When something goes wrong my first instinct is to work out whose fault it is, and it is never mine. I can see myself doing it and I still do it.

“And the man said, The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat. And the LORD God said unto the woman, What is this that thou hast done? And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat.”

The first recorded human conversation after the first wrong is a chain of deflection: the man blames the woman and hints at God, the woman blames the serpent. Nobody actually lies about the facts. Everyone relocates the responsibility. The account puts blame-shifting right at the start of the human story, which suggests the writer thought of it as our oldest and most natural reflex.

“And when he came to himself, he said, How many hired servants of my father's have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger!”

In Jesus' parable the younger son has run out of money and options, and the turning point is a phrase Luke's readers would have noticed: he came to himself. Nothing improves before that moment. He does not build a case against his father, his friends or the famine. The recovery begins with one honest sentence about his own part in it.