Don’t Confuse Generational Curses with Poor Generational Choices
The real curse is believing we are powerless to break these familial patterns
In Exodus 34:7, we hear about the God of the Bible “visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children’s children, unto the third and to the fourth generation.” From this passage has derived the notion of generational curses; the concept of pathological dysfunction as spiritual punishment. Modern adaptations of this idea speak to the cyclical nature of unhealthy family pathologies, citing things like poor health, illiteracy, sexual violence, and poverty as examples of these transmissible misfortunes.
But how much of our personal dysfunction is compounded by our decisions, as opposed to shaped by our ancestry? How many of us hide behind the guise of inherited issues to dodge the responsibility of having to resolve them? Probably quite a few of us. When we take this Bible passage as proof positive that our propensity for problematic behavior is everyone’s fault but our own, we render ourselves helpless to defend against it and embrace a level of victimhood that keeps us trapped in its cycle. So when does our participation in unhealthy familial patterns stop being the result of our “generational curses” and start being the consequence of our own generational choices?
But how much of our personal dysfunction is compounded by our decisions, as opposed to shaped by our ancestry?
The Bible speaks to this subject a total of four times, the most noted being in Exodus 34:7, just shortly after telling the story of Moses and the Ten Commandments. Despite the sorted placement of these four passages within the text, they all tell a similar story. To get a better understanding of the passage, it’s just as vital to understand the historical context within which it was written, as well as its context within the surrounding scripture.
The story told in chapter 34 of Exodus centers around the renegotiation of God’s covenant with the Israelites, his chosen people. God instructs Moses, the leader of the Israelites, to travel to Mount Sinai to receive instructions for the sculpting of new stone commandments to…
