Sins of the Fathers

     When I first read the passage in the Bible that says "the sins of the fathers are visited on the sons unto the fourth generation", I thought it was terribly unfair of God to impose such conditions.  Now that I have had an additional four decades to observe life, I realize that sins being passed on to the following generations is a natural consequence.  God no more has to intervene to impact descendants with familial sins than He has to perform a miracle for rain to make things wet.  The miracle is that God intervenes to break the sin cycle in ways that change families for the good for many generations.  The grace is that He will be faithful to many because of the obedience of one.
     I learned that mostly from the books of Kings and Chronicles where God would bless a disobedient king and country because of a predecessor's faithfulness or even their own previous obedience. I am comforted by that when I think of the faith of our founding fathers and the tolerance of every ideology but Christianity in our own time.
     Few illustrations of the generational impact of sin have been as poignant for me as the broken boys and girls with whom I interacted in our home, whose parents' examples taught them such low expectations for life, responsibility and happiness. They surfed from couch to couch looking for a home and from one set of arms to another looking for love.  Babies were born as souvenirs of various relationships and forgotten almost as easily. I believe one of the reasons tattooes have become so popular with young people is because they are the only thing that can't be taken away from them.  They lose relationships, jobs, possessions, freedom, even children; all they are able to keep is their skin.  Their desire to make their mark in the world is fulfilled through the marks on their body 
     As bad as the damage was from the sins of their fathers, the common factor seemed to be the absence of fathers.  Bad parents might be forgiven, might even change, absence gives neither of those comforts.  It is very difficult to erase the message "you weren't important enough to stick around for".  Neither Reed nor I will leave great Christian examples for our children, they have witnessed many of our failures, but they know our weaknesses so well because of all the time we spent together.  I would rather be a flawed parent up close than an idealized one far away.  I would rather have them laughing at me than not laughing at all.