Verboten Reconciliation

At the end of the Civil War, a number of key leaders chose the path of reconciliation. Jay Winik details the leaders and the decisions they made in his book, April 1865: The Month That Saved America. In the present day, we do not fight internally with weapons that kill, but with words that tear asunder the social fabric. When the current process ends (as it must, eventually, one way or another) will the nation be permanently divided? 

An eloquent plea can be found in the peace prayer attributed to St. Francis.

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace,

Where there is hatred, let me sow love;

Where there is injury, pardon;

Where there is doubt, faith;

Where there is despair, hope;

Where there is darkness, light;

Where there is sadness, joy;  

O Divine Master,

Grant that I may not so much seek

To be consoled as to console;

To be understood as to understand;

To be loved as to love. 

For it is in giving that we receive;

It is in pardoning that we are pardoned;

And it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.  

Such a prayer may well express the heartfelt desire of many on all sides of political rancor. But there is a problem. It is verboten. It is politically incorrect to express Christian thoughts, ideas, or sentiments in political life. In some contexts, the courts have ruled it illegal and unconstitutional.  

This cultural norm has even more poisonous implications than current politics in Washington, D.C. We have rejected and excluded from our nation’s public life the only possible source of life itself. We are rejecting the very Gift of Christmas, Him of whom the angels sang “Peace on Earth, Good Will toward men.” In accepting the lie of the devil that Jesus has no place in public discourse, we have condemned our public forum to separation from Him, into the outer darkness of divine separation.

Overcoming the Curse of the Sins of the Fathers

As I watch my peers age into the final retirement from life, I cannot escape the observation of how closely the law of cause and effect tracks with Moses’ warning that the sins of the fathers would be visited on the children to the third and fourth generation. (e.g. Numbers 14:18: The Lord is slow to anger, abounding in love and forgiving sin and rebellion. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; ) There is nothing mysterious about the children of an abusive or narcissistic parent having crippling self-esteem issues or lacking normal relationship skills —  these being natural consequences in the psychological realm. 

Consequences in the natural realm are equally obvious. Illegitimate children historically were scorned or shunned or worse, despite no fault of their own. In ancient times the children of debtors might be sold into slavery to satisfy the debts of the father. Habits of men, such as drug use, criminal activity, or sexual promiscuity, are often inescapable for children growing up seeing them as normal.

God promises similar inheritance in the spiritual realm. Deuteronomy 5:7-9 is the clearest statement of His punishment for idolatry. The first and second commandments carry the warning of spiritual cause and effect, linked to God’s nature and character. There is evidently an invisible but powerful spiritual dynamic that transmits spiritual adultery - worship of false gods - to descendants. 

And yet, there is also the possibility of redemption even under O.T. Law. Deuteronomy 24:16. Jeremiah 31:29-34 goes even further, promising a new covenant, written on our hearts, in the context of transcending the law of generational curses. 

What happens, all too often, is that children grow up with optimism that hard work will build their lives, not recognizing the curse that clings. The curse was in fact broken through the blood of Christ on the cross (Galatians 3:13),  but His Blood must be applied to our lives individually through identification  with Christ. Not just once through a declaration of faith (the starting point), but daily through a relationship with the risen and ascended Christ. Not just a generic petition or statement of faith, but a discussion with Him of the specific issues of our life, our unique struggles, and His specific will for our life. It is through this (and the discipline/discipling that He applies — Hebrews 12:5-11) that we are changed into His image (2 Corinthians 3:18), and at the end of our earthly journey, will have shed the baggage of our forebears’ sins, going back four generations. 

The alternative approach, most sadly, is to trust in God’s forgiveness and continue to live out the lifestyle and choices of our forebears and our own worldly decisions.  The consequences cannot be avoided forever. As we reap them later in life, we cannot pretend to not see the truth of Virgil’s observation: facilis descensum Averno.

The Scriptures are clear on this point. Striving against sin (clearly our own sin, regardless of generational curse) involves not only the shed blood of Christ in the spiritual realm, but pain in the natural and psychological realms on our part. Self-denial. Grief over consequences of our actions. Payment in the physical world. We can’t purchase holiness, but when we pay a price for sin it helps motivate us to change our ways. The first verse of “I’d Rather Have Jesus” captures this mindset.  But deliverance from original sin, from the curse, only happens if we choose to actively work for it. And it is in this context that the power of the Holy Spirit overcomes the curses we inherit from our forebears, going back to Adam.