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Never trouble trouble till trouble troubles you…..
I’m quite fond of that saying right along with another favorite of mine, never follow your own advice. That can sound a bit amusing on the surface, until you understand the reason being, it’s usually far wiser to follow the Lord’s advice than your own.
First let me say, I’m a big fan of repentance, metanoia. In my mind, you take whatever it is that troubles you, set it at the foot of the cross, and receive forgiveness, mercy, wisdom, and peace of mind. From my end of things, it is like, a total win-win. “In Christ there is no condemnation.” So I’m not thinking of repentance in terms of guilt and shame, because that debt has been paid in full. Jesus hung on the cross, “despising the shame,” on our behalf.
Repent easy and often. It’s even better for you than brushing your teeth.
Sometimes there can be some Godly sorrow, some grief, some regret, or perhaps not. Sometimes there is nothing but relief, order brought to your chaos, peace of mind, healing, for you and for others. Whether you call it repentance, sin, intercession for other people, or simply “the things that trouble you,” taking it to the Lord is always win-win.
So I’ve really been a bit baffled by some running about claiming, “it’s a sin to repent of sin that isn’t your sin.” Or, “it ain’t my shame!” Or perhaps, “I didn’t do it, so I’m not repenting of it!”
Reminds me a bit of children, “I’m not cleaning the bathroom, I didn’t mess it up.” Well too bad, because when we’re part of a family, we collectively pitch in, because some of that mess really is yours. I for instance, do not happen to hold dominion over the dust in the air, but I still wipe it off now and then. Okay so rarely, but I still do dust once in a while.
“It’s not my sin,” is not my mindset at all. I’m a big fan of taking anything and everything to the Lord, even those things I had no obvious hand in and couldn’t have stopped if I wanted to. Since the Lord has never held me in condemnation over my own sins, He’s certainly not going to condemn me for being distressed about someones else’s sin. In fact, another word for being distressed about sin impacting someone else is actually just called “caring.”
So generational curses, as any abuse survivor will tell you, impact us on down to the fourth and fifth generation. The iniquities of the father’s really are passed on down to the kids. God didn’t do that to us, it just is the way it is. We inherit more than just DNA from our families. If your grandfather built a house on sand and you now live in that house, well, fair or unfair, you now live in a house built on sand.
I know of no other way to break generational curses than to take it to the Lord in repentance. Lord, I want metanoia, change, I want the sins of the ancestors to end with me. If you have four generations destroyed by alcoholism than, Lord I repent of this disease. Help me to break this generational curse, heal me from the harm that has been inflicted, and help me to leave a new inheritance for my kids.
He is faithful to answer our prayers and there is big fruit to be found there. Those of us who can see our fore fathers (and mothers) for who they were, who can begin to understand, to empathize, and to intercede for them, help not only to heal ourselves, to let go of bitterness and unforgiveness, but to start to walk in a new direction.
Lord, I totally repent of those poor ancestors of mine that spent 40 years roaming around lost in the desert murmuring to themselves. I can totally relate. I am a murmurer too. Given the same conditions, I would be walking right in their very shoes. Help me to replace my cynicism, my complaining, my murmuring, with faith, with trust, with confidence in you….
I have been hugely, incredibly, amazingly, blessed by people who were big enough to intercede for me, big enough to care, big enough to express their Godly sorrow, their repentance for The Way Things Are. That’s how you spark healing. That’s how you reflect the love of Christ. He also had no hand in the sins of the world but He took them ALL upon himself anyway, and He gave His very life for us.
The Good Samaritan did not see a man laying in a ditch and promptly declare, I had no direct hand in this sin, so……not my problem. A priest and a Levite did exactly that. They said, not my problem.
We who express some Godly sorrow and repentance for things like poverty, crime victims, child abuse, addiction, injustice, and racism, are interested in reaching out to those who may have suffered these things, interested in promoting healing, interested in restoring them to their rightful inheritance, to the peace, joy, and power, to be found in Christ Jesus. Oh yeah, the power to be found in Him.
He gave His very life for us. In reflecting that great act of sacrificial love out to others, all we have to give up is some pride. Grace just works miracles.
There’s another reason why we repent of the sins of our ancestors, to empathize, to learn to judge them fairly, to come to perceive them with neither arrogance nor shame, but with understanding and compassion. As the old saying goes, “those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” We don’t honor our mother and father (or our great, great grand parents) simply to make them feel better about themselves, that commandment has far-reaching implications for the well-being of a society, of a community as a whole. For our own peace and well being as individuals, too.
I’ve been following the church’s efforts on racial reconciliation, everything from Russell Moore and the Southern Baptists to Thabiti Anyabwile. There are some really wise people out there, firmly rooted in biblical truth, who are cutting across the convoluted wasteland of our politics and speaking the truth, speaking the love of Christ to one another.
And there are a handful who are not. There are some trapped in politics, arrogance, pride, shame, all over my twitter feed. They are raging about everything from the #Metoo campaign to racial reconciliation. Here’s what I’m going to say about that, if you can’t empathize with your brother and sister’s pain, you can’t love them. How you judge others is going to be used to judge you in exactly the same way. If you can’t love people in the Body of Christ who are hurting because of abuse, because of racism, because if injustice, than you are cutting your own self off from the Father’s compassion for you.
That’s not me, that’s biblical. That’s Jesus speaking. Just saying.
We aren’t really commanded to fix anything, or to make it right, or to wallow in guilt, we’re simply commanded to love one another. A big part of loving people simply involves listening to them and empathizing with their story, and in that process of listening in love, it is the Lord who restores, who heals.
So, to the Tweeting twits of the Not-My-Job-Church, I beg you to reconsider and to ponder what Jesus really said.
I was having this conversation with a friend recently. We were talking about racism and I shared that I have no ‘white guilt’. He is very pc, and was shocked. I asked him how far back in history would he like to go, or is he picking an arbitrary time in history – US colonial period/Euro imperialism to make his point? I explained that my folks immigrated here in the 1960’s from Italy. We weren’t part of the slavery that existed here. But, I did mention Hannibal coming down from the Alps, raping and pillaging the Roman countryside. Should I hate black people? Again, how far back do we want to go? So, I guess I’m not cleaning my room. 😉
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I hear you,Rob. My dad was an Italian immigrant, whose parents were escaping Mussolini and the instability going on in Europe. They arrived here in the 40’s at some point during the war. When you look at my family history on both sides, both of them were so poor and powerless they couldn’t have oppressed anyone if they tried. However, they all made a real mess of many other things.
I once knew a black woman, a feminist, who was fond of tracing ancestry. She found out that rather than being descended from slaves she actually had an ancestor, a great, great aunt who had run a brothel with bars on the windows that pretty much amounted to sex trafficking and had a plantation worked by slaves. It really changed her perception on a lot of things, especially women. Before that she had no awareness that women could actually be mercenary, self serving, driven by profit. The feminist narrative kind of likes to imply men as the patriarchy are the root of all evil, while women are perpetual victims. The truth is never quite so black and white, pardon the pun.
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Amen! My sister worked with someone we had gone to school with who was very prejudice and they would have discussions regarding race. She told my sister that she would never change her mind because if she did it would mean everything her mama taught her was wrong and she couldn’t do that. She left this world with that prejudice and racial hatred in her heart.
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What a sad tale. I’m pretty sure you have to learn how to love your brothers and sisters to get into heaven.
I’m chuckling here, but if I had been unable to accept that everything my mama taught me was probably all wrong, I’d be in a huge world of hurt. She’s not really prejudice, just atheist, Marxist, and hating on everything.
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yeah, pretty sad and yeah, love is required! 🙂
I so agree…my, my, my so many issues today because people cannot say someone or something is wrong. It is okay to say, I love my family but they were wrong in this regard. My, my, my…what a difference it would make in this country and the world.
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That’s sad.
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Wow. I don’t think I’ve ever thought of a post as brilliant before but that is the only word that comes to mind. This is very well stated. There is often miscommunication and misdirection from both sides but if we “Christians” would love one another as our Lord commanded, this nonsense going on today could be eradicated. Sometimes people just want to be heard and respected. Sins of the father do fall on all of us,yet we can make a choice to overcome our biological DNA and find, create and leave a victorious legacy of love for those who will follow us.
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Thanks for reading and for your kind words, Lilka. I think the Lord left us exactly that, a legacy of love and victory. We’re seated with Him now at the right hand of the Father, but that’s an inheritance we have to reach out for and to claim for ourselves.
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To put it simply, when you have an issue with some over this, accept that what you have is a failure to communicate to a large extent. One cannot repent for what one has never done and to attempt such an act is pure hubris, a self-flagellation made for personal gain. On the other hand, just because a sin isn’t yours doesn’t mean it would not be good thing to mitigate its affects anyway.
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“One cannot repent for what one has never done and to attempt such an act is pure hubris, a self-flagellation made for personal gain.”
I disagree and part of the reason for that is because I think we’re incredibly blind to our own sin. I know of a lot of addicts for example who actually say, “I have nothing to apologize for, I was only hurting myself.” That’s just so spiritually blind. None of us live in a vacuum, our behavior actually impacts others.
As to self flagellation for personal gain, I think repentance is the exact opposite. There’s often a pay off, a personal gain that stems from hanging onto stuff. Repentance is the precise opposite of hubris. One is surrendering all, pride, control, the things we cling to because they are familiar.
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“One cannot repent for what one has never done and to attempt such an act is pure hubris, a self-flagellation made for personal gain.”
I disagree and part of the reason for that is because I think we’re incredibly blind to our own sin. I know of a lot of addicts for example who actually say, “I have nothing to apologize for, I was only hurting myself.” That’s just so spiritually blind. None of us live in a vacuum, our behavior actually impacts others.
But…that would be apologizing for something they’ve actually done, wouldn’t it?
By contrast, apologizing for historical events or unfortunate events unrelated to what one has done or would ever do or even be in a position to do is pointless and immaterial, and yeah…actually a form of self-serving virtue signaling.
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“By contrast, apologizing for historical events or unfortunate events unrelated to what one has done or would ever do or even be in a position to do is pointless and immaterial, and yeah…actually a form of self-serving virtue signaling.”
I disagree. I saw a couple of Christian men once, apologize and repent to a woman for having failed to protect her from child abuse, abuse they had no hand in. They simply had a great deal of Godly sorrow for having failed her as a part of the greater church at large, for having not been there for her, for not having prayed for her sooner. Those prayers totally crushed her, in an instant she was healed, the words she had needed to hear so badly had been said. Her heart softened, her whole perspective changed. And the guys,well they were on cloud nine for weeks, feeling as if they had actually made a difference, blessed someone the way they had learned to do.
The thing about virtue signaling is you have to believe you have some virtue to signal. That’s what virtue signaling is, defensively proclaiming your own virtue. I have no problem declaring I have no virtue of my own, all I have stems from Jesus Christ’s work on the cross.
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I disagree. There’s a type of back-handed virtue signaling much like the back-handed compliment.
True piety is expressed privately…between oneself and the “victim” (whomever the apologizer might perceive that to be).
No need to make a public show of it on social media.
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Well, I disagree and I’ll try to address it in a blog post.
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Excellent post. Here’s my take: a) We cannot personally repent for sin that is not ours if repent literally means acknowledge our own sin, at least not without eventually going insane for obvious reasons, b) We can however personally **identify** with the injustice others have endured as a result of the sin of others (call this empathy), c) We can also **stand in the place of** those who have sinned against others and repent on their behalf, not because of our culpability, but our spiritual and relational authority, often (though not always) established by our relationship to the transgressor. This is called **intercession**
We think of intercession in the church as prayer, but it literally means “standing in the place of” or “doing on behalf of another” which is symbolic, spiritual and powerful. I am not sure much is gained by white guilt; this, apart from being a virtual signal pastime, just says “I am guilty and I don’t deserve to live.” But intercession asks for forgiveness on behalf of that society might be healed. If leading voices who are now saying “It wasn’t my sin” turned instead and said, “What happened to you should never have happened, and we stand in place of those transgressors and ask for your forgiveness,” I am sure such a symbolic act would not be lost on the rest of America.
Sheesh, sorry for the word count! InsanityB: If you do not write the post, i will 🙂
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Oh, your comment is fabulous! Intercession, standing in their place, providing cover, that is exactly what has been missing from this whole conversation. It is precisely that, our spiritual and relational authority needs to kick in. It’s not about guilt at all, but rather taking care of our own.
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I.B. I didn’t have time to look up this prayer when I made a comment before, but I think it is very appropriate to the issue you have discussed i this post. Daniel’s pray in Chapter 9. I remembered the prayer but I couldn’t think which of the prophets prayed. Actually I believe there were more, but this one is really good. I haven’t read all your string of comments so maybe someone else has already mentioned it.
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Daniels prayer! Perfect, Oneta. Yes, amen, that really captures the spirit of what bothers me.
So there are things wrong with “our city.” So let’s collectively repent and turn to the Lord. Sounds simple enough, but of course nobody never done nothing wrong, so…….
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I’m an atheist, but I am so inspired by your faith and admire it!
Your thoughts are hard to absorb, and take some critical self-awareness but are important!
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It wasn’t my sin” turned instead and said, “What happened to you should never have happened, and we stand in place of those transgressors and ask for your forgiveness,” I am sure such a symbolic act would not be lost on the rest of America. – this has been on my mind and I am so grateful for this post.
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in relation to my country – South Africa and race relations, forgiveness and breaking the yoke of the past.
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