I grew up in a small town near the seacoast of New Hampshire. It was the kind of town you might expect to see on a postcard bursting with fall colors, dry-staked stone walls and one room schoolhouses; the stuff of Robert Frost poems and Martha Stewart magazines. My home life in that town, however, was not always a like a postcard. My parents divorced when I was young and I grew up with a distant stepfather and a biological father who was often too busy battling his own demons to make sufficient time for his two sons. Years later I can say with certainty that my parents loved me, and that they, truly, did the best that they could. I am, after all, exactly who I am today because of them, and I wouldn’t change a thing about my past. But that is not to say that I don’t have very intentional plans to change my future.

When I married a beautiful Southern Belle named Carrie, our college pastor once shared with me that he sensed God was calling me to “break the sin cycles” of my family history. His words touched me in a place that had been barren for years; the place of dreaming, the place of vision, the place of hope.

And so it was when God gave us our first son, Luke,  that I remember a very specific sense of awe and confirmation that maybe God actually intended to accomplish through me what I had considered the impossible, the reversal of history and the redemption of a messy storyline.   

When God blessed us with our second son, Andrew, the feeling of grace and responsibility was overwhelming. Again, God whispered hope and blessing into our lives and an eternal sense of purpose to raise the next generation of Woodworths to be a generation of men who loved the Lord, and stayed with their wives.

Then, for a third time, my wife became pregnant. This one was not planned, not for this time in life anyway, when work, and children, and marriage, and graduate school seemed to be pushing in on every side. So it was that one morning I found myself on a long walk in the woods praying to God for guidance, and wisdom, and protection for the little one now growing in the womb of my bride. And as I rested on a nearby log the spirit of God spoke to my own spirit saying, “it will be a boy, and his name will be Zachary.” Such divine conversations were far from the norm for me.   

I shared the experience with my wife and we both agreed that in true “better-safe-than-sorry” fashion we should simply call him Zachary if he is indeed a boy.

We visited the doctor on the day of our scheduled appointment after my wife had consumed an extra measure of caffeine to ensure the little bean would move enough to give us a clear view. The ultrasound technician moved the electronics over her smooth tummy until the screen of static before us slowly cleared to reveal to us, for the first time, our child.  “It is a boy.”

The words echoed in my mind as my wife and I embraced with the clarity of God’s redemptive purposes for us, for all of us, for the magnificent way in which he graciously offered us not just one, or even two chances, but now even three times as many opportunities to bless the future of our family name, His family name.

I met each of my sons for the very first time at 20 weeks. And in that moment I heard their heartbeat for the first time, I watched them suck their fingers, and caught them responding to the sound of our voices. They had eyes, noses, feet, legs, arms, lungs and all the potential necessary to utterly transform the pictures in the family photo album of my mind.

20 weeks. That is when I met them for the first time. And while I do not wish to politicize this story, their story, I will say that to suggest that in that moment it was my wife’s “right” to have a “choice” to end their story is, arguably, one of the greatest injustices that our world has ever known.   

In the days and weeks surrounding the holidays I am always reminded of a theological truth known as Generational sin. The phrase itself sounds rather archaic when I am honest, medieval even. The notion that the sins of future generations trickle down to fall squarely on the shoulders of proceeding generations after them sounds more like pagan witchcraft, the stuff of fairy tales, than it does anything remotely theological, let alone Biblical. And yet we find it so clearly presented to us in the pages of scripture. In several passages God tells his people, in no uncertain terms, that God is a jealous God who will punish children for the sins of their fathers to the third and fourth generations. (Ex. 20:5, 34:7; Deut. 5:9; Num. 14:11). The book of Lamentations puts it more bluntly, “Our fathers sinned, and are no more; It is we who have borne their iniquities (Lam. 5:7). Beyond the fact that this sounds out of line with God’s just character, what sort of practical hope is there for those of us born into families full of sinners? What is the fate for those who grew up hearing stories about Grampa’s wandering eyes, or Grandmas alcoholism, or for those who suffered under the hand of a violent father or a manipulative mother? In short, what I am struggling to answer for myself, and my children is, when will the curse ever end? If the ingredients for generational sin hinge on the perfection of the previous generation, who will ever escape? I remember one of my final sessions of premarital counseling when the pastor excused my wife and asked me to stay behind. I assumed he had done so to simply relay to me (once again), the rather obvious fact that I was wholly unworthy of my future bride. But when my fiancé had exited, I realized that the pastor’s face was far more serious than I had seen it before. He was prone to sarcasm, but this day his expression was decidedly different. When he did finally begin to speak he backtracked through my sordid family tree, reiterating at every point the simple truth that by embarking on my own marital journey, I was also taking on a grand spiritual responsibility to break the generational sin that hung off my shoulders like a wet sweater. He looked across the desk and said “no matter what else you may ever be called to in your life, you are called first to break the sin cycles of your family.” That conversation was one that I continually point back to as one in which I had a distinct encounter with God. I am reticent to speak often about “hearing from God”, but there are just a handful of moments in my life that, on a deeply spiritual level, the Spirit of God spoke to me in a away every bit as real as an audible voice. This was one of those times. It wasn’t the first time I had ever thought about generational sin, but it was the first time I had ever contemplated the possibility that something could be done about them, that they even could be “broken” in some way. What I have learned in the years since that first conversation by raising three boys, marriage, and counseling countless others who share a similar story, is that generational sins are broken, not through penance but through repentance. What I mean is that there is a consequential reality to sin; children do pay a price for the sins of their parents, yet paying the price alone does not stop the cycle. In fact, what I believe the Bible is telling us is that if left unnamed, the sins of previous generations are destined to become our own struggles if we are not intentional about repenting of them. Repenting, literally “to turn around”, is the means by which the curse of generational sins is broken. So today I have learned to read the scriptures with new eyes and what I see them saying to us is that “the sins of the fathers will visit the coming generations…IF…future generations let them.” The process is not an easy one, but perhaps more simple than we imagine. Rather than playing the role of the victim each of us needs to have the courage to peer back into our past and read our story with an eye to the struggles, addictions and failures of previous generations. Then three things need to happen. One, name them. Adultery, divorce, addiction, abuse, greed, violence, lawlessness- name it. Second, recognize that the same blood fills your veins. Their story is intimately connected to yours and the consequence of these sins has visited you in the form of a natural propensity to sin in the very same way. So, thirdly, you repent. You examine the contours of your current life and attempt to see the natural bent of your life towards the sins of the future generations and fight like mad to do things differently. It is not a process that is done alone. In fact, many of us can accomplish it without some degree of professional help, and no attempt will ever be permanent or completely transformational unless the Author of your story is also the one you are trusting to write the next chapter. Will future generations be cursing your name for the sins that have been passed down to them, or will they recognize you as the one through which the endless cycle of familial sin was finally broken?