Stories of exile

Christian Century, Feb 21, 2001 by Elizabeth Marquardt

THE PARABLE OF the Prodigal Son is often used to illustrate the gracious and steadfast nature of God's love. Most of us can recognize and even identify with the characters--the younger son who strikes out on his own and makes costly mistakes, the responsible elder son who always does what is expected of him, and the long-suffering father, who shows love and constancy. But for some people the father figure in the story is unrecognizable. Many people feel that one or both of their own parents were never there for them, and as a result they may find it difficult to apprehend the parable's message about the all--embracing love of God.

Certainly there have always been troubled family relationships, including in Jesus' time. Many people have experienced the kinds of conflict with a parent that might influence their understanding of scripture. Yet unprecedented family changes have marked the past few decades. Since the 1960s we have witnessed a precipitous increase in the number of marriages ending in divorce. The rate of divorce stabilized in the mid-'80s at its present number of almost one out of two marriages. Consequently, many of today's 20- and 30-year-olds have experienced the divorce of their parents. This entire generation of young adults has been deeply affected by living in a society in which the possibility of lasting commitment is viewed with suspicion and sometimes despair.

Yet our culture and our churches have asked relatively few questions about the experience of children of divorce. At most, we have assumed that divorce affects children during the first months or years after their parents part. We have failed to recognize that their parents' divorce shapes the spiritual journeys of people throughout their lives. Ministries that have assumed a two-parent, intact family structure may not work well for people who did not grow up in such families. In order to welcome young adults--to teach, counsel and comfort them--the church must do a better job of understanding and including their distinctive experience and perspective.

Over the past several years I have conducted formal interviews with adult children of divorce and held informal conversations with many more. During these discussions I often ask them to reflect on specific biblical passages such as the parable of the Prodigal Son or the commandment to honor one's father and mother. Frequently the responses of children of divorce differ greatly from the way religious leaders approach these texts.

At a Protestant seminary one student whose parents were divorced told me that the parable of the Prodigal Son held little resonance for her. She said, "I was always kind of the dutiful one--the one traveling distances to be sure I saw my mother, traveling distances to be sure I saw my father." She had friends for whom the story meant a great deal because "they feel like they've gone away and rejected their families and come back. But my family didn't even give me anything to reject. There wasn't a stable enough thing to go away from or come back to." An evangelical Christian told me that he sees his father in the role of the Prodigal Son, leaving the family to seek his own fortune elsewhere. This child of divorce saw himself in the role of the father, waiting at the door for his loved one to return.

When I asked the ministry student to reflect on the Fourth Commandment, she shook her head and said, "It means nothing to me. I don't have any concept of my parents as authority figures. I don't know if this is because of the divorce, but I came to know them as completely fallible human beings." A young man who is Roman Catholic told me, "If you want to be a believer and you're a kid of divorce, you really have to reflect on that commandment. You have to ask, Are they honoring each other? Did they honor you? Did they even ask you before they decided to divorce?" Another Catholic told me, "I have a hard time with that one. I honor my parents because I love them, but there are things they do I don't believe in, there are things they do that make me very angry, things I can't honor."

A young man who considers himself spiritual but doesn't identify with any particular faith tradition observed: "Well, in theory the commandment makes a lot of sense to me. But if your mother and father are not honorable people, then they don't deserve to be honored. My father doesn't think about the people who rely on him. He made a commitment to a spouse. He had a child. And then he didn't find a way to honor his commitments to them."

CLEARLY, CHILDREN of divorce bring a complicated feeling of loss to their encounter with biblical texts. Those who continued to see both parents after the divorce in a sense still "had" their parents, but family life was forever changed. After divorce children lose easy, unplanned access to at least one parent, and can almost never be with both parents at the same time. A reunion with one's father involves a parting from one's mother, and vice versa. As a teenaged boy told Newsweek, "When you're a child of divorce, you're always missing somebody." Divorce often strains and sometimes even completely severs the child's relationship with at least one parent, often the father.