Magyar Egyház, 1991 (70. évfolyam, 1-6. szám)
1991-03-01 / 2. szám
10. oldal MAGYAR EGYHÁZ When the family moves, it has to adjust to new housing, new schools, and new friends.... And this often leads to insecurity and instability. A recent best-seller on the white collar class compares these conditions to the nursery that advertised, “We move our trees every year so they won’t grow deep roots.” In other words, the nursery deliberately kept the root systems of its trees shallow so they could be transplanted easily. But they did not warn that such trees, without deep top roots, would not withstand the storms. And many of our families today are facing this same danger. 3. LONELY FAMILIES Third, there is a lack of communication between family members today. The result of this development is a loss of oneness and togetherness. In many homes the husband, wife, and children all come and go as they please, often failing even to check in. Even though together, they are virtually alone. In an atmosphere such as this, real communication is impossible, and the family structure breaks down. Yes, the family is in trouble. And let us remember that although the Christian home should be different, it is not exempt from these same problems. Some time ago a mother shared with me concerning her married son who had just committed suicide. “Apples do not fall far from the trees,” she said, as she spoke of the problems her son had experienced. She told me how her boy had capped a whirlwind romance by entering a hasty marriage. His wife had really never gotten to know him. All his weaknesses were brushed over until after the honeymoon. Soon his wife discovered that he was a heavy drinker, emotionally immature, and totally lacking in responsibility. He was no more reliable than a cracked barometer. He was a poor marriage risk. Shortly after the birth of their first child, he deserted the family, and the marriage ended in divorce. Five years later he was dead, a victim of his own hand. “He was just like his father,” said the mother. “All of his faults he learned from my husband. Apples do not fall far from the trees.” Throughout the Scriptures, we are told that we reap exactly what we sow. “Be sure your sin will find you out” (Num 32:23). 4. SINFUL FAMILIES The book of Exodus tells us about the children of Israel as they traveled through the wilderness. There, as they pitched their tents around Mount Sinai, God gave them His immutable Law. In explaining the first commandment, Exodus 20:5 states, “I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me.” This verse is speaking about the sins of the parents. Moses was so impressed by this statement that he repeated it again in Exodus 34:7. And years later, when the children of Israel wavered between fervor and fear, Moses recalled these exact words in Deuteronomy 5:9. They were unforgettable to him. He saw God write them upon the tables of stone, and they were written upon the tablet of his mind. These words were terrifying then, and they are terrifying now. Our children reap the result of our sins to the third and fourth generation. Every second, a baby is born somewhere in our world. For the most part, aside from the fact-that we all are born with sinful natures, those children are emotionally, physically, and morally capable of developing into happy, adjusted adults. Yet many grow up to he just the opposite: miserable, unhappy, and frustrated. Why? Largely because of the sins of their parents. In a study of the broken home, Newsweek magazine quoted one wife and mother who realized the effect her divorce had upon her eldest son: “We are very concerned with him,” said the mother. “Lance has suffered psychic damage from all of this.... I laugh at a lot of things Lance does when I really should cry.” That boy suffered as a result of his parents’ sin. A Chinese proverb states, “In a broken nest there are few whole eggs.” Sad to say, today there are literally thousands of emotionally disturbed children, products of shattered marriages. It behooves every parent to do everything possible to avoid a broken home. Out of one thousand girls in an eastern Pennsylvania reform school, only eighty-seven came from homes in which there was a normal husband-wife relationship. More than nine hundred were from broken homes. The late J. Edgar Hoover attributed our exploding crime rate to the sins of the parents. He felt that scandal in our nation is frequently due to broken homes, an attitude that God is not necessary in our way of life, and the idea that morality is old-fashioned. It is not surprising to me that our nation’s crime rate continues to climb. We have become a secularized society. We are living in an age when children are told God is dead, the church is irrelevant, and the former moral codes are outdated. We live in a world that is saturated by sex and given over to greed. The apostle Paul wrote to the church at Galatia, “Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting” (Gal. 6:7-8). “Apples do not fall far from the trees.” Lord Byron, the poet, was handsome, witty, and gifted, yet his life was a tragedy. At age thirty-six he wrote: The flower and fruit of love are gone. I’ve nothing left but the worm, the canker, and the grief. Neither glacier, mountain, torrent, forest or cloud can lighten the weight upon my heart, or enable me to lose my wretched identity. Byron’s ancestors, as far back as they can be traced, were violent, passionate, and unrestrained in morals. Byron lived as his parents lived. He openly violated all standards of morality and righteousness. He, indeed, bore the sins of his parents. Although he left imperishable poetry, Lord Byron also left an imperishable example of what happens to children who are neglected by careless parents. 5. SUCCESSFUL FAMILIES There is no secret of a happy home. There is no magic formula to follow. But God’s Word is perfectly clear when it
