A friend asked me how I thought The Parable of the Prodigal Son related to my insistence that forgiveness, rightly practiced, requires amends be made. I initially responded: “This is an excellent question. The Parable of Prodigal Son comes up a lot in discussions of God’s forgiveness, mostly among folks who insist God forgives without requiring anything. So I have some answers percolating.” Later, I replied by subjecting him to a 10-minute think-aloud voice message, which I then revised and summarized in writing as follows: “The Parable of the Prodigal Son demonstrates, among other things, that God is so keenly interested reconnecting with and embracing His people that mere but provably genuine repentance can count as amends. (God’s relative position of power, which the parable keeps in view but which should be noted is not a feature of every relationship, facilitates this mercy.) However, the story is not absent an amends more concrete: Besides your beautiful, literary observation that, obliquely reminiscent of Leviticus and therefore of Jesus, an animal is slaughtered to facilitate the celebration of the restored relationship, the son was explicitly preparing to offer himself to his father as a hired hand. That his father saw no need for that demoting measure does highlight the father’s mercy, but it does not thereby reject the rightness of the offer. True repentance will always prompt the repenter to want to substantiate his repentance.”