May 9, 2024 • 48 mins
In this profound episode of the Echo Podcast, Pastor Dan Sinkhorn and Adrienne Tarullo of Shiloh Church delve into the concept of generational sins from biblical exegesis to personal experiences. By exploring verses from Old Testament, they shed light on how our formative experiences shape our perception of sin and faith.
The subject of generational habits, the fear of questioning traditions, and the possibility of disrupting them for a healthier life story is discussed. We tell the tale of cutting ham tradition by Zig Ziglar as a vivid example of unconscious family habits and how to liberate oneself if they are leading down a harmful path.
The conversation deepens as we engage you with Anthropological roots of fear and comfort zones, taking you through the grafting process as a metaphor for transformation and evolution. Also discussed are concepts of 'normal' that are socially imposed and how to embrace your unique path.
This episode is a wholesome guide that acknowledges past wounds, encourages resilience, and reinstates the power of choice in reshaping responses to life's tribulations. The episode also underscores the significant role of faith and community support in the recovery journey. A shift in perspective can significantly impact how we perceive and deal with life's challenges, leading to profound personal growth.
Join us in this spiritual exploration to break the cycle of harmful family traits, inspire courage, and instigate change for a meaningful future. This episode is filled with profound insights, real-life experiences, and forward-looking transformations. It serves as a guide to personal growth and healing.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Music.
(00:07):
Hi, welcome to the Echo Podcast, where we discuss how our hearts and minds can
be an echo of God's heart and mind and what that even means in this world.
We are Pastor Dan Sinkhorn and Adrienne Tarullo from Shiloh Church of Jasper,
Indiana, and we've gone pulpit to podcast. We hope you enjoy today's episode.
Pastor Dan, we've taken a few weeks off. Yeah. Yeah. Pretty much the month of April.
(00:29):
We have. And I think it's good. There's a time for rest, and then there's a
time for the other one that you always say that I'm forgetting right now.
Rest and restoration.
What's the word? Recreation.
Do I have a thing I say? I don't know. Maybe it's the Bible.
There's a time for rest. Maybe it's the sowing, the gardening thing.
(00:50):
I mean, you're reflecting the very familiar passage from Ecclesiastes that says,
you know, there's a time to live, there's a time to die, there's a time to,
you know, it's very famous,
kind of, it's been used in folk songs and stuff like that.
And maybe that's what you're thinking. Maybe.
Either way. Either way. We've done something like that, and now we're back. And we're back.
(01:14):
We were supposed to be back last week, but then I decided to be really, really sick.
It was definitely a decision that you made, right? You're like, please, Lord.
I have not been that sick in so long.
I couldn't remember the last time I'd ever been that sick. I was really sick
with a stomach virus. And...
(01:40):
But, you know, I had another, you know, I had a sort of trip off the planet
because it was one of those kinds of illnesses.
I was running a fever and, you know, I'd be hot and sweaty one minute and throwing
off the covers and soaked in my own sweat.
And then the next minute I'm shivering and shaking and, you know,
I'm delirious and I'm remembering things that I thought, dreamed or imagined.
(02:03):
You know, it's all just a blur.
Wow. You know, it was that kind of illness. I spent about 30 hours in bed and,
you know, I can't stay in bed if I'm not sleeping, awakening or descending into sleep.
It's like, you know, something to do with sleeping. Otherwise, I'm not in bed.
So for me to be in bed for 30 hours was a real indication of how bad it was.
(02:28):
It means you were in that constant state of like reawakening, sleeping.
And my body just refused to function normally. And it was, but,
you know, it's funny how I came away from all of that with some really interesting observations,
you know, like I have a certain piece about some things that I haven't felt in a long time.
(02:51):
And it's like, I can't really tell you when that happened, but somewhere in
that twilight, you know, I think I might've met the Lord at a couple of crossroads
and worked a few things out. And that's pretty wild.
And it's actually very historically substantive because there's a lot of stories
of the saints and church fathers and mothers,
(03:14):
you know, having similar experiences where they're really sick and they're in
the throes of the fever, delirium and whatever.
But then they come out of it with a kind of a catharsis, you know,
and I kind of feel like I might have had that happen to me. It's pretty wild. out. Cool.
So I'm not advising that you go get really sick and, you know,
(03:38):
flirt with death or something like that to have a religious experience.
But I will tell you that if you're sick, at least ask the Lord to redeem it
somehow and into something like that, because you might as well.
Yeah. Yeah. I had a patient once tell me that he found the Lord while on a crazy acid trip.
(04:00):
I'm sure it was nothing like that. But, you know, sometimes when you have those
out-of-body times, you can meet the Lord.
I don't know. I don't recommend that, by the way.
Gosh, you know, you came in with the topic, and we need to get to it. Sure.
But, you know, that is, in most cultures, there's a real strong history of that, right?
(04:22):
I, you know, the sweat lodges and, and the, the native American traditions of,
of, oh, what's it called? I've forgotten the name of it, but.
You know, some of the things they will do to create an out-of-body kind of experience
in order to commune with the gods or to commune with their ancestors or whatever.
(04:42):
That's a very common thing.
Yeah, that's still happening these days in South America.
There's some tea, I forgot what it's called, but people go on this trip.
Well, they take a literal trip. They take a trip to go take a trip.
Right, to a very specific place. and they have this tea that's like hallucinogenic
and it causes like vomiting and all of this stuff.
(05:04):
And they say people have just crazy spiritual experiences.
Anthony, my husband is going on a trip to Peru here in a couple of weeks and he wants to do it so bad.
And I'm like, do not do it. Please don't. I'm begging you. Don't do that. It sounds terrible.
Anyway, so I came in with a topic today from your sermon last week,
(05:24):
Sunday, and this has been, I think, a much awaited topic for me and for my husband.
Specifically, I think we've been talking about this behind the scenes for years.
I mean, a really long time.
And you've been an elder or a mentor for us in this in many ways.
(05:44):
And we're grateful for that. And so I think it was really cool for the whole
congregation. And now whoever's listening to this podcast to hear it come from you.
And that That is, you called the sermon, The Sins of the Father.
Yeah, yeah. And you talked about how there's these generational consequences of sin.
And there are several, several times in the Bible, two in Exodus,
(06:08):
one in Numbers, and one in Deuteronomy, that you listed out for us that talk
about these generational sins.
And I've got one here. It's Exodus 34, 6 through 7.
And let's see, I'll just start at six.
And there Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God,
(06:28):
slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands,
and forgiving wickedness, rebellion, and sin.
Yet He does not leave the guilty unpunished. He punishes the children and their
children for the sin of the parents to the third and the fourth generation.
And there are I mean, all four of those are so similar.
You know, it's like they all say the same thing. And so, I think that can be
(06:52):
kind of hard to chew on, especially maybe for a non-Christian who's hearing this.
Like, okay, am I responsible for the sin that my great-grandfather made, you know, 150 years ago?
Well, not directly, right? But it keeps getting passed down.
Like, no, you're not responsible that he got drunk and killed somebody.
(07:15):
That's not on your shoulders, but the effects of that is like the trauma that
he experienced and the way that he dealt with that, he passed down to his son
who took those things and passed it down to his son, daughter, whatever.
And it just keeps going down the generations. And that's something that my husband
(07:36):
and I have been really trying to heal from.
Like we've seen all this dysfunction in the prior generations and how that has been passed down.
I mean, we're living it every day and we're constantly saying,
we're going to be different. It stops here.
And that's what you talked about in your sermon. Like it just takes someone
(07:57):
saying, look, it stops here.
And that is so hard to do, but it takes faith and it takes elders and it takes
a community to be able to kind of pull you out of that dysfunction so you can
see exactly what is dysfunctional.
So I would add a word and that's perseverance. Yeah, absolutely.
(08:19):
Because you keep falling down in these these patterns if you're not if you don't
persevere, if you don't stick to the path there.
Like there's a lot of passive aggressiveness in my family.
That I've been trying to break. And I can tell when I get really stressed and
really tired and I get to a certain point, I'm very passive aggressive,
but it takes some awareness of saying, okay, whoa, I know that I did that.
(08:44):
Apologizing to whoever I did it to. Usually it's my husband, right?
It's the ones we're closest to who see that the most and then saying,
okay, I'm just going to try again.
I'm going to keep persevering. I'm going to keep dealing with this.
So I guess I'll just let you springboard off of that.
I know you talked about David quite a bit. I thought that was an amazing reference,
mostly because we literally just covered it in youth group.
(09:06):
Like David died yesterday in our reading. So that was so fresh in my mind and
it led for a great conversation in youth group.
But anything that you want to go from from there? Well, gosh.
So thank you. That's a very good summary of the message.
And this theme is dear to my heart because, you know, I wrestled as a young
(09:32):
man and teenager with this concept.
Concept and I can't remember
the first time I read those what seemed
to me like curses from the Bible but I
did begin to read the Bible in earnest when I was a teenager when I was in high
school and I know that when I read that I that was my immediate reaction is
(09:58):
are you telling me that because my grandfather or my great-grandfather screwed up that I'm cursed?
Is that what the Lord is saying?
And that really troubled me deeply.
But before I had a better sort of biblical understanding and a better,
you know, practical knowledge of the Bible, God seemed to be saying to me,
(10:23):
no, you're not cursed by me.
But if you do not choose a new way, a better way, then you'll just perpetuate
the only normal, you know.
No. And so even in high school, I was on the cusp of being a sort of amateur
(10:43):
sociologist, anthropologist, you know, I don't know the terms.
Well, I know the words and the terms, but I don't know the professions well enough to distinguish.
But it seems to me that understanding the physical human nature and the societal human nature,
that it's pretty easy to see how most of us grow up with a very small scope
(11:06):
of what we consider normal.
You know, I always call it the mayonnaise or miracle whip thing,
because there are people who just think anyone who likes miracle whip is insane
because that's not mayonnaise.
And there are people who think miracle whip is the only way to go because mayonnaise
is icky rotten eggs and, you know, whatever. And it really kind of just depends on you.
(11:32):
But I've literally heard people decry others as not being normal and maybe tug-in-cheek,
but they call you abnormal because you like Miracle Whip and not mayonnaise
or salad dressing and not mayonnaise or vice versa.
And see, that's the way we are, though. That's our nature.
(11:52):
I've gone to churches in the past because I've visited many,
many types of churches and synagogues and other religious expressions over the years.
And I've had a very liberal education that way, and I'm very grateful for it.
But I've been in some settings where the preacher would invite us to participate
in worship in a way that we're not comfortable with,
(12:15):
and then put us down publicly in front of everybody saying that we don't know how to worship.
You know what I mean? And so we do that. We do that all the time.
We have very closed communities and we even have more close,
even more closed families in the sense of what we assume is normal.
(12:36):
And so if you're a child in a household
raised by parents who have certain idiosyncrasies, that's normal to you.
And then when you encounter the consequences of their idiosyncrasies,
then you have a tendency to have, you know, great deal of stress trying to reconcile that. Well,
(12:59):
Is it normal for me to suffer because of this strangeness?
And so, you know, your parents send you to public school, they send you out
into the world. It's still a pretty limited world.
And people by their very nature tend to hang with people that they can relate
to, which means that even when your scope broadens, it doesn't broaden much.
(13:21):
And, and so your cultural diversity of thought is still really limited for the most of your life,
unless there's an outside force that intervenes,
you know, so you'll find that children who are, who are raised in military families
where they're moving all the time or children who grow up in urban areas where
(13:43):
there's a lot of transients and they're meeting people from all over the world.
They're a little more flexible about these
kinds of things because their normal is diverse
but the vast majority of us don't know any better i i remember meeting people
in in suburbs of chicago who had never left their street there's an l train
(14:03):
that ran right through the middle of their neighborhood that would take them
to a lake you know a great lake like michigan that they'd never ever seen.
And it was a five-minute train ride from their neighborhood,
but they never left their street.
So naturally, everything that seems normal to them is there.
Now, bringing that full circle, when God says, look, the sins of the Father
(14:27):
are going to be visited on third and fourth generation.
God's not really—I mean, I'm not saying he didn't mean it as a curse,
because if you do the exegetical work, the hermeneutic, that is to study the words and the context.
And if you do the work of reading scripture as those who wrote it and those
(14:49):
who immediately read it, then you're going to get a different meaning from it.
And the meaning is curse. It's God saying.
God desires so desperately that you obey him and stay within a righteous relationship with him.
That he's scaring you a little bit with a threat.
He's saying, you know, not only will you suffer the consequences of disobedience
(15:15):
and disloyalty to me, but it will be visited upon generations to follow.
Do you really want that to happen? So it is a sort of a curse,
but it still ultimately expresses a concept that we really don't have to be
Bible scholars to understand.
And you addressed it well in your introductory words, and I've just explained
(15:35):
how you can live in the same neighborhood all your life and live the consequences
of a previous person's sin or choices.
You know, sin is very specific to the relationship with God,
but you and I often get into conversations about the...
Way we were both raised in the Catholic church and stuff, and we'll talk a lot
(15:57):
about the various nuances of Catholic culture, especially in a community like
ours where it's a very strong influence.
And if that's not an example of what we're talking about, I don't know what is.
You know, there are people, but there's a really famous sort of analogy that
I, at least famous among us preachers,
(16:18):
and it was about, the first time I heard it, it was told by a guy named Zig
Zig Ziglar and Zig was just talking about how, you know, one day he worked really,
he'd worked very hard all week to,
to earn a sales achievement because the prize was a 15 pound ham.
And he won that ham for his family and he won that prize and he brought it home.
(16:38):
And his wife said, Oh honey, this is wonderful.
And she put it on the pan and immediately cut the end off of it and set it aside,
and then stuck it in the oven. And he looked at her and he says, why'd you do that?
Why'd you cut the end of that ham off. He goes, I don't know.
She said, my mom always did that.
Well, get your mother on the phone. I want to know why you did that. I want that whole ham.
(16:59):
And so we got mom on the phone and mom said, well, I don't know.
My mother always did that. So just get your mother on the phone.
So we got grandma on the phone and we said, grandma, why did you cut the ham
like that? Well, it was all bigger than my pan was.
And you've heard me tell that story, but that's it, right? The sins of the generations,
or the habits of the generation in this case, is we just do what we think is
(17:24):
normal because we don't know any better. And there has to be a decision.
Somebody has to say, you know, I don't think this is working out very well.
I think it's a real shame to cut a chunk of ham off that otherwise would have
been part of a delicious meal.
You know, I mean, someone has to kind of, it's the old emperor's new clothes
(17:45):
analogy. I mean, somebody has to say, hey, question, why is the emperor naked?
You know, because nobody ever does that. Nobody ever questions anything.
And if they don't question, and of course, there's consequences for asking questions.
And, you know, I know families, for example, where there are certain things,
(18:05):
if you bring them up, man, you get an ice cold reception.
And you get a, we don't talk about that. Yeah. You know, and it turns out that
there has been so much pain and shame associated with some historical recent
or distant aspect of our family story.
We just don't talk about it. Well, that's another great way to make sure it keeps happening.
(18:27):
You know, and, and, and so, so it turns out that the whole concept of the sins
of the father and the idea that,
that having a healthy family depends on being able to recognize that none of
us had any choice about being born.
I don't know one person who said from wherever you are before your soul sparks
(18:50):
into existence, I ain't going. Right.
Right? Nobody gets that choice. I've never met a child who was born in some difficult,
illegitimate, or otherwise unplanned and unprecedented situation where I could
look at them and say, well, you're worthless because you were born of this union.
(19:11):
I mean, people do it historically.
They do it all the time, you know, and back when mixed-race marriages and things
were taboo, children were punished simply for being born out of a union they had nothing to do with.
Like, how can that be right on anybody's, how can people, civilized,
decent people, never mind Christians or Jews or whatever, how can civilized,
(19:33):
decent people condemn a child for just being born?
And so what if they happen to have been born to someone whose reputation is
questionable or happen to be born to a relationship that wasn't considered acceptable
at the time or whatever. It's still not the child's problem.
And you can have issues with other adults that revolve around adult matters,
(19:58):
but what right do we have to condemn a child for just being born?
Well, take that concept and ask yourself. So when you're trying to break paradigms
from your family's story, you don't have to apologize for being born.
You don't have to apologize because you were born to a father or a mother who
was screwed up. It wasn't your fault.
(20:20):
It wasn't your fault that your alcoholic father and your chronically depressed
mother got together and had a baby and they raised you.
And for much of your life, you just assumed that his alcoholism and her depression were normal.
And then one day you started thinking, I'm not happy.
What can I do you to make that better. And somehow you began to realize you
(20:43):
didn't have to repeat their paradigm. That's on them.
Well, most of us never have the courage or permission or freedom.
There's always something that prevents you from breaking free.
And it's a perceived barrier.
There's an old story that's been told among the inspirational speakers of generations
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about the fleas that got put in a jar.
And it turns out fleas can jump really high. Ask your dog and your cat.
And what they found was, is they could put the fleas in the jar and put a lid on it.
And after trying for several times, the fleas would eventually over days realize
(21:30):
where the lid was, and then they could take the lid off and the fleas would
never jump out of the jar because they just accepted that that's where the barrier was.
So many of us live that way too. We live as though we have these barricades
or these boundaries that are preventing us from being free of unhealthy paradigms.
And we, there may be something legitimate about that, or at least something
(21:54):
that was for a time, maybe the lid was on, but now it's not.
And, and so, you know, when you're living in a, you know, when you're,
you're underage and incapable of being independent, you're living in a household
that's dysfunctional and you're trying your best to live through that.
And you know something's wrong and something could
be better and you try to deal with it to the best of
(22:14):
your ability but you're limited because you have no particular freedom to bring
big change to your situation and yet there comes a time in your life when you
do but whether you do it or not really then depends on you yeah and so i'm not
trying to make i don't want to
oversimplify it because even then you have to, you know, it's like, if I'm going to,
(22:39):
if I, you know, think about the people who, who,
you know, like live in foreign countries and they want to come immigrate to
America, or they want to immigrate from one country to another,
they're basically making a decision to leave behind everything that's familiar
to them, even what's bad about it.
And to embrace something new that has all kinds of risk associated with it.
(23:01):
And most people don't make those kinds of decisions without a lot of preparation.
And then they, if they're really wise, they prepare with plans for your contingencies
for things to go wrong. Well, what happens if this doesn't work out the way
I thought it would? What will I do?
So what I'm proposing is, is that when a person is ready to make a new paradigm
(23:26):
or a new life story, they got to take into account all the costs associated with making that move.
And that almost always requires you to align yourself with people who can help you, you know.
And this is why I think being in a church community, especially one that's got
a particular sensitivity to these sorts of things.
(23:48):
Is really vital, you know, because you, you got to have that,
you got to have that sense of, of, of readiness for this choice.
So all that to say, because the analogy I used in the sermon,
you might remember was sort of a grafting horticultural or arborist kind of analogy,
where an arborist sees a tree that has branches that are looking helpful or
(24:12):
healthful and have potential,
but the stem or the trunk of the tree is pretty unhealthy and it just doesn't
look good for the whole living system.
So they take the branch that's healthy and they cut it away in a particular
way, and then they graft it to a healthy trunk.
And then that way that branch continues and it continues to bear fruit and all of that.
(24:36):
And, you know, for the branch, match this
is a really traumatic experience being cut
away from the only place you
ever you know because once upon a time you didn't
exist and the tree was shooting you out you know and now you're being cutting
away from it you know so you're born on this trunk that is unhealthy and dying
(24:59):
and decaying and now you've been cut away from it and you've been connected
to something different and you're going to go through a trauma.
There's going to be a traumatic experience of transformation or transplanting
or grafting, rather, you know.
And then yet for you, there will always be that traumatic memory and there will
(25:20):
also be that ball or that scar at the base of the stem where you are grafted
to the new healthier stem or healthier trunk.
But then everything that comes from you after that, only knows healthy, vibrant, vital life.
And to me, that's the essence of that message.
(25:43):
That whole sins of the father message is to say, it isn't fair that the ugliness of sin,
which is separation from God and therefore open to influence from God's enemy and the flesh,
but it isn't fair that that will produce generations of suffering, but it is inevitable.
(26:08):
But in the same way, a legacy of love and grace,
a legacy of new life and vibrancy in the Holy Spirit has the same potential,
and in fact, a greater potential because it's being sourced and fueled by the
very source of life and eternal life. Yeah.
(26:31):
Yeah. I have so many thoughts, so many things running through my head.
But I think about that metaphor frequently, the grafting that I think you told
me that maybe two years ago for the first time.
And I even referenced that with my husband over the weekend.
We have a tree in the back of our yard, a pin oak that has those like nasty,
I don't know, they kind of look like tumors all over them and they're because of wasps or whatever.
(26:54):
And so I pointed to that tree and said that metaphor and I think it's so helpful.
It reminds me, in New Harmony, Indiana, they have a 40-fruit tree.
I don't know if you've ever heard of that. But they took one healthy trunk,
basically, and they have grafted it 39 times so that there are fruits growing out.
I mean, pears, apples, cherries, like all of these things. It's so cool.
(27:17):
But it's so true. They do that. They do that, and they're successful if the trunk is healthy.
You said normal a lot, too, the word normal.
And I have been thinking so much about the word normal. I'm listening to an
audio book right now called The Myth of Normal.
It's written by author Gabor Mate. G-A-B-O-R is his first name, Mate.
(27:38):
And he, I'm really impressed by his work. I've been reading a book by him and
listening to a book and podcasts and all these things.
And basically what he says about this myth of normal is it's hardwired into
us from way back when, when we were a nomadic people moving around.
Like you had to fit into the community that you were in because if you weren't,
(28:01):
you were kicked out into the wilderness, right?
Into that unknown territory.
And I think what keeps us in that jar, like the fleas are, is that fear of the
unknown. known. Hey, that's brilliant.
It's huge. I mean, that's life changing, right? Because it's like,
well, I at least know what this mold is.
I at least know how to be passive aggressive.
(28:24):
I at least know what this looks like when I get drunk or whatever,
like whatever your mold is, whatever your family has shown you.
And that has a wide, a wide range of things. Like I know what that looks Right?
I can at least predict what will happen.
But what I can't predict will happen is when I get sober.
(28:45):
Yes. Or when I start treating people with love or when I start asking questions.
What does that look like? How will I be received?
Will people make me feel stupid? Is that not normal? Right.
Right? And so it's like, what is normal? My normal is not your normal.
My normal is bilateral knee pain. I walk around with knee pain every single day. That's my normal.
(29:07):
But is that the normal? No.
But I know how to perpetuate that cycle of pain. I've learned that very well
over the past eight years of dealing with this.
But what it takes is education, perseverance, and mentorship.
Mentorship—this is why physical therapy is so important—to say,
(29:28):
look, this isn't normal.
Here's how you achieve a pain-free life. Here's how you achieve more normal
knees that aren't shredded.
I mean, literally shredded. So, that's huge.
I mean, if we trace it back, even in Exodus, like, if people didn't serve the
Lord as Moses was saying,
(29:49):
this is our normal now, this is how we choose
god after 400 years of slavery from a
very evil people yeah this is our normal
if you don't do this you will be
kicked out or i will open up the earth right in front of you and swallow you
whole you and your family like there's all of these these like storylines that
(30:11):
we can trace back to and say oh okay this is why i behave this way yeah but i thought a
second layer there of your flea analogy in the jar.
It's like, once you take the lid off, you know, they don't jump out because
they've learned, ow, that hurts, right? There's a thing up there.
I guess fleas can feel pain, I guess. We'll go with it.
(30:33):
But it's like, once you take that lid off, they just jump to that height.
But if you're going to be a flea who's going to get out of that jar,
what do you have to do first?
You have to look up. You have to look up and see that there's not that lid there anymore.
And I think that's a perfect metaphor for us. If we want to change the status
(30:54):
quo, if we want to jump out of the jar that we've been born in,
we first have to look up. You have to look to God.
Because He's the perfect example of what unending, unfailing love looks like, and grace and mercy.
But He also tells us, if you don't follow my rules, here's what's going to happen.
Yeah, and not so much as a threat, as a cause and effect.
(31:20):
Which is another term I used in the sermon quite often, that God is the author
of everything that we scientifically discover.
Like, scientific discovery is basically a revealing of God's genius.
Now, obviously, there's plenty of so-called scientists out there who don't approach it that way.
(31:40):
But in my opinion, scientific discovery is figuring out how God does things. Yeah.
(32:16):
But can this process be interrupted? You know, can this be changed?
Well, it turns out pretty much anything can be changed. You know,
can't make your knee better, but you can change how you deal with it.
And you already described it because you're an excellent therapist yourself.
You already know that you can do certain things to mitigate the consequences
(32:39):
of something that may not change.
And so that's really it in a nutshell. shells.
None of us has the luxury of being able to reset things and start over,
even though we kind of metaphorically do.
We're starting over from where we are. We can't start over from where we were
when the original cause and effect happened, you know?
(33:01):
And that's one of the hardest things I think about growing up in a dysfunctional
home is, and understanding that, you know, yes, you didn't have anything to
say about that. You were just born.
It was, you're You're just, you're, you know, for whatever reason,
you were born to this household. You were born to this situation.
(33:22):
You can't undo that. And you can't even undo all the years when you had little
to say or do about what was happening.
You can only say, well, now that I understand, now that I have a new vision,
because I looked up, I have a new power because I have knowledge and information
that's going to inform how I decide to respond to this.
(33:43):
I can take the shredded knee and I can live with it.
Because I can't change what happened to, and this is what everybody goes through.
Like, you know, when, when you're a victim entirely, you know, of whatever,
you know, like you're, you're involved in an accident that wasn't your fault,
that you were just simply in a place and time where you became a victim because
(34:07):
some other thing happened.
And, you know, you're caught in a hailstorm and you get hit in the head by a
big old chunk of ice, and it causes brain damage that affects the way your body
works for the rest of your life.
Not your fault. Yeah. But before you can begin this new paradigm,
you have to make peace with that.
Not my fault that this happened. Right. It's not my fault.
(34:31):
There's people all over our country right now picking up after tornadoes.
There's more coming tonight.
They aren't responsible for what happened to them. But unfortunately,
whether they like it or not, they are responsible for what they do after that,
how they approach it. That is so good. And that is so profound.
And it hits closer to home than you even realize just saying that it's not my fault.
(34:57):
I've had recently a few months ago, kind of a falling out with my grandmother
because she was extremely unhealthy and treated me in a very not okay way.
And it was very hurtful. And you talk about that just like cutting the branch, right?
And we are up against the clock today, but I think this is good stuff.
And so my husband goes out there.
This was a few months ago that the initial thing happened. So he goes out on
(35:21):
Sunday after you gave this sermon in church.
He goes out to her house with my dad and his girlfriend, and he's trying to make amends, right?
Because I am not to that point yet. I have told her, I forgive you.
I understand where you're coming from, but I'm not in a place where I'm I'm
ready to have a relationship with you again.
And that hurt her to the core so deeply because she's so dysfunctional and so
(35:44):
angry, so angry towards me for things that is not my fault, like my parents' divorce.
Anyway, this is like not therapy, but kind of, right? Because I think it's helpful.
I think someone's going to hear this and they're going to say,
wow, I can relate to that.
So very angry at me, like put her hands on me, shaking me, yelling at me,
crying in my face. Like it was it was bad and I told you all about that.
(36:06):
But yeah, so so my husband goes out there because he's just been feeling this
like What what's the word i'm trying to say here like.
A dis-ease. Like he's been feeling like things aren't resolved.
Like lack of closure. Lack of closure. Yes. And like he's going out without
intention. He said it was all great for a few hours.
And then at the very end, he could tell she was starting to get angry and starting
(36:30):
to get in that zone again.
And he was like, I should leave. I should leave. I know I should leave.
I know this is happening. And she wouldn't let him.
She kept making like wanting him to stay for different reasons.
And then it just exploded.
And she was saying all of these hurtful things and saying things like,
well, isn't she a Christian?
(36:50):
Isn't she a Christian? Why would she do this to me?
Right? Why would she do this to me? Why would she treat me this way after all that I've done for her?
I went to all of her things growing up, whatever. And so for me,
it's like, okay, this is just a deep understanding of what it means to be a Christian.
Because yeah, Yeah, I've done something that hurts her, but it's because I'm
(37:12):
choosing a healthier life.
I don't want to be tied up to that unhealthy trunk anymore.
Yeah. Right? Because anger and chaos, that's not where God is.
Right? Well, and you can't fix what's wrong with them.
Exactly. And listeners, I don't think that what I am saying is without flaw
(37:35):
or that couldn't be adapted and adjusted by a professional therapist or I don't
know. I don't know what I'm trying to say.
My perspective is based on years and years of experience.
And from my experience, what I have learned is that you can try to help other
(38:01):
people join you in a therapeutic personal growth process.
But if they don't join you, there's a certain point at which you have to cut
your losses and think about what you can control, what you can change, and then focus on that.
And I don't think that that's easy because you don't want to leave anybody along the way.
(38:29):
I don't know why, but I've had this picture of the Oregon Trail in my mind a
couple of times over the last 15 or 20 minutes.
Like when I was talking about people making the decision to leave their country
or whatever, it's like, like when you make the decision that you're going to
take this treacherous, dangerous journey across country in order to start a
new life in a place you've never been before.
There's always going to be, you know, and if you've ever played Oregon Trail
(38:52):
on the computer when you were a kid, you know you're going to leave some things behind along the way.
There are people who are going to start out on that journey with you that won't
get very far, and you'll leave them behind.
They'll either turn around and go back, or they'll die on the way.
And you have to let them go, or you'll never get where you're going, or you'll die too.
(39:15):
I didn't make the rules. So this is really what the whole Sins of the Father
series, or series, it's really more of a message in itself, is really about.
It's the reality that you have to take the circumstances you've been given and
choose how you're going to respond to them.
And understanding that if you choose to do nothing, that by default,
(39:37):
you are the third and the fourth generation that it's visited upon.
It's just how it is. You could die with them, go back with them,
or you can leave it on the way and go.
And it doesn't literally mean that you'll never have a relationship with your
grandmother or that you'll ever have a healthy relationship with her.
It doesn't mean that will never happen.
(39:58):
It's highly unlikely given all of the knowns.
But there is a possibility where there are terms or boundaries that we agree
to observe and where you take control of the situation,
not without cost, because it's going to be tested.
(40:20):
Your resolve is going to be tested. Your boundaries are going to be probed.
But if you are committed, you may be able to create a situation,
God willing, where she lives long enough to respect your boundaries and have
some sort of relationship with you rather than no relationship with you.
And it won't necessarily change her therapeutically, but it won't interfere
(40:45):
with your therapeutic development.
Because that's the only thing you really have any control over.
And that that's i like i said i
didn't make those rules and and my god is
a god who shows me those things those cause and effects those
those if then and boundary you know like like
he's the god that you discover when you do scientific investigation and my scientific
(41:09):
investigation tells me that he gives us all the freedom of will and liberty
to to choose whether or not to submit ourselves and submit our flesh and our ego.
And if we don't, there are consequences.
That's the very essence of sin.
I was talking with someone earlier this morning because we're going to be doing
(41:33):
a whole lot of messages and teaching this summer that are going to be about
everything from family well-being, growing old, and we're going to talk about mental illness.
I'm just planning on talking about all these things that I hope help.
And one of the things that I've realized is that, you know, you have to have
a willingness to invite the Holy Spirit to join in collaboration with your world
(42:01):
in order to bring you to a place of wholeness.
So to put that in another way, if I know that I'm chronically depressed and I give that to God,
then in order for me to receive the therapeutic help that he can direct me to,
I have to submit myself to his authority first.
(42:22):
As long as I'm stubborn and I'm saying, I don't need that. If I take those pills, I'm weak.
And I can't admit that weakness. You know, I, if I take those pills,
I'm weak and that's why I'm not going to ever do that.
And then you keep living out this paradigm where you're suffering the consequences
of these highs and lows and, and various, you know, expressions of your mental illness.
(42:46):
Then, then how does a mentally ill, and I mean ill, not diseased or radically sick.
I mean, if you're mentally unwell, which could be mild depression,
right? How does a mentally ill Christian reconcile therapeutic treatments like
counseling and medications and things like that with their Christian faith?
(43:09):
Because Christians have done a horrible job for decades and decades, for generations.
Christians have said, the only reason you're depressed is because you're not
right with God. And that's just BS, plain and simple.
Those people are just as guilty of as you, if you're not careful,
is being too proud to admit that God has a care plan for you.
(43:33):
And God loves you so much that he'll even use some ornery doctor who is so proud
and arrogant that they would never admit that God exists in order to provide
a treatment plan for you.
See, because that's what God does. He did that with Pharaoh,
right? He says, I love my people so much, I'm going to play games with Pharaoh.
But in the end, he's going to lose, and he's going to lose big time because
(43:53):
he's obviously not with me.
Well, you can do the same thing with your arrogant doctor. Not that all doctors are arrogant.
I'm just saying, in order to put this in perspective, you're a Christian saying,
I'm not going to use medications or whatever to be healthy, you know,
because that's weakness.
Well, I say that's BS, because the fact is, is God is actually saying,
(44:13):
I'm in charge of all of this.
So your number one problem is, is you're not letting me be in charge of you.
You, because if you let me be in charge of you, then I can help you with the
thing you want my help with.
But the first thing you have to do is submit your pride. You have to say, I'm a sinner.
What is a sinner? Someone who's more full of themselves than they are the Holy Spirit.
(44:35):
You know, I mean, it's really like that.
You know, it's like you can look at them and you can either see a person that's
filled with their own ego, their own self-assessment and everything,
and their narcissism and all their, you know, whatever.
And then you look at another person who's submitted to the authority of God
and who's constantly trying to humble themselves before God,
and ultimately what you see is a person that God can help.
(44:59):
I can't help people who won't get out of the way. That's why I think one of
the biggest lies that has ever been perpetuated is that old saying that God
helps those who help themselves.
That ain't in the Bible, and it isn't even doctrinally sound.
Because God can help those who refuse to get in the way of God helping them.
(45:21):
God can help those who don't try to help themselves and then come to him with
the end of themselves. selves.
If you want to be whole and healthy, then submit to God and admit that you have
a problem that you can't fix on your own and probably shouldn't try to fix on your own.
And then see where he takes you.
(45:44):
And if he takes you to a really good therapist,
if he takes you to a medication that works with your body's naturally designed
God-given biochemistry and helps you to to be strong and fit and able to be
productive and to have a richer relationship with him. Why wouldn't you do that?
(46:05):
You know, so like I said, God, God has to be in charge of your treatment plan.
And so if you decide you want to put yourself on a new paradigm,
you want to graft yourself to a new paradigm, you have to let him be the arborist.
You have to say, Lord, Lord, you cut me away from this paradigm and you match
(46:30):
me to the place and time, the stem,
the trunk that will bring in me something new.
You know, Lord, you take over my treatment plan. You take over my revitalization
and restoration. duration.
And what happens is, is that you have this rich, harmonious relationship with your Creator,
(46:55):
who is also enriching your human life, your flesh existence,
in ways that you would not have embraced if your pride was constantly in the way. Amen.
I think we'll end with that today, because that is good. Thank you.
Listeners, rewind, listen to that again. That was profound. Thank you.
(47:16):
Well, all I can tell you is while I was in the depths and throes of my deep
illness last week and spent 30 hours in bed and much of it in this twilight,
one of the things I came away with was clarity about certain things, as I mentioned earlier.
And one of the things I was clear of is that whatever time I have left as a
(47:38):
pastor and a preacher, as a creature, I just want to help people.
So I pray that helped you. For sure.
Okay. Well, we have another meeting to go to, so y'all be blessed. We'll see you around.
Music.
Music.
(00:07):
Hi, welcome to the Echo Podcast, where we discuss how our hearts and minds can
be an echo of God's heart and mind and what that even means in this world.
We are Pastor Dan Sinkhorn and Adrienne Tarullo from Shiloh Church of Jasper,
Indiana, and we've gone pulpit to podcast. We hope you enjoy today's episode.
Pastor Dan, we've taken a few weeks off. Yeah. Yeah. Pretty much the month of April.
(00:29):
We have. And I think it's good. There's a time for rest, and then there's a
time for the other one that you always say that I'm forgetting right now.
Rest and restoration.
What's the word? Recreation.
Do I have a thing I say? I don't know. Maybe it's the Bible.
There's a time for rest. Maybe it's the sowing, the gardening thing.
(00:50):
I mean, you're reflecting the very familiar passage from Ecclesiastes that says,
you know, there's a time to live, there's a time to die, there's a time to,
you know, it's very famous,
kind of, it's been used in folk songs and stuff like that.
And maybe that's what you're thinking. Maybe.
Either way. Either way. We've done something like that, and now we're back. And we're back.
(01:14):
We were supposed to be back last week, but then I decided to be really, really sick.
It was definitely a decision that you made, right? You're like, please, Lord.
I have not been that sick in so long.
I couldn't remember the last time I'd ever been that sick. I was really sick
with a stomach virus. And...
(01:40):
But, you know, I had another, you know, I had a sort of trip off the planet
because it was one of those kinds of illnesses.
I was running a fever and, you know, I'd be hot and sweaty one minute and throwing
off the covers and soaked in my own sweat.
And then the next minute I'm shivering and shaking and, you know,
I'm delirious and I'm remembering things that I thought, dreamed or imagined.
(02:03):
You know, it's all just a blur.
Wow. You know, it was that kind of illness. I spent about 30 hours in bed and,
you know, I can't stay in bed if I'm not sleeping, awakening or descending into sleep.
It's like, you know, something to do with sleeping. Otherwise, I'm not in bed.
So for me to be in bed for 30 hours was a real indication of how bad it was.
(02:28):
It means you were in that constant state of like reawakening, sleeping.
And my body just refused to function normally. And it was, but,
you know, it's funny how I came away from all of that with some really interesting observations,
you know, like I have a certain piece about some things that I haven't felt in a long time.
(02:51):
And it's like, I can't really tell you when that happened, but somewhere in
that twilight, you know, I think I might've met the Lord at a couple of crossroads
and worked a few things out. And that's pretty wild.
And it's actually very historically substantive because there's a lot of stories
of the saints and church fathers and mothers,
(03:14):
you know, having similar experiences where they're really sick and they're in
the throes of the fever, delirium and whatever.
But then they come out of it with a kind of a catharsis, you know,
and I kind of feel like I might have had that happen to me. It's pretty wild. out. Cool.
So I'm not advising that you go get really sick and, you know,
(03:38):
flirt with death or something like that to have a religious experience.
But I will tell you that if you're sick, at least ask the Lord to redeem it
somehow and into something like that, because you might as well.
Yeah. Yeah. I had a patient once tell me that he found the Lord while on a crazy acid trip.
(04:00):
I'm sure it was nothing like that. But, you know, sometimes when you have those
out-of-body times, you can meet the Lord.
I don't know. I don't recommend that, by the way.
Gosh, you know, you came in with the topic, and we need to get to it. Sure.
But, you know, that is, in most cultures, there's a real strong history of that, right?
(04:22):
I, you know, the sweat lodges and, and the, the native American traditions of,
of, oh, what's it called? I've forgotten the name of it, but.
You know, some of the things they will do to create an out-of-body kind of experience
in order to commune with the gods or to commune with their ancestors or whatever.
(04:42):
That's a very common thing.
Yeah, that's still happening these days in South America.
There's some tea, I forgot what it's called, but people go on this trip.
Well, they take a literal trip. They take a trip to go take a trip.
Right, to a very specific place. and they have this tea that's like hallucinogenic
and it causes like vomiting and all of this stuff.
(05:04):
And they say people have just crazy spiritual experiences.
Anthony, my husband is going on a trip to Peru here in a couple of weeks and he wants to do it so bad.
And I'm like, do not do it. Please don't. I'm begging you. Don't do that. It sounds terrible.
Anyway, so I came in with a topic today from your sermon last week,
(05:24):
Sunday, and this has been, I think, a much awaited topic for me and for my husband.
Specifically, I think we've been talking about this behind the scenes for years.
I mean, a really long time.
And you've been an elder or a mentor for us in this in many ways.
(05:44):
And we're grateful for that. And so I think it was really cool for the whole
congregation. And now whoever's listening to this podcast to hear it come from you.
And that That is, you called the sermon, The Sins of the Father.
Yeah, yeah. And you talked about how there's these generational consequences of sin.
And there are several, several times in the Bible, two in Exodus,
(06:08):
one in Numbers, and one in Deuteronomy, that you listed out for us that talk
about these generational sins.
And I've got one here. It's Exodus 34, 6 through 7.
And let's see, I'll just start at six.
And there Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God,
(06:28):
slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands,
and forgiving wickedness, rebellion, and sin.
Yet He does not leave the guilty unpunished. He punishes the children and their
children for the sin of the parents to the third and the fourth generation.
And there are I mean, all four of those are so similar.
You know, it's like they all say the same thing. And so, I think that can be
(06:52):
kind of hard to chew on, especially maybe for a non-Christian who's hearing this.
Like, okay, am I responsible for the sin that my great-grandfather made, you know, 150 years ago?
Well, not directly, right? But it keeps getting passed down.
Like, no, you're not responsible that he got drunk and killed somebody.
(07:15):
That's not on your shoulders, but the effects of that is like the trauma that
he experienced and the way that he dealt with that, he passed down to his son
who took those things and passed it down to his son, daughter, whatever.
And it just keeps going down the generations. And that's something that my husband
(07:36):
and I have been really trying to heal from.
Like we've seen all this dysfunction in the prior generations and how that has been passed down.
I mean, we're living it every day and we're constantly saying,
we're going to be different. It stops here.
And that's what you talked about in your sermon. Like it just takes someone
(07:57):
saying, look, it stops here.
And that is so hard to do, but it takes faith and it takes elders and it takes
a community to be able to kind of pull you out of that dysfunction so you can
see exactly what is dysfunctional.
So I would add a word and that's perseverance. Yeah, absolutely.
(08:19):
Because you keep falling down in these these patterns if you're not if you don't
persevere, if you don't stick to the path there.
Like there's a lot of passive aggressiveness in my family.
That I've been trying to break. And I can tell when I get really stressed and
really tired and I get to a certain point, I'm very passive aggressive,
but it takes some awareness of saying, okay, whoa, I know that I did that.
(08:44):
Apologizing to whoever I did it to. Usually it's my husband, right?
It's the ones we're closest to who see that the most and then saying,
okay, I'm just going to try again.
I'm going to keep persevering. I'm going to keep dealing with this.
So I guess I'll just let you springboard off of that.
I know you talked about David quite a bit. I thought that was an amazing reference,
mostly because we literally just covered it in youth group.
(09:06):
Like David died yesterday in our reading. So that was so fresh in my mind and
it led for a great conversation in youth group.
But anything that you want to go from from there? Well, gosh.
So thank you. That's a very good summary of the message.
And this theme is dear to my heart because, you know, I wrestled as a young
(09:32):
man and teenager with this concept.
Concept and I can't remember
the first time I read those what seemed
to me like curses from the Bible but I
did begin to read the Bible in earnest when I was a teenager when I was in high
school and I know that when I read that I that was my immediate reaction is
(09:58):
are you telling me that because my grandfather or my great-grandfather screwed up that I'm cursed?
Is that what the Lord is saying?
And that really troubled me deeply.
But before I had a better sort of biblical understanding and a better,
you know, practical knowledge of the Bible, God seemed to be saying to me,
(10:23):
no, you're not cursed by me.
But if you do not choose a new way, a better way, then you'll just perpetuate
the only normal, you know.
No. And so even in high school, I was on the cusp of being a sort of amateur
(10:43):
sociologist, anthropologist, you know, I don't know the terms.
Well, I know the words and the terms, but I don't know the professions well enough to distinguish.
But it seems to me that understanding the physical human nature and the societal human nature,
that it's pretty easy to see how most of us grow up with a very small scope
(11:06):
of what we consider normal.
You know, I always call it the mayonnaise or miracle whip thing,
because there are people who just think anyone who likes miracle whip is insane
because that's not mayonnaise.
And there are people who think miracle whip is the only way to go because mayonnaise
is icky rotten eggs and, you know, whatever. And it really kind of just depends on you.
(11:32):
But I've literally heard people decry others as not being normal and maybe tug-in-cheek,
but they call you abnormal because you like Miracle Whip and not mayonnaise
or salad dressing and not mayonnaise or vice versa.
And see, that's the way we are, though. That's our nature.
(11:52):
I've gone to churches in the past because I've visited many,
many types of churches and synagogues and other religious expressions over the years.
And I've had a very liberal education that way, and I'm very grateful for it.
But I've been in some settings where the preacher would invite us to participate
in worship in a way that we're not comfortable with,
(12:15):
and then put us down publicly in front of everybody saying that we don't know how to worship.
You know what I mean? And so we do that. We do that all the time.
We have very closed communities and we even have more close,
even more closed families in the sense of what we assume is normal.
(12:36):
And so if you're a child in a household
raised by parents who have certain idiosyncrasies, that's normal to you.
And then when you encounter the consequences of their idiosyncrasies,
then you have a tendency to have, you know, great deal of stress trying to reconcile that. Well,
(12:59):
Is it normal for me to suffer because of this strangeness?
And so, you know, your parents send you to public school, they send you out
into the world. It's still a pretty limited world.
And people by their very nature tend to hang with people that they can relate
to, which means that even when your scope broadens, it doesn't broaden much.
(13:21):
And, and so your cultural diversity of thought is still really limited for the most of your life,
unless there's an outside force that intervenes,
you know, so you'll find that children who are, who are raised in military families
where they're moving all the time or children who grow up in urban areas where
(13:43):
there's a lot of transients and they're meeting people from all over the world.
They're a little more flexible about these
kinds of things because their normal is diverse
but the vast majority of us don't know any better i i remember meeting people
in in suburbs of chicago who had never left their street there's an l train
(14:03):
that ran right through the middle of their neighborhood that would take them
to a lake you know a great lake like michigan that they'd never ever seen.
And it was a five-minute train ride from their neighborhood,
but they never left their street.
So naturally, everything that seems normal to them is there.
Now, bringing that full circle, when God says, look, the sins of the Father
(14:27):
are going to be visited on third and fourth generation.
God's not really—I mean, I'm not saying he didn't mean it as a curse,
because if you do the exegetical work, the hermeneutic, that is to study the words and the context.
And if you do the work of reading scripture as those who wrote it and those
(14:49):
who immediately read it, then you're going to get a different meaning from it.
And the meaning is curse. It's God saying.
God desires so desperately that you obey him and stay within a righteous relationship with him.
That he's scaring you a little bit with a threat.
He's saying, you know, not only will you suffer the consequences of disobedience
(15:15):
and disloyalty to me, but it will be visited upon generations to follow.
Do you really want that to happen? So it is a sort of a curse,
but it still ultimately expresses a concept that we really don't have to be
Bible scholars to understand.
And you addressed it well in your introductory words, and I've just explained
(15:35):
how you can live in the same neighborhood all your life and live the consequences
of a previous person's sin or choices.
You know, sin is very specific to the relationship with God,
but you and I often get into conversations about the...
Way we were both raised in the Catholic church and stuff, and we'll talk a lot
(15:57):
about the various nuances of Catholic culture, especially in a community like
ours where it's a very strong influence.
And if that's not an example of what we're talking about, I don't know what is.
You know, there are people, but there's a really famous sort of analogy that
I, at least famous among us preachers,
(16:18):
and it was about, the first time I heard it, it was told by a guy named Zig
Zig Ziglar and Zig was just talking about how, you know, one day he worked really,
he'd worked very hard all week to,
to earn a sales achievement because the prize was a 15 pound ham.
And he won that ham for his family and he won that prize and he brought it home.
(16:38):
And his wife said, Oh honey, this is wonderful.
And she put it on the pan and immediately cut the end off of it and set it aside,
and then stuck it in the oven. And he looked at her and he says, why'd you do that?
Why'd you cut the end of that ham off. He goes, I don't know.
She said, my mom always did that.
Well, get your mother on the phone. I want to know why you did that. I want that whole ham.
(16:59):
And so we got mom on the phone and mom said, well, I don't know.
My mother always did that. So just get your mother on the phone.
So we got grandma on the phone and we said, grandma, why did you cut the ham
like that? Well, it was all bigger than my pan was.
And you've heard me tell that story, but that's it, right? The sins of the generations,
or the habits of the generation in this case, is we just do what we think is
(17:24):
normal because we don't know any better. And there has to be a decision.
Somebody has to say, you know, I don't think this is working out very well.
I think it's a real shame to cut a chunk of ham off that otherwise would have
been part of a delicious meal.
You know, I mean, someone has to kind of, it's the old emperor's new clothes
(17:45):
analogy. I mean, somebody has to say, hey, question, why is the emperor naked?
You know, because nobody ever does that. Nobody ever questions anything.
And if they don't question, and of course, there's consequences for asking questions.
And, you know, I know families, for example, where there are certain things,
(18:05):
if you bring them up, man, you get an ice cold reception.
And you get a, we don't talk about that. Yeah. You know, and it turns out that
there has been so much pain and shame associated with some historical recent
or distant aspect of our family story.
We just don't talk about it. Well, that's another great way to make sure it keeps happening.
(18:27):
You know, and, and, and so, so it turns out that the whole concept of the sins
of the father and the idea that,
that having a healthy family depends on being able to recognize that none of
us had any choice about being born.
I don't know one person who said from wherever you are before your soul sparks
(18:50):
into existence, I ain't going. Right.
Right? Nobody gets that choice. I've never met a child who was born in some difficult,
illegitimate, or otherwise unplanned and unprecedented situation where I could
look at them and say, well, you're worthless because you were born of this union.
(19:11):
I mean, people do it historically.
They do it all the time, you know, and back when mixed-race marriages and things
were taboo, children were punished simply for being born out of a union they had nothing to do with.
Like, how can that be right on anybody's, how can people, civilized,
decent people, never mind Christians or Jews or whatever, how can civilized,
(19:33):
decent people condemn a child for just being born?
And so what if they happen to have been born to someone whose reputation is
questionable or happen to be born to a relationship that wasn't considered acceptable
at the time or whatever. It's still not the child's problem.
And you can have issues with other adults that revolve around adult matters,
(19:58):
but what right do we have to condemn a child for just being born?
Well, take that concept and ask yourself. So when you're trying to break paradigms
from your family's story, you don't have to apologize for being born.
You don't have to apologize because you were born to a father or a mother who
was screwed up. It wasn't your fault.
(20:20):
It wasn't your fault that your alcoholic father and your chronically depressed
mother got together and had a baby and they raised you.
And for much of your life, you just assumed that his alcoholism and her depression were normal.
And then one day you started thinking, I'm not happy.
What can I do you to make that better. And somehow you began to realize you
(20:43):
didn't have to repeat their paradigm. That's on them.
Well, most of us never have the courage or permission or freedom.
There's always something that prevents you from breaking free.
And it's a perceived barrier.
There's an old story that's been told among the inspirational speakers of generations
(21:07):
about the fleas that got put in a jar.
And it turns out fleas can jump really high. Ask your dog and your cat.
And what they found was, is they could put the fleas in the jar and put a lid on it.
And after trying for several times, the fleas would eventually over days realize
(21:30):
where the lid was, and then they could take the lid off and the fleas would
never jump out of the jar because they just accepted that that's where the barrier was.
So many of us live that way too. We live as though we have these barricades
or these boundaries that are preventing us from being free of unhealthy paradigms.
And we, there may be something legitimate about that, or at least something
(21:54):
that was for a time, maybe the lid was on, but now it's not.
And, and so, you know, when you're living in a, you know, when you're,
you're underage and incapable of being independent, you're living in a household
that's dysfunctional and you're trying your best to live through that.
And you know something's wrong and something could
be better and you try to deal with it to the best of
(22:14):
your ability but you're limited because you have no particular freedom to bring
big change to your situation and yet there comes a time in your life when you
do but whether you do it or not really then depends on you yeah and so i'm not
trying to make i don't want to
oversimplify it because even then you have to, you know, it's like, if I'm going to,
(22:39):
if I, you know, think about the people who, who,
you know, like live in foreign countries and they want to come immigrate to
America, or they want to immigrate from one country to another,
they're basically making a decision to leave behind everything that's familiar
to them, even what's bad about it.
And to embrace something new that has all kinds of risk associated with it.
(23:01):
And most people don't make those kinds of decisions without a lot of preparation.
And then they, if they're really wise, they prepare with plans for your contingencies
for things to go wrong. Well, what happens if this doesn't work out the way
I thought it would? What will I do?
So what I'm proposing is, is that when a person is ready to make a new paradigm
(23:26):
or a new life story, they got to take into account all the costs associated with making that move.
And that almost always requires you to align yourself with people who can help you, you know.
And this is why I think being in a church community, especially one that's got
a particular sensitivity to these sorts of things.
(23:48):
Is really vital, you know, because you, you got to have that,
you got to have that sense of, of, of readiness for this choice.
So all that to say, because the analogy I used in the sermon,
you might remember was sort of a grafting horticultural or arborist kind of analogy,
where an arborist sees a tree that has branches that are looking helpful or
(24:12):
healthful and have potential,
but the stem or the trunk of the tree is pretty unhealthy and it just doesn't
look good for the whole living system.
So they take the branch that's healthy and they cut it away in a particular
way, and then they graft it to a healthy trunk.
And then that way that branch continues and it continues to bear fruit and all of that.
(24:36):
And, you know, for the branch, match this
is a really traumatic experience being cut
away from the only place you
ever you know because once upon a time you didn't
exist and the tree was shooting you out you know and now you're being cutting
away from it you know so you're born on this trunk that is unhealthy and dying
(24:59):
and decaying and now you've been cut away from it and you've been connected
to something different and you're going to go through a trauma.
There's going to be a traumatic experience of transformation or transplanting
or grafting, rather, you know.
And then yet for you, there will always be that traumatic memory and there will
(25:20):
also be that ball or that scar at the base of the stem where you are grafted
to the new healthier stem or healthier trunk.
But then everything that comes from you after that, only knows healthy, vibrant, vital life.
And to me, that's the essence of that message.
(25:43):
That whole sins of the father message is to say, it isn't fair that the ugliness of sin,
which is separation from God and therefore open to influence from God's enemy and the flesh,
but it isn't fair that that will produce generations of suffering, but it is inevitable.
(26:08):
But in the same way, a legacy of love and grace,
a legacy of new life and vibrancy in the Holy Spirit has the same potential,
and in fact, a greater potential because it's being sourced and fueled by the
very source of life and eternal life. Yeah.
(26:31):
Yeah. I have so many thoughts, so many things running through my head.
But I think about that metaphor frequently, the grafting that I think you told
me that maybe two years ago for the first time.
And I even referenced that with my husband over the weekend.
We have a tree in the back of our yard, a pin oak that has those like nasty,
I don't know, they kind of look like tumors all over them and they're because of wasps or whatever.
(26:54):
And so I pointed to that tree and said that metaphor and I think it's so helpful.
It reminds me, in New Harmony, Indiana, they have a 40-fruit tree.
I don't know if you've ever heard of that. But they took one healthy trunk,
basically, and they have grafted it 39 times so that there are fruits growing out.
I mean, pears, apples, cherries, like all of these things. It's so cool.
(27:17):
But it's so true. They do that. They do that, and they're successful if the trunk is healthy.
You said normal a lot, too, the word normal.
And I have been thinking so much about the word normal. I'm listening to an
audio book right now called The Myth of Normal.
It's written by author Gabor Mate. G-A-B-O-R is his first name, Mate.
(27:38):
And he, I'm really impressed by his work. I've been reading a book by him and
listening to a book and podcasts and all these things.
And basically what he says about this myth of normal is it's hardwired into
us from way back when, when we were a nomadic people moving around.
Like you had to fit into the community that you were in because if you weren't,
(28:01):
you were kicked out into the wilderness, right?
Into that unknown territory.
And I think what keeps us in that jar, like the fleas are, is that fear of the
unknown. known. Hey, that's brilliant.
It's huge. I mean, that's life changing, right? Because it's like,
well, I at least know what this mold is.
I at least know how to be passive aggressive.
(28:24):
I at least know what this looks like when I get drunk or whatever,
like whatever your mold is, whatever your family has shown you.
And that has a wide, a wide range of things. Like I know what that looks Right?
I can at least predict what will happen.
But what I can't predict will happen is when I get sober.
(28:45):
Yes. Or when I start treating people with love or when I start asking questions.
What does that look like? How will I be received?
Will people make me feel stupid? Is that not normal? Right.
Right? And so it's like, what is normal? My normal is not your normal.
My normal is bilateral knee pain. I walk around with knee pain every single day. That's my normal.
(29:07):
But is that the normal? No.
But I know how to perpetuate that cycle of pain. I've learned that very well
over the past eight years of dealing with this.
But what it takes is education, perseverance, and mentorship.
Mentorship—this is why physical therapy is so important—to say,
(29:28):
look, this isn't normal.
Here's how you achieve a pain-free life. Here's how you achieve more normal
knees that aren't shredded.
I mean, literally shredded. So, that's huge.
I mean, if we trace it back, even in Exodus, like, if people didn't serve the
Lord as Moses was saying,
(29:49):
this is our normal now, this is how we choose
god after 400 years of slavery from a
very evil people yeah this is our normal
if you don't do this you will be
kicked out or i will open up the earth right in front of you and swallow you
whole you and your family like there's all of these these like storylines that
(30:11):
we can trace back to and say oh okay this is why i behave this way yeah but i thought a
second layer there of your flea analogy in the jar.
It's like, once you take the lid off, you know, they don't jump out because
they've learned, ow, that hurts, right? There's a thing up there.
I guess fleas can feel pain, I guess. We'll go with it.
(30:33):
But it's like, once you take that lid off, they just jump to that height.
But if you're going to be a flea who's going to get out of that jar,
what do you have to do first?
You have to look up. You have to look up and see that there's not that lid there anymore.
And I think that's a perfect metaphor for us. If we want to change the status
(30:54):
quo, if we want to jump out of the jar that we've been born in,
we first have to look up. You have to look to God.
Because He's the perfect example of what unending, unfailing love looks like, and grace and mercy.
But He also tells us, if you don't follow my rules, here's what's going to happen.
Yeah, and not so much as a threat, as a cause and effect.
(31:20):
Which is another term I used in the sermon quite often, that God is the author
of everything that we scientifically discover.
Like, scientific discovery is basically a revealing of God's genius.
Now, obviously, there's plenty of so-called scientists out there who don't approach it that way.
(31:40):
But in my opinion, scientific discovery is figuring out how God does things. Yeah.
(32:16):
But can this process be interrupted? You know, can this be changed?
Well, it turns out pretty much anything can be changed. You know,
can't make your knee better, but you can change how you deal with it.
And you already described it because you're an excellent therapist yourself.
You already know that you can do certain things to mitigate the consequences
(32:39):
of something that may not change.
And so that's really it in a nutshell. shells.
None of us has the luxury of being able to reset things and start over,
even though we kind of metaphorically do.
We're starting over from where we are. We can't start over from where we were
when the original cause and effect happened, you know?
(33:01):
And that's one of the hardest things I think about growing up in a dysfunctional
home is, and understanding that, you know, yes, you didn't have anything to
say about that. You were just born.
It was, you're You're just, you're, you know, for whatever reason,
you were born to this household. You were born to this situation.
(33:22):
You can't undo that. And you can't even undo all the years when you had little
to say or do about what was happening.
You can only say, well, now that I understand, now that I have a new vision,
because I looked up, I have a new power because I have knowledge and information
that's going to inform how I decide to respond to this.
(33:43):
I can take the shredded knee and I can live with it.
Because I can't change what happened to, and this is what everybody goes through.
Like, you know, when, when you're a victim entirely, you know, of whatever,
you know, like you're, you're involved in an accident that wasn't your fault,
that you were just simply in a place and time where you became a victim because
(34:07):
some other thing happened.
And, you know, you're caught in a hailstorm and you get hit in the head by a
big old chunk of ice, and it causes brain damage that affects the way your body
works for the rest of your life.
Not your fault. Yeah. But before you can begin this new paradigm,
you have to make peace with that.
Not my fault that this happened. Right. It's not my fault.
(34:31):
There's people all over our country right now picking up after tornadoes.
There's more coming tonight.
They aren't responsible for what happened to them. But unfortunately,
whether they like it or not, they are responsible for what they do after that,
how they approach it. That is so good. And that is so profound.
And it hits closer to home than you even realize just saying that it's not my fault.
(34:57):
I've had recently a few months ago, kind of a falling out with my grandmother
because she was extremely unhealthy and treated me in a very not okay way.
And it was very hurtful. And you talk about that just like cutting the branch, right?
And we are up against the clock today, but I think this is good stuff.
And so my husband goes out there.
This was a few months ago that the initial thing happened. So he goes out on
(35:21):
Sunday after you gave this sermon in church.
He goes out to her house with my dad and his girlfriend, and he's trying to make amends, right?
Because I am not to that point yet. I have told her, I forgive you.
I understand where you're coming from, but I'm not in a place where I'm I'm
ready to have a relationship with you again.
And that hurt her to the core so deeply because she's so dysfunctional and so
(35:44):
angry, so angry towards me for things that is not my fault, like my parents' divorce.
Anyway, this is like not therapy, but kind of, right? Because I think it's helpful.
I think someone's going to hear this and they're going to say,
wow, I can relate to that.
So very angry at me, like put her hands on me, shaking me, yelling at me,
crying in my face. Like it was it was bad and I told you all about that.
(36:06):
But yeah, so so my husband goes out there because he's just been feeling this
like What what's the word i'm trying to say here like.
A dis-ease. Like he's been feeling like things aren't resolved.
Like lack of closure. Lack of closure. Yes. And like he's going out without
intention. He said it was all great for a few hours.
And then at the very end, he could tell she was starting to get angry and starting
(36:30):
to get in that zone again.
And he was like, I should leave. I should leave. I know I should leave.
I know this is happening. And she wouldn't let him.
She kept making like wanting him to stay for different reasons.
And then it just exploded.
And she was saying all of these hurtful things and saying things like,
well, isn't she a Christian?
(36:50):
Isn't she a Christian? Why would she do this to me?
Right? Why would she do this to me? Why would she treat me this way after all that I've done for her?
I went to all of her things growing up, whatever. And so for me,
it's like, okay, this is just a deep understanding of what it means to be a Christian.
Because yeah, Yeah, I've done something that hurts her, but it's because I'm
(37:12):
choosing a healthier life.
I don't want to be tied up to that unhealthy trunk anymore.
Yeah. Right? Because anger and chaos, that's not where God is.
Right? Well, and you can't fix what's wrong with them.
Exactly. And listeners, I don't think that what I am saying is without flaw
(37:35):
or that couldn't be adapted and adjusted by a professional therapist or I don't
know. I don't know what I'm trying to say.
My perspective is based on years and years of experience.
And from my experience, what I have learned is that you can try to help other
(38:01):
people join you in a therapeutic personal growth process.
But if they don't join you, there's a certain point at which you have to cut
your losses and think about what you can control, what you can change, and then focus on that.
And I don't think that that's easy because you don't want to leave anybody along the way.
(38:29):
I don't know why, but I've had this picture of the Oregon Trail in my mind a
couple of times over the last 15 or 20 minutes.
Like when I was talking about people making the decision to leave their country
or whatever, it's like, like when you make the decision that you're going to
take this treacherous, dangerous journey across country in order to start a
new life in a place you've never been before.
There's always going to be, you know, and if you've ever played Oregon Trail
(38:52):
on the computer when you were a kid, you know you're going to leave some things behind along the way.
There are people who are going to start out on that journey with you that won't
get very far, and you'll leave them behind.
They'll either turn around and go back, or they'll die on the way.
And you have to let them go, or you'll never get where you're going, or you'll die too.
(39:15):
I didn't make the rules. So this is really what the whole Sins of the Father
series, or series, it's really more of a message in itself, is really about.
It's the reality that you have to take the circumstances you've been given and
choose how you're going to respond to them.
And understanding that if you choose to do nothing, that by default,
(39:37):
you are the third and the fourth generation that it's visited upon.
It's just how it is. You could die with them, go back with them,
or you can leave it on the way and go.
And it doesn't literally mean that you'll never have a relationship with your
grandmother or that you'll ever have a healthy relationship with her.
It doesn't mean that will never happen.
(39:58):
It's highly unlikely given all of the knowns.
But there is a possibility where there are terms or boundaries that we agree
to observe and where you take control of the situation,
not without cost, because it's going to be tested.
(40:20):
Your resolve is going to be tested. Your boundaries are going to be probed.
But if you are committed, you may be able to create a situation,
God willing, where she lives long enough to respect your boundaries and have
some sort of relationship with you rather than no relationship with you.
And it won't necessarily change her therapeutically, but it won't interfere
(40:45):
with your therapeutic development.
Because that's the only thing you really have any control over.
And that that's i like i said i
didn't make those rules and and my god is
a god who shows me those things those cause and effects those
those if then and boundary you know like like
he's the god that you discover when you do scientific investigation and my scientific
(41:09):
investigation tells me that he gives us all the freedom of will and liberty
to to choose whether or not to submit ourselves and submit our flesh and our ego.
And if we don't, there are consequences.
That's the very essence of sin.
I was talking with someone earlier this morning because we're going to be doing
(41:33):
a whole lot of messages and teaching this summer that are going to be about
everything from family well-being, growing old, and we're going to talk about mental illness.
I'm just planning on talking about all these things that I hope help.
And one of the things that I've realized is that, you know, you have to have
a willingness to invite the Holy Spirit to join in collaboration with your world
(42:01):
in order to bring you to a place of wholeness.
So to put that in another way, if I know that I'm chronically depressed and I give that to God,
then in order for me to receive the therapeutic help that he can direct me to,
I have to submit myself to his authority first.
(42:22):
As long as I'm stubborn and I'm saying, I don't need that. If I take those pills, I'm weak.
And I can't admit that weakness. You know, I, if I take those pills,
I'm weak and that's why I'm not going to ever do that.
And then you keep living out this paradigm where you're suffering the consequences
of these highs and lows and, and various, you know, expressions of your mental illness.
(42:46):
Then, then how does a mentally ill, and I mean ill, not diseased or radically sick.
I mean, if you're mentally unwell, which could be mild depression,
right? How does a mentally ill Christian reconcile therapeutic treatments like
counseling and medications and things like that with their Christian faith?
(43:09):
Because Christians have done a horrible job for decades and decades, for generations.
Christians have said, the only reason you're depressed is because you're not
right with God. And that's just BS, plain and simple.
Those people are just as guilty of as you, if you're not careful,
is being too proud to admit that God has a care plan for you.
(43:33):
And God loves you so much that he'll even use some ornery doctor who is so proud
and arrogant that they would never admit that God exists in order to provide
a treatment plan for you.
See, because that's what God does. He did that with Pharaoh,
right? He says, I love my people so much, I'm going to play games with Pharaoh.
But in the end, he's going to lose, and he's going to lose big time because
(43:53):
he's obviously not with me.
Well, you can do the same thing with your arrogant doctor. Not that all doctors are arrogant.
I'm just saying, in order to put this in perspective, you're a Christian saying,
I'm not going to use medications or whatever to be healthy, you know,
because that's weakness.
Well, I say that's BS, because the fact is, is God is actually saying,
(44:13):
I'm in charge of all of this.
So your number one problem is, is you're not letting me be in charge of you.
You, because if you let me be in charge of you, then I can help you with the
thing you want my help with.
But the first thing you have to do is submit your pride. You have to say, I'm a sinner.
What is a sinner? Someone who's more full of themselves than they are the Holy Spirit.
(44:35):
You know, I mean, it's really like that.
You know, it's like you can look at them and you can either see a person that's
filled with their own ego, their own self-assessment and everything,
and their narcissism and all their, you know, whatever.
And then you look at another person who's submitted to the authority of God
and who's constantly trying to humble themselves before God,
and ultimately what you see is a person that God can help.
(44:59):
I can't help people who won't get out of the way. That's why I think one of
the biggest lies that has ever been perpetuated is that old saying that God
helps those who help themselves.
That ain't in the Bible, and it isn't even doctrinally sound.
Because God can help those who refuse to get in the way of God helping them.
(45:21):
God can help those who don't try to help themselves and then come to him with
the end of themselves. selves.
If you want to be whole and healthy, then submit to God and admit that you have
a problem that you can't fix on your own and probably shouldn't try to fix on your own.
And then see where he takes you.
(45:44):
And if he takes you to a really good therapist,
if he takes you to a medication that works with your body's naturally designed
God-given biochemistry and helps you to to be strong and fit and able to be
productive and to have a richer relationship with him. Why wouldn't you do that?
(46:05):
You know, so like I said, God, God has to be in charge of your treatment plan.
And so if you decide you want to put yourself on a new paradigm,
you want to graft yourself to a new paradigm, you have to let him be the arborist.
You have to say, Lord, Lord, you cut me away from this paradigm and you match
(46:30):
me to the place and time, the stem,
the trunk that will bring in me something new.
You know, Lord, you take over my treatment plan. You take over my revitalization
and restoration. duration.
And what happens is, is that you have this rich, harmonious relationship with your Creator,
(46:55):
who is also enriching your human life, your flesh existence,
in ways that you would not have embraced if your pride was constantly in the way. Amen.
I think we'll end with that today, because that is good. Thank you.
Listeners, rewind, listen to that again. That was profound. Thank you.
(47:16):
Well, all I can tell you is while I was in the depths and throes of my deep
illness last week and spent 30 hours in bed and much of it in this twilight,
one of the things I came away with was clarity about certain things, as I mentioned earlier.
And one of the things I was clear of is that whatever time I have left as a
(47:38):
pastor and a preacher, as a creature, I just want to help people.
So I pray that helped you. For sure.
Okay. Well, we have another meeting to go to, so y'all be blessed. We'll see you around.
Music.
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