Old Books, God and Ourselves, Norman Cox, Part 4. The father of the prodigal could thank God that he had at least one good son -- or did he? Though the elder son never left home, “his heart was in a spiritual far country more depraved and more hopeless than the one which ruined the prodigal.” His condition was more desperate because he didn’t recognize his “sinful unworthiness.... Such people seldom do. The older son was as lost in the far country of pride as the younger brother was in the far country of debauchery.

The elder son’s “behavior...proved that the father had two lost sons instead of one.” Though the younger brother revolted “from parental control,” the elder revolted “from parental love.” As a result his hardened heart made him blind to “the depths of his brother’s repentance” and prevented him from rejoicing with the rest of the family.

The apostle Paul observed that “the sins of some men are obvious, reaching the place of judgment ahead of them; the sins of others trail behind them.” (I Tim.5:24) C.S. Lewis made a similar observation: “A man who makes his golf or his motorcycle the centre of his life, or a woman who devotes all her thoughts to clothes or bridge or her dog, is being just as intemperate as someone who gets drunk every evening. Of course, it does not show on the outside so easily: bridge-mania or golf-mania do not make you fall down in the middle of the road. But God is not deceived by externals.”
Am I deceived by externals? Would I rather have the cold-hearted but respectable elder son or the broken, name-in-the-police-report younger son? It’s not a choice I would relish, but the dissipated younger son may have the easier time finding his way back to God. He knows he is lost and that his very life is in danger. The elder son, however, may never find the path to repentance. He had “a negative piety that boasts of the sins it has not committed and is blind to the sins the are destroying it.” He was so filled with his brother’s failings, that he couldn’t see his own.