Weekly Thoughts

12/1/07 – Curse of the Generations? #1

Hi all,

I'm traveling today through Sunday so I am sending my "Thoughts" out early.

In John 9:1-2 Jesus and the disciples passed by a man blind from birth. They asked Jesus who had sinned, the man or his parents that he was born blind. Jesus responded that neither was the reason.

In Jesus' day a popular teaching was "the curse of the generations", a teaching that is well known in our day as well. It's largely taken from Exodus 34:6-7 where the Lord tells Moses around 1400BC he will "by no means clear the guilty; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and the iniquity of the children upon the children's children to the third and fourth generation."

Thus the disciples naturally assumed someone in a previous generation had sinned, empowering the spiritual forces behind the scenes that resulted in this man being born blind. In a directly related belief of their day, by contrast it was taught that if someone was wealthy it was because they and/or their parents were super spiritual or had great faith to merit God's blessing of wealth upon them. Thus the more spiritual you were the more wealthy you would become, and the more downtrodden and cursed you were, the worse off your faith and/or your parent's and grandparent's faith was.

Thus they were shocked when Jesus said it was hard for a rich man to be saved - that was exactly opposite what they had been taught all their lives - and it must have also sent their minds spinning when Jesus said that a previous generation was not responsible for this man being born blind.

I'm not to blame

The modern version of this teaching has become much more sophisticated in hunting down the culprit in the previous generations, often focused on the belief that ONE key (or perhaps a bunch of keys) will stop the issues of someone in this generation. For that reason people buy books, manuals, seek deliverance from demons from a previous generation, renounce this and that, attend conferences, delve into spiritual beliefs and practices of long ago and much more, trying to find THE answer.

If someone is especially focused on this doctrine they begin to look at every personal problem in themselves or their family as a curse of the generations. I've seen it countless times: In the extreme they develop a victim mentality which means when you talk to them about taking responsibility for their lives, they push it off on their mother or father or grandparent to explain their issues. Then when they hear of issues in someone else or someone else's family they immediately begin looking for the curse behind the scene that is to blame for it. They seek other victims to bolster their belief that an ancestor is responsible for their problems, with the net effect that they don't have to be responsible for their own lives.

The fact that "curses" can be handed down from generation to generation is well documented however. We have all heard of welfare recipients that are the 2nd and 3rd generation to live on public assistance, and we've all seen diseases, addictions, abuses and divorces continue into the children and grandchildren.

Can we blame the passing down of these "curses" solely on spiritual forces, thus also cut them off by using spiritual authority and power? How much is spiritual and how much is lack of a good Christian family example in training and environment?

The fact that Jesus told the disciples no previous generation was responsible for the man being born blind tells us that at least sometimes things happen that have no cause in a previous generation.

Correction to the teaching

Actually, the Lord tried to correct Israel's theology in the matter in about 592BC, in Ezekiel's day. By the time of Ezekiel 18:2 the teaching had given rise to a proverb which the Lord quotes to Ezekiel: "The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge". In other words, the dads ate the sour grapes, but it's the kids who have their mouths pucker and get the bitterness of what the father did.

But the Lord cancels the teaching of the "curse of the generation" in this chapter. He continues in verses 3-4: "As I live says the Lord God, you will not have any occasion any more to use this proverb in Israel. Behold, all souls are mine; as the soul of the father, so also the soul of the son is mine; the soul that sins shall die."

It is that last sentence which changes everything. The soul that sins shall die. The Lord takes the teaching of the curse of the generations and cancels it, stating that each person shall be completely responsible for their own spiritual sins and blessings, no longer able to blame nor be responsible for their ancestor's sins.

In the rest of the chapter, which is too long to quote completely, the Lord gives a hypothetical situation and then provides his course of action to the 3 generations in his example. He starts in verses 5-9 by telling of a righteous man who then has a son who becomes a robber and a "shedder of blood" in verses 10-13, and then HE has a son who chooses to be righteous like his grandfather rather than his dad (verses 14-17).

In verses 17-20 the Lord teaches Ezekiel (and us): "...he shall not die for the iniquity of his father, he shall surely live. As for his father, because he cruelly oppressed, spoiled his brother by violence, and did that which is not good among his people, lo, even he shall die in his iniquity. Yet you say, Why? Doesn't the son bear the iniquity of the father? (No) When the son has done that which is lawful and right, and has kept all my statutes, and has done them, he will surely live."

This teaching should have stopped the "curse of the generation" teaching in Israel from that point on, but obviously it didn't as Jesus' disciples believed in it. 

A New Testament truth presented in the Old Testament

"The soul that sins shall die."

The Lord's teaching to Ezekiel lines up perfectly with our New Testament reality. There is no New Testament teaching about the "curse of the generations" because in our day Christ lives in each one of us, having recreated our spirits by the Holy Spirit and imparted God's life to each.

We are now solely responsible for our own lives, and we find no teaching that tells us to look backwards over our shoulder at our ancestors to see who allowed such a curse into our family. You and I have become part of a new family, a new blood line through the blood of Christ. The implications are that no matter how evil the blood flowing through your veins was in your father or grandfather (mother or grandmother), the blood of Jesus cancels and nullifies their bloodline - your blood line is now royal, pure, and holy.

You and you alone are responsible for your spiritual and natural life, and you cannot blame it on something in a previous generation. We combine this spiritual truth by living Christian values in our lives and families, thus bringing spiritual and natural together to cause blessings to come on our families, breaking patterns and curses forever.

My own generational curse to overcome

I first heard of this teaching when I was 17 and looked at how the teaching stacked up against the Word, and took the matter into my own hands.

The curse I was considering in my family was my grandfather on my dad's side who was an alcoholic and adulterer, and committed suicide when I was 7 years old (1965). Four years later my dad left my mom and us 4 kids for another woman. When I became a Christian I did not want to follow in the footsteps of my father and grandfather, so I took these steps: First, I "communed with my own heart" so to speak, setting in my mind the curse of what they had done on one hand, and the blessing I wanted on a future wife and children on the other.

Once I set my will as to what I wanted, I stood up (I remember the day clearly, standing in my bedroom), and said: "I take authority over the spirits that would try to get me to follow in my father's and grandfather's footsteps. I take authority over you and refuse to allow you into my life. I am covered by the blood of Jesus, I belong to the family of God now, and I will not allow any abuse of alcohol or adultery or any other evil thing from them to come into my life or my children or their children in the name of Jesus. Father I am yours, please protect me and keep me faithful and true to you, in Jesus name, Amen."

New Testament teaches personal responsibility

When we read through Romans or the Corinthian letters or Paul's "prison epistles" it is very clear each person is responsible for their own lives, and responsible for setting good examples of what a Godly life looks like.

That means the answer to the curse in the case of the welfare family's 3rd and 4th generation dependency on public assistance must combine a spiritual change of family WITH practical teaching using Christian values; you work or you don't eat, faithfulness in every area, and so forth.

The answer for that child of an abuser or child of an alcoholic (no matter their age now) is to stand up and take responsibility spiritually and in every other way for their lives, and again learn practical Christian values through relationships with those who are walking it out.

The New Testament speaks of spiritual fathers and mothers, elders and leaders and a community of healthy examples of family and Godly life, who help bring people out of dysfunction and into healthy function.

You see, Jesus' response to the disciples was not merely "neither has this man sinned, nor his parents.", but he continued: "But that the works of God should be revealed in him. I must work the works of him that sent me...", then he healed the man. Jesus' focus was not on the past and how he got to be in that condition, rather on the future the man could have.

Jesus established a truth and pointed us in the right direction. We need to get our eyes off outdated doctrine that was corrected by God himself in Ezekiel 18 and stop looking over our shoulder; focusing instead on how Jesus can reveal the work of God in a person's life.

We do this by ministering life to them, and showing them how to take personal responsibility for their own spiritual, emotional, physical, and social life through a network of multi-generational relationships based from our homes, workplace, and other spheres of influence existing in our lives. Both blessings and curses are handed down to succeeding generations by the quality or lack of quality in family life. You can't stop the ungodly habits and behavior from previous generations by prayers alone, there must be actions that back up and support those prayers. My taking authority over my father's and grandfather's influences would have had no effect if I had not been determined to pattern my life after a Godly pattern. It takes both spiritual and natural to effect change. 

From John 9 on there is no more mention of a curse of the generations, yet Paul and the other apostles would have had good reason to bring it up if you know of Roman or Greek culture. In Ephesus some new disciples had previously been involved in black magic and the occult, and burned their books. In Greek culture homosexuality, pedophilia, and other sexual sins were prominent, not to mention basic idol worship, drug abuse, and so on were more prevalent then than in our day.

Yet no mention is made anywhere in the New Testament by any writer of the need to exorcise demons or spiritual forces from previous generations. Instead, they told the people they were new creations, created by God with God now living in them, washed by the blood of Jesus and part of HIS family, and they would one day stand before Jesus to give account of their life with no opportunity to blame their mom, dad, or grandparents.

They taught that what you sow is what you reap, so watch what you sow - not what the previous generation sowed into your life. (Gal 6: 5-9) They taught personal responsibility and overcoming the past and present through Christ; can we do any less?

 

Some thoughts today,

John Fenn
www.ifaithhome.org
www.cwowi.org