The Bible has the best solutions for life

I always seem to want to say more than I can possibly say in a single post. Perhaps “The Bible has the best solutions for life,” is a book too. But I want to say two things today. The first thing is that principles that work can always be found in some form in the Bible. The second is to say that though there are some good things out there, the Bible got there first. A prime example of both points comes with the discovery by secular research (several thousand years after the Bible told us about it), that we inherit our parents faults and difficulties (see Exodus 20:5 and below). One of the buzz words Psychology uses in its study of these things is the word 'genogram.' Genograms were first used in clinical Psychology as an aid to recognize family patterns of dysfunction. The hope was that recognizing them would help to prevent them. I say more about this in the post “The Sins of the Fathers ... August 15, 2010). But there are also many Biblical principles that secular Psychology has not yet cottoned onto, and/or are still in the process of discovering.

I do not want to give the impression that I don't think the insights from secular psychology are useful. I have found that secular research can give me insight into Biblical principles, and at times confirm them. But there are also times when the Scriptures correct secular insights and/or bring them into balance. A primary example of imbalance is the early teaching on “catharsis.” Anger often gets bottled up inside us, and the early idea of catharsis was simply to release this by expressing anger. The hope was that by expressing it, it would simply vanish. It is balance I am talking about here. The Bible does not say that anger is wrong period (see “Be angry and sin not” January 16th). But when we “let it all out,” it can too easily result in the grievance behind the anger being nursed, and nursed anger tends to grow rather than diminish. Secular research is in fact catching up, and more recent teachings on this subject are more balanced.

In a single post, all that it is possible to do is to give an illustration. The point I want to illustrate today is about the balance of the approach the Bible takes. I do need to say that we do need to take the whole council of God, and not just zone in on a single verse here or there. I guess I don't need to say that we Christians can be out of balance, especially when we don't know our Bibles very well! The following two Scriptures come from the single context of the ten commandments. The first is “I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me” (Exodus 20:5). The second is “Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long …” (Exodus 20:12).

These two Scriptures need to be taken together to get the balance I am talking about. It would be easy just to take the first scripture, and use it as an excuse for parent bashing. The secular literature does this at times. When for example you see such titles as “Toxic parents,” you have to wonder if it is more about selling books, than helping people. So I am certainly not into parent bashing, but neither do I want to minimize the pain and the difficulties and even abuse that some of us have to deal with. The Bible does not minimize it either. But there is another side which those in pain may find hard to hear or even see. Bad things happen, but God does not want us to allow them to warp our souls. And bad things will indeed warp our souls if we let them. And when we do, we will then more often than not, pass the same warping onto our children. We do of course have choices (as do our children), but part of what the first scripture is saying is that the default is for the family to get stuck in dysfunctional patterns that go down generation after generation.

It is no easy thing to let go, but the Bible shows us the way, and as usual it is radical. The saying from 12 step programs keeps coming back to me “half measures profited us nothing”. The radical solution the Bible proposes is to be found several verses later in the commandment to honour the very ones who handed the garbage down to us. For many this is not Biblical recovery 101, it is more like the second or third graduate course. It is in the end the best solution, but it may take some time for us to accept this, and even longer to fully enter into it.

Many I speak to, know the verse quoted above about the sins of the fathers being visited on the children. But few know the next verse (verse 6). It starts with a “but.” A “but” changes everything. “I had a winning lottery number, but...” I hardly need to finish the sentence. When we hear such a “but” we will inevitably be waiting for the other shoe to drop. Here it comes “but I lost the ticket”. That “but" changes good news into bad, the “but” of Exodus 20:6, changes the bad news into good. Here is the good news “but showing mercy to thousands (of generations), to those who love Me and keep My commandments.” There are two things here that need to happen to affect the reversal. The first is our turning to the Lord (to love Him in ongoing relationship), the second is our costly obedience to His commandments. I say costly because when we clearly see the faults of our ancestors, we may not want to let go of our resentment, let alone go the extra mile to honour them (well they deserve our resentment right?). The greater the faults of the parents the harder it is. It helps I think, to understand that most parents do the very best they can with what they were handed down.

This is true even when there are severe dysfunctions in the family. As an example alcoholism can often be traced back generation after generation. When this happens, our parents inherited the very same difficulties we experience, and they may not have had this teaching that you and I are getting here. I need to say very clearly, that it is not enough to vow “I will never by like my father, never!” (see July 2010). Many have made such vows, only to discover to their horror, that down the road they are far more like their parent than they ever imagined. We become like what we focus on (its called idolatry in the Bible), and the vow puts the focus on “not dad,” and actually pushes us to be like him rather than what we want to avoid. So then we do what we do not want to do (Romans 7:15). So again the default, if we do not deal Biblically with these things, is that down the road our children will be making the same vows about us.

But it is not just our children who benefit from our turning in obedience to God, we do. The second of the two commandments quoted above to honour our parents, is described in the New Testament as the “first commandment with a promise.” Let's look at it. It promises not only length of days, but it also “that it will go well with you” (Ephesians 6:2,3). We may need to cling to this promise as an aid to obeying the commandment. It might also be encouraging to us and our children, that the above quotation in Ephesians is followed by the command to the parents not to exasperate their children (verse 4).

The outworking of the principle just outlined in Exodus 20:5,6 is not something that happens overnight. Part of why it framed in terms of love, is that it is all about relationship with God. In a loving relationship we will spend time with each other. Similarly it is in spending time with God in intimacy, and in His Word, that we are transformed by the renewing of our minds (Romans 12:1,2). In most cases the generational messes we find ourselves in, did not get the way they are overnight. And we will not get out of them over night.

In summary then, part of why the Bible has the “best solutions” is that it knows the problems, it points to the way to addresses them in a balanced way, and to solutions that address the long term. I want to close by saying something about the outworking of Biblical balance in my own life. The Bible is balanced but we are not. We have this “wonderful” tendency when we see an error, to go to the equal and opposite extreme. I have gone through two broken marriages. In the first (before I was a Christian) we fought too much. In the second after after I became a Christian we did not fight enough. We do need to fight fair though, for example no name calling or punishing silences. What the Lord taught me though his Word (and which I also had to learn the hard way) is that conflict avoidance is in its own way just as destructive to relationships as freely expressed anger. The Bible has the balance. We are told not to let the sun go down on our wrath, to be angry and sin not (Ephesians 4:26), but we are also told to deal with what needs to be dealt (Matthew 18:15-17). We are to be honest, but we are to deal with each other in love. In particular we are to speak the truth in love (Ephesians 4:15), and when we need to confront, we are to do it with meekness and fear considering ourselves lest we fall into the very same error (Gal 6:1)

So I made many mistakes, even after I became a Christian. We will not be perfect in this life and I am not (just ask my children). What I do want to do though, is to leave my children the heritage - the example of, as much as is within me, following Exodus 20:6 by seeking to love and obey God. A big part of this is the ongoing process of learning to deal Biblically with the hand we re dealt, and with our own contributions to the dysfunction. If they pick up on this, then they and the succeeding generations will be blessed and find steadfast love and mercy in Him. If we won't do it for ourselves, perhaps we will do it for our children.