts. We can be responsible and still become resentful, faithful and yet unforgiving, successful while quietly envious, or morally certain while lacking compassion. We can even begin believing that our good choices have earned us the right to judge people whose failures happen to be more visible than our own.
The younger son’s brokenness is easy to see because he leaves home; the older son’s brokenness is easier to hide because he stays. Yet both, in different ways, have become separated from the father’s heart. That should give us pause whenever we feel morally superior to another person. Sometimes the judgment we direct toward someone else reveals something within ourselves that still needs healing.
Becoming the Father
Nouwen’s deeper invitation is not simply to decide which son we resemble. It is to grow beyond both.
In his reflections on the parable, Nouwen came to understand compassionate fatherhood in terms of grief, forgiveness, and generosity. The father’s response is not driven by comparison or competition. He sees the returning son and moves toward him. He does not pretend that nothing happened, nor does he declare the son’s choices wise or harmless. But neither does he reduce his son to those choices.
The past matters. But the past does not receive the final word.
At Heartitude, we talk about learning to lead, live, and love from the heart. Perhaps becoming the father is one of the clearest pictures of what that means. It means becoming someone who creates the conditions in which another person can move toward restoration. Sometimes that means forgiving or listening. Sometimes it means encouraging or offering another chance. Sometimes it requires establishing a necessary boundary while refusing to become consumed by bitterness. And sometimes it simply means communicating through our words and actions: You are more than the worst thing you have ever done.
There is, however, an important distinction. The father does not force the son to return. The son must eventually turn toward home himself.
We cannot force another person to change. We cannot make someone reconcile, confront an addiction, release resentment, reconsider a belief, apologize for harm, repair a relationship, or choose a different path. Loving another person does not give us control over their journey.
What we can decide is what they will encounter from us if and when they turn toward home.
Will they encounter humiliation and an I told you so? Will they encounter a permanent record of every mistake they have made? Or will they encounter truth accompanied by dignity, accountability accompanied by compassion, and perhaps an open door?
That is the choice that belongs to us.
Why Love Today May Matter Tomorrow
One of the reasons this matters so much is that we rarely know what impact our treatment of another person may eventually have. We tend to evaluate kindness by immediate results. We show compassion and expect someone to respond. We forgive and hope the relationship changes. We offer encouragement and expect a different choice. But human transformation rarely follows our timetable.
Someone may remember years from now that when everyone else reduced them to a failure, one person still saw the human being beneath it. They may remember who listened when everyone else was shouting, who treated them with dignity when they were ashamed, or who refused to reduce them to a political label, an addiction, a mistake, a disagreement, or a painful chapter of their life.
They may remember the person who left the light on.
We cannot know what role an act of compassion today might play in someone’s journey tomorrow. Love does not guarantee transformation; every person remains responsible for their own choices. But love can create possibilities that condemnation often closes.
Judgment freezes people in a moment. Love leaves room for transformation.
Contemporary social science gives us additional reason to take this seriously. A major meta-analysis by Thomas Pettigrew and Linda Tropp, encompassing more than 500 studies, found that meaningful contact between members of different groups generally reduces prejudice. Research on perspective-taking has similarly shown that attempting to see circumstances from another person’s point of view can, under appropriate conditions, reduce stereotyping and favoritism toward our own group. Research in organizational settings has also found positive relationships between perspective-taking, empathic concern, and supportive behavior toward others.
None of this means empathy magically resolves disagreement. Nor does compassion require us to surrender our convictions. Perspective-taking, empathy, compassion, agreement, and forgiveness are not interchangeable. But the evidence reinforces something spiritual and moral traditions have taught for centuries: how we see another human being influences how we treat that human being.
That matters in a culture where it is increasingly easy to turn people into categories: right or wrong, good or bad, left or right, friend or enemy, one of us or one of them. Research examining perceptions of outside groups has found associations between viewing an out-group as one single, coherent entity and prejudice toward that group. When “those people” become an undifferentiated category in our minds, it becomes easier to stop seeing the individual person.
Heartitude asks us to resist that impulse.
Empathy does not require us to pretend we completely understand someone else’s experience. Compassion does not require agreement. Kindness does not require surrendering our convictions. Love does not require eliminating accountability.
They begin with something more fundamental:
There is a human being standing in front of me.
Who Are We Becoming?
There is one more detail in the parable that deserves our attention. The father does not only go toward the younger son. He also goes toward the older one. One son has wandered into a distant country; the other is standing outside the celebration. The father goes toward both.
His desire is not merely to have two sons physically near the house. He wants both sons restored to relationship.
That image feels particularly relevant to the world in which we live. Politics, religion, race, class, geography, generation, culture, and ideology can divide us. We have become remarkably skilled at deciding who belongs on which side of the table. The father’s heart offers another possibility—not agreement on everything, not pretending differences don’t matter, and not abandoning truth, justice, responsibility, or boundaries. Rather, it is the refusal to allow disagreement to erase another person’s humanity.
What might happen if we brought that posture into our families, workplaces, communities, churches, and public conversations? Perhaps we would spend a little less time asking, Whose side are you on? and more time asking, How do we preserve our shared humanity while working through what divides us?
The next time we find ourselves preparing to judge someone, perhaps these three characters can become a mirror. Where have I been the prodigal? When have I needed patience, forgiveness, compassion, or another chance? Where am I the older son? Where might resentment, comparison, self-righteousness, or my need to be right be interfering with my ability to love? And where am I being invited to become the father? Who needs me to listen, encourage, forgive, or simply express a necessary boundary without contempt?
These questions do not ask us to abandon discernment. They ask us to practice humility.
And perhaps we should ask them more than once, because the answer may change depending on the person standing in front of us. I may show the generosity of the father toward one person and the resentment of the older brother toward another. I may be extending grace publicly while privately wandering from something I know to be true. Becoming the father, then, is not a status we finally achieve. It is a posture of the heart we must repeatedly choose.
Today I may be the one returning home. Tomorrow I may find myself standing outside the celebration, convinced someone else does not deserve grace. And perhaps, because other people have loved me through both of those seasons, I can gradually become the person standing at the door welcoming someone else toward restoration.
That may be the deeper journey Nouwen invites us to consider. We begin by recognizing ourselves in the sons, but we cannot stop there.
Our experience of needing grace should gradually teach us how to give grace.
We have been the prodigal. We have been the one who stayed. We may even find both of them within us today. And still, we are called to become the one who welcomes.
So perhaps the most important question is not simply, Which character am I?
It is:
Who am I becoming?
Am I becoming slower to judge and quicker to listen? Am I learning to hold people accountable without stripping them of dignity? Can I disagree without dehumanizing? Can I establish boundaries without hatred? Can I see another person’s failure without deciding that failure represents the totality of who they are? Can I leave room for the possibility that another person’s story is still being written—and remember that mine is too?
Each encounter gives us another opportunity to choose which posture of the heart we will bring to the person before us.
If we increasingly choose compassion over condemnation, humility over self-righteousness, relationship over division, and love over judgment, perhaps we are moving a little closer to the heart of the father.
We are learning to lead from the heart, live from the heart, and, most importantly, love from the heart.
That is Heartitude.
References
Nouwen, H. J. M. (1992). The Return of the Prodigal Son: A Story of Homecoming. Doubleday.
Henri Nouwen Society. The Return of the Prodigal Son. Resources and reflections on Nouwen’s journey from identifying with the younger and older sons toward his calling to become the compassionate father.
Pettigrew, T. F., & Tropp, L. R. (2006). “A Meta-Analytic Test of Intergroup Contact Theory.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 90(5), 751–783.
Galinsky, A. D., & Ku, G. (2004). “The Effects of Perspective-Taking on Prejudice: The Moderating Role of Self-Evaluation.” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 30(5), 594–604.
Longmire, N. H., & Harrison, D. A. (2018). “Seeing Their Side Versus Feeling Their Pain: Differential Consequences of Perspective-Taking and Empathy at Work.” Journal of Applied Psychology, 103(8), 894–915.
Agadullina, E. R., & Lovakov, A. V. (2018). “Are People More Prejudiced Towards Groups That Are Perceived as Coherent? A Meta-Analysis of the Relationship Between Out-Group Entitativity and Prejudice.” British Journal of Social Psychology, 57(4), 703–731.