Growing Young in My Forties: Reflections of a Prodigal Son

In my forty seven years of life many of my tastes have changed along with age, but Rich Mullins always and forever will be my favorite musician. I was first introduced to him as a kid, and now that I’m older than he ever was I find myself continually coming back to his music.

He was a poet more than anything, and his version of faith was one that was at first odd to me because for him faith was always mixed with doubts. The church I grew up in didn’t leave a lot of room for doubts, but life often has a messy way of colliding with such a faith. The aftermath of that collision often leaves regrets, disappointment, and dealing with death. Maybe even despair. All of these continually batter our faith like angry waves crashing against an isolated rock with no end in sight.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about Rich’s song about the Prodigal Son. It’s called “Growing Young.” When I was younger I thought a lot about growing up, and now in middle age I can relate more and more to what Rich meant by growing young. In a world come of age I feel more and more homeless, Rich sings: 

I've gone so far from my home

I've seen the world and I have known

So many secrets

I wish now I did not know

'Cause they have crept into my heart

They have left it cold and dark

And bleeding,

Bleeding and falling apart

Seeing God’s people and its formal institution, the church, get caught up in the machinations of the world is nothing new. The Old Testament prophets continually railed against it. John the Baptist prepared the way for Jesus by doing the same. Eight decades ago in Europe, Christians in Germany had to figure out what to do in such a world. 

Among them was Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who chose to go back to Germany from the United States at a time when everything was upside down in the 1930s. He ended up in prison during the war and there he had a lot of time to reflect. In letters with his best friend he talks about a world “come of age.”

What he meant by that phrase is that the world had become disenchanted. People now easily imagined a world without a god because one was presented to them and explained to them scientifically. Meanwhile, the church at the time did not seem to alter its approach in such a world - it still presented some deity out there who would respond like magic to fix everything. But in Germany in the 1940s nothing was fixed, especially for Bonhoeffer who was in prison facing his death.

Bonhoeffer found this to be an opportunity, though, for the church - to look for and actually find God in our messy world. Bonhoeffer quotes Mathew 8:17, which quotes Isaiah 53:4 - “He took up our infirmities and bore our disease.” Bonhoeffer concludes that Christ helps us “not by virtue of his omnipotence, but by virtue of his weakness and suffering.” The world come of age is keen on the idea that there is no magic sky man who will fix everything for us. And for Bonhoeffer this is good news as it can only force the world to look for the real God of the cross, “who wins power and space in the world by his weakness.”

Weakness, however, requires vulnerability and even doubt. Arthur C. McGill makes this very clear when he writes:

"Faith" is not the possession of a settled world-view, which people can interpose between themselves and the shock of experience, and by which therefore they can keep the world at an arm's length away from them, can solve all their problems, and can arrange themselves with the "right" attitudes for every situation. On the contrary, "faith" has the effect of opening a man to the world, to his neighbors, and to himself. It deprives him of all self-conscious postures. It propels him into a living engagement with concrete experience.

This is the faith of someone who lives in a world come of age, the world in which I want to grow young. I reflect a lot on what people call the “information-action ratio.” It’s just a fancy phrase for being mindful of how many things I am exposed to versus how few things I can actually do about them. If 2025 has taught me anything it is that I am not equipped to carry the weight of the world’s news in my heart every day. Like Rich, there are secrets I wish I hadn’t known and despite the temptation to turn my fleshy heart into a stony one - to become that rocky island that Simon and Garfunkel sang about - I can relate to Rich’s description of a fleshy heart that also feels cold, bleeding, and falling apart.

This is the world of lament. The world of the Psalms, Job, Ecclesiastes, Lamentations, and the prophets. But it's thankfully also the world of Jesus Christ, who takes up our infirmities and bears our disease. When disaster strikes, children’s television personality Mr. Rogers, told children to look for the helpers. I’d like to think the helpers are those who are also winning power and space in this world by their weakness. I don’t hear about them much; neither do you. But they are there in their little ways being salt and light, shining amid a dark world.

Lest I get myself off the hook, what’s so powerful about Growing Young is that it’s a song of the Prodigal Son, the one who took his family for granted—the one who shamed his father and estranged his brother. The one who went to the far country. For all that’s wrong with the world, I am very much a part of it just like that son. But as he came to his senses he finally came…home. And there was his father, waiting and welcoming. Rich sings:

Well we are children no more, we have sinned and grown old

And our Father still waits and He watches down the road

To see the crying boys come running back to His arms

And when I thought that I was all alone

It was your voice I heard calling me back home

And I wonder now Lord

What it was that made me wait so long

And what kept You waiting for me all that time

Was Your love stronger than my foolish pride

Will You take me back now, take me back and let me be Your child?

'Cause I've been broken now, I've been saved

I've learned to cry, and I've learned how to pray

And I'm learning, I'm learning even I can be changed

I am a child no more. I’m older now than both Rich Mullins and Dietrich Bonhoeffer ever were. But I’m learning. I’m learning how strong love is, for it’s strong than dehumanization. I’m learning how foolish pride is, for it thinks being clever is better than being compassionate. I’m learning how hard change is, for growing old has gravity’s pull dragging it along - but to grow young is to find that incompetent childlike trust again, but with the aches, regrets, and doubts of adulthood. Karl Barth says that Jesus was the one who innocently went into the far country for us, and as Hebrews says that's why he can be our faithful high priest. He knows exactly what this world is like - it mocked, spat on, and crucified him. But that wasn't his end, he won power and space in this world by his weakness. His way is to be our way too.

The Prodigal Son grew may have grown young that day, but his older brother wouldn’t. The older brother was content with dehumanization, cleverness, and pride. This world come of age rewards such things. But my prayer is that the church of the older brother will no longer go looking for God among the so-called richest and “strongest of this world, but rather among the weak. For even that older brother can be changed, which is exactly how Jesus ends the parable. We're all rooting for him to grow young.