You probably remember the term dramatic irony from a high school English or literature class. It’s when the audience knows something important that’s happening to the characters in a story that the characters themselves do not know. In Romeo and Juliet, for instance, as the final act hurtles to its tragic conclusion, we find ourselves wanting to yell at the star-crossed Romeo, “Stop! Juliet isn’t dead! She’s only asleep!” Or consider how, during basically every horror movie you’ve ever watched, you want to yell out to the lurking monster’s feckless victims, “For goodness sake, don’t go in there!” We want to tell Snow White, “Don’t eat the apple!” We want to tell Belle, “The Beast is really a prince. Give him a chance.”
Dramatic irony abounds. As the plot thickens, many memorable characters exhibit not only an unawareness about the true contours of the story they’re in but about themselves, as well. Think of Dr. Malcolm Crowe, the child psychologist in M. Night Shymalan’s The Sixth Sense or the main character in Robert Louis Stevenson’s, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. These protagonists aren’t just missing information about their situations but acting in the absence of knowledge about themselves.
When we find ourselves in real-life situations, being forced to act without complete information—which is pretty much all of the time—it might be a good idea to ask God to reveal to us a little more about the story we’re in. Likewise, a prayer for a bit more self-awareness is a good one too. “God, what am I missing here; where are my blind spots?” This is helpful because God always has a bead on our psychology. God knows what moves us even when we don’t know ourselves. God knows all about the shadowy lies we keep telling ourselves. God knows the longings of our secret hearts, and the core truths we hold most dear even when they remain only murky to us, free-floating around inside our subconscious minds.
In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus tells three successive parables—one about a lost sheep, another about a lost coin, and then most famously, one about a lost son. In each of them, Jesus is telling us about what God is like. However, Jesus is also—especially in the last story, the one we call The Prodigal Son—telling us what we are like. He’s offering us some needed self-awareness. Some vital knowledge about ourselves. He’s pulling back the curtain on some of the darkest parts of human nature. He’s revealing to us that we’re self-focused and prone to wander like the younger brother, but we’re also resentful and prone to rivalry like the older brother. Jesus’ parable firmly lodges in our minds and hearts the truth of what God is like, but He’s also dropping right in our laps something else we ought to be aware of about ourselves.
We should see ourselves clearly reflected within the personalities of these flawed brothers. Through this remarkable story, Jesus is asking us a series of important questions. Questions like these: What will it take for the older brother to come around and embrace his younger brother after his foray into the far country? Will the younger brother accept his father’s grace for good or succumb to his wanderlust again, leaving by the back door without regard to the mercy he’s received? Will either of the brothers come to understand the full meaning and ramifications of their father’s profound love for them? Will they learn to act upon it in the way they treat each other? Will the boys come to see how self-destructive their most base impulses are? Will they ask—each in his own way—why am I the way that I am and how might I change? Will they grow in their self-awareness? Will we?
At the end of the story, it’s almost as if Jesus is asking us: If this is what God is like, then what kind of child will you be? The parable, both confrontational and forward-looking, is quizzing us about whether we really know the contours of our own story, and second, whether we’re self-aware enough to grasp its eternal truth. And finally, perhaps most dramatically ironic of all, Jesus is telling us that if we fully absorb the lessons of the story about these two prodigal sons, we’ll actually become more like the Father Himself.
God—Help me to become, on one hand, more self-aware about myself, and on the other, to fully grasp Your profound and eternal love. Amen.
