You can't prune your family tree

“Whatever my ancestors did to you, none of them consulted me.”

             Tad Williams

  Poor Ben Affleck. Over the years he’s had a history of womanizing, as well as drug and gambling addictions. For the past decade he’s been married to Jennifer Garner and is the father of three children. Periodically, rumors surface that he’s still fighting his demons and they’re threatening his marriage. But in our politically correct world, it’s not his checkered past or current struggles that seem to bother him the most – it’s what his ancestors did – over two and a half centuries ago that make Ben blush.

  Recently, it came out that when Affleck participated in Henry Louis Gates’s PBS program Find Your Roots, and it was discovered — Gasp! — that Affleck’s roots include slave owners. According to an e-mail exchange between Gates and Sony CEO Michael Lynton, Affleck wanted to suppress this aspect of his family tree. The correspondence, found by the New York Daily News from the leaked Sony emails, shows Gates struggling to square the unprecedented request with his own editorial judgment. Gates wrote, “To do this would be a violation of PBS rules, actually, even for Batman.”

  In our Politically Correct world to have had slave owners in your family tree is something that you want cut down, burn up and ultimately seek to eradicate all of the evidence. It’s noteworthy in our distorted, upside down values world that Affleck’s personal history and issues don’t seem to bring nearly the embarrassment or motivation for a cover-up that something some ancestor he never knew did hundreds of years ago.

  As we read the pages of Scripture, we find that the Jews essentially took the same approach. They were very proud of their heritage and ancestors. After all, they were God’s chosen people. Somehow they mentally chose to cut down, burn up and eradicate from their collective memory all of the evidence of idolaters, adulterers, perverts, murderers, thieves, liars and basically any other sinful, debauched and criminal behavior from their family tree.

  This tendency to whitewash ourselves or our history is one of the reasons I’m cautious when I’m reading an autobiography or a biography written by a spouse or child. Because of the personal relationship or for their own reputation, candid honesty is often lost. Sometimes out of love, we don’t share or even choose to forget some of the dark facets of our family member’s life. Then, sometimes the opposite is true. A wounded family member exaggerates how bad a person was because they’re looking back through the eyes of their own personal pain.

  But that’s never the case with God’s Word. As we read the Bible, we find that while Scripture is never salacious, there is no expunging of the record or a cover-up. That’s because we all come from the same rotten family tree. It goes all the way back to the Garden and our first parents. That reminds us of some important truths.

  We all come from bad people, we are bad people and we have bad children. Like Ben Affleck, we often want to edit out skeletons in our family’s history. When it comes to our own shortcomings, the tendency is to gloss them over. When it comes to our children, we excuse and justify.

  But we’re not just bad by nurture, we’re bad by nature. Theologians call it “original sin.” Our ancestors, no matter how far or short of a distance from us, all had the same sin nature that we do. The evidence for it in our children is demonstrated as soon as they can exercise a personal will. A small child screaming that she wants a candy bar in the checkout line isn’t just tired or needs a nap, he’s willful and wants his way.

  Our crimes against God then are not circumstantial or environmental. We do what is wrong because it’s our nature. Even placing us back in Eden wouldn’t change that. That’s why giving people better housing, education, health care or even jobs will never bring about long term behavioral change. The wrong doing may become more educated and even “white collar” rather than gangsta style, but it will still be there. We have a heart problem, not an environmental one.  

  Evil is evil in the sight of God. Even in the Church, we like to categorize sin as big and little. Let me share just three examples.

  Alcohol/drug addiction are considered big sins among Christians, somehow though being a materialist/consumer is socially acceptable and even envied. Some believers are addicted to spending and buying – a newer house, car, furniture, clothes, gadgets, vacations, etc. There is no concept of stewardship or honoring the Lord with the finances He’s entrusted to them. They’re as addicted to spending and consuming as a heroin addict is to heroin. Don’t believe me? Challenge them to NOT spend except for necessities for the next three months. They’ll go into withdrawals.

  We would never use obscene language, somehow though complaining and criticizing is given a pass. How many of us, even as Christians who have so much to be thankful for, thank God or others? Not only do we fail to praise the God who gave it to us, we fail to thank the instruments He used like our family, friends or even brothers and sisters in our church family. So when was the last time you affirmed or encouraged someone compared to how many times you criticized or complained? To be candid, obscene language hurts the Kingdom much less than complaining or criticizing.  

  Smoking is horrible, anger just comes naturally. Smoking is not only a big sin in the church, our culture has made it one and even taxes it. Yet, holding something on fire between your lips does less damage than letting loose a volley of fire from your tongue. Christians who’d never consider smoking often have a smoking hot temper. Those closest to them are seared by their explosions, tiptoeing around them much as they would walking through a minefield.

  The bottom line of all this is that there’s not enough dirt in this world to bury all of our sinful skeletons. We’re not good or nice people. In God’s sight, sin is sin, whether it’s adultery or anger. Instead of trying to bury what can’t be buried, we need to celebrate God’s grace who in His mercy and grace paid for all our sin with His own Son’s life and pulled us out of the pit, “Listen to me, you who pursue righteousness, you who seek the Lord: look to the rock from which you were hewn, and to the quarry from which you were dug” (Isaiah 51:1). And we need to share with others who hopelessly attempt to bury their skeletons and clean up the sinful corpse of their life, the true hope that only God’s grace can bring.

Looking for quality Christian books (and lots of other books) at very low prices. Check out our bookstore at resurrectedreads.com.