ThinkBlog

I don’t really think of familial sin—patterns of sins that fall into more or less the same category of vice to which you, your parents, and their parents may have fallen into—outside of the New Testament. But when I was talking with a friend about patterns of lust and sin as it infiltrates family lines, I realized that while sex and sexual infidelity doesn’t run in my family, there is something that does.

Anger. Not teeth-sucking, “gosh that sucks,” road-rage, boy that bad grade ruined my day, how could she do this to me kind of anger. I mean the kind that infiltrates your soul to the core and takes over.

In November of 2000, I started writing a short story. It was a very macabre, very dark tale featuring a nameless eighteen-year-old girl with a propensity for smoking and dark rage. I’m confident that the reason it was lost in a late-night OS crash-and-reformat was divine intervention to get me out of that hole, but I still remember the imagery from the story.

Picture this. Your heart is a castle, a beautiful stone fortress crafted in the image of God, which for all intents and purposes let’s say looks something like Neuschwanstein. Inside are all sorts of tapestries and fine furnishings, gold plating maybe, a couple of marble floors here and there, fine hardwoods. Bustling with people! Jesters, cooks, visitors, sons, daughters, lovers…. See, the people are memories of people. The tapestries and furniture are things you hold dear, ideas and ideals to which you hold true.

Now then. Let’s say your castle is threatened. Your heart hurts, your head is ringing with insult, with pain, with whatever-have-you. If you’re like me, you have three options to deal with the threat beyond the moat outside, or the infiltrators inside that are terrorizing you. You can pray, and yield your castle to the control of Christ, letting love purge wicked Envy, Greed, Fear, Hatred, Bitterness, and Jealousy by His overwhelming power, just as the Shekinah glory so filled the Tent of Meeting at its consecration that even Moses couldn’t enter (Ex 40:35). Second option, you can do it in your own strength, and watch the enemies lay waste to your insides. Or, you can opt for Number Three.

Third option is, you let Rage out of the dungeon and make supplication to it, yielding as you would to Jesus, and beseeching it to destroy those enemies and protect the castle. Now, that’s dangerous, to say the least: this dragon is constituted entirely of flame, you see. All flame. And it’s been kept in the dungeon only by the grace of God. Remember, this isn’t your righteous indignation, this isn’t anger, this isn’t had-a-bad-day—it’s not even I-can’t-believe-she-just-said-that. This is mythic Rage. So when it gets out of the dungeon, because you let it out with your blessing, it immediately gathers strength by singeing your will—the very persona kneeling before it. That alone should give you cause for dread, but it’s too late: it runs up the various levels, out of the depths of the dungeons, burning everything in its path.

You only wanted it to destroy your enemies, but no, it doesn’t discriminate: the tapestries, those things you hold dear, those bits of furniture, that fine oaken chair, the wainscoted reading room, and so forth—they smoke and smoulder at first, singed, then feed Rage and are blanked from your awareness, not to return but after much toil. But your Will has come to enjoy it now, you don’t mind, you just want the enemies gone. But then the lovers, the jesters, those memories—just become fuel, and then the gold and silver begin to drip off the walls, the marble floors crack; and so along with Fear and Envy go Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, Faithfulness, Gentleness, and Self-Control. You are left a broken hull, Rage filling the whole castle, the very stones of your heart wheezing black smoke. You can destroy anything. Unfortunately, the dragon is never satisfied, and then seeks the castle itself as fuel. Stone can’t feed flame, so eventually you collapse, your heart hollow, into a depression from which only Jesus can restore you, your enemies held at bay only momentarily, your friends hurt, your memories impaired, the things you hold dear gone, disappeared from giving you any solace.

That, I think, is the sin the men in my family have struggled with, my “family sin,” as it were. You have bile? Ours is blacker. And that’s not a good thing. You see that, too? There’s that little interface of pride there. I say interface, because pride in all its various forms is the cardinal sin, that first and foremost one out of which all others spring for every man, woman, and child. The one with which you struggle most may or may not be a “familial sin,” but it certainly is the one about which you entertain the most pride. Do you struggle with sex? Watch yourself as you talk about past experience—for a little pride mixed in with the shame and guilt. Do you struggle with drugs? Watch yourself launch into war stories about just exactly what you did with whom when and how, and how you came out the hero because you got everyone the highest. Do you struggle with Rage? Watch yourself as you describe that state for that little edge that says, “Yeah, basically I’m invincible when I’m like that.” Because you may be. But an invincible fortress shut up with its own self-consuming preoccupations can neither love nor receive love, and without that, you and I are in no better a position than the enemy himself.

I don’t really think of familial sin—patterns of sins that fall into more or less the same category of vice to which you, your parents, and their parents may have fallen into—outside of the New Testament. But when I was talking with a friend about patterns of lust and sin as it infiltrates family lines, I realized that while sex and sexual infidelity doesn’t run in my family, there is something that does.

Anger. Not teeth-sucking, “gosh that sucks,” road-rage, boy that bad grade ruined my day, how could she do this to me kind of anger. I mean the kind that infiltrates your soul to the core and takes over.

In November of 2000, I started writing a short story. It was a very macabre, very dark tale featuring a nameless eighteen-year-old girl with a propensity for smoking and dark rage. I’m confident that the reason it was lost in a late-night OS crash-and-reformat was divine intervention to get me out of that hole, but I still remember the imagery from the story.

Picture this. Your heart is a castle, a beautiful stone fortress crafted in the image of God, which for all intents and purposes let’s say looks something like Neuschwanstein. Inside are all sorts of tapestries and fine furnishings, gold plating maybe, a couple of marble floors here and there, fine hardwoods. Bustling with people! Jesters, cooks, visitors, sons, daughters, lovers…. See, the people are memories of people. The tapestries and furniture are things you hold dear, ideas and ideals to which you hold true.

Now then. Let’s say your castle is threatened. Your heart hurts, your head is ringing with insult, with pain, with whatever-have-you. If you’re like me, you have three options to deal with the threat beyond the moat outside, or the infiltrators inside that are terrorizing you. You can pray, and yield your castle to the control of Christ, letting love purge wicked Envy, Greed, Fear, Hatred, Bitterness, and Jealousy by His overwhelming power, just as the Shekinah glory so filled the Tent of Meeting at its consecration that even Moses couldn’t enter (Ex 40:35). Second option, you can do it in your own strength, and watch the enemies lay waste to your insides. Or, you can opt for Number Three.

Third option is, you let Rage out of the dungeon and make supplication to it, yielding as you would to Jesus, and beseeching it to destroy those enemies and protect the castle. Now, that’s dangerous, to say the least: this dragon is constituted entirely of flame, you see. All flame. And it’s been kept in the dungeon only by the grace of God. Remember, this isn’t your righteous indignation, this isn’t anger, this isn’t had-a-bad-day—it’s not even I-can’t-believe-she-just-said-that. This is mythic Rage. So when it gets out of the dungeon, because you let it out with your blessing, it immediately gathers strength by singeing your will—the very persona kneeling before it. That alone should give you cause for dread, but it’s too late: it runs up the various levels, out of the depths of the dungeons, burning everything in its path.

You only wanted it to destroy your enemies, but no, it doesn’t discriminate: the tapestries, those things you hold dear, those bits of furniture, that fine oaken chair, the wainscoted reading room, and so forth—they smoke and smoulder at first, singed, then feed Rage and are blanked from your awareness, not to return but after much toil. But your Will has come to enjoy it now, you don’t mind, you just want the enemies gone. But then the lovers, the jesters, those memories—just become fuel, and then the gold and silver begin to drip off the walls, the marble floors crack; and so along with Fear and Envy go Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, Faithfulness, Gentleness, and Self-Control. You are left a broken hull, Rage filling the whole castle, the very stones of your heart wheezing black smoke. You can destroy anything. Unfortunately, the dragon is never satisfied, and then seeks the castle itself as fuel. Stone can’t feed flame, so eventually you collapse, your heart hollow, into a depression from which only Jesus can restore you, your enemies held at bay only momentarily, your friends hurt, your memories impaired, the things you hold dear gone, disappeared from giving you any solace.

That, I think, is the sin the men in my family have struggled with, my “family sin,” as it were. You have bile? Ours is blacker. And that’s not a good thing. You see that, too? There’s that little interface of pride there. I say interface, because pride in all its various forms is the cardinal sin, that first and foremost one out of which all others spring for every man, woman, and child. The one with which you struggle most may or may not be a “familial sin,” but it certainly is the one about which you entertain the most pride. Do you struggle with sex? Watch yourself as you talk about past experience—for a little pride mixed in with the shame and guilt. Do you struggle with drugs? Watch yourself launch into war stories about just exactly what you did with whom when and how, and how you came out the hero because you got everyone the highest. Do you struggle with Rage? Watch yourself as you describe that state for that little edge that says, “Yeah, basically I’m invincible when I’m like that.” Because you may be. But an invincible fortress shut up with its own self-consuming preoccupations can neither love nor receive love, and without that, you and I are in no better a position than the enemy himself.