For he was the real sinner and he was such because, knowing what
he was about and able to choose, he desired to do wrong. It was not
ignorance, nor environment, nor inheritance, that led him into the far
country. It was its alien delights and their alien nature, for which
as such he craved. How subtle and certain is the word of Jesus here.
No shepherd seeks this wandering sheep; no householder searches for
this lost coin. The boy who willed to do wrong must stay with the
swine among the husks until he wills to do right. Then, when
he desires to return, return is made possible and easy, but the
responsibility is forever his. The source of his misery is his own
will.
So the disposition of mankind is at the bottom of the suffering and
the division. There is rebellion and perverseness mingled with the
helplessness and ignorance and sorrow. No man ever understands or can
speak to the religious life unless he has the consciousness of this
inner moral cleft. No man will ever be able to preach with power about
God unless he does it chiefly in terms of God's difference from man
and man's perilous estate and desperate need of Him. Indeed, God is
not like us, not like this inner life of ours; this is what we want
to hear. God is different; that is why we want to be able to love Him.
And being thus different, we are separated from Him, both by the inner
chasm of the divided soul and the outer chasm of remote and hostile
nature.
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