Encouraging - Happiness

Jesus uses the younger and elder brothers to portray the two basic ways people try to find happiness and fulfillment: the way of moral conformity (elder brother) and the way of self-discovery (younger brother). Each acts as a lens coloring how you see all of life, or as a paradigm shaping your understanding of everything. Each is a way of finding personal significance and worth, of addressing the ills of the world, and of determining right from wrong.

Timothy Keller, The Prodigal God: Recovering the Heart of the Christian Faith (Dutton, New York, NY: 2008), 29. Parentheses added.