And He Will Turn The Hearts Of The Fathers To The Children
November 18, 2010
8:23 p.m. CST
Malachi 4:6 (New Living Translation)
His (Elijah's) preaching will turn the hearts of fathers to their children, and the hearts of children to their fathers. Otherwise I (God) will come and strike the land with a curse.
As you may have noticed from reading other posts of mine, I don't generally bandy or brandish bible verses. There's not very many verses I can say I believe were actually inspired by God. Or Jesus. Or whoever the inspiration was supposed to come from. I usually come from the standpoint of what constitutes common sense and practicality.
I grew up in a fundamentalist religion. Bible verses were somewhat strictly adhered to. We were expected to memorize all we could. We were constantly admonished to be prepared to answer questions with God's pre-prepared automaton responses to any situation, even if they did not apply! You get my drift. We had to be know-it-alls. I say this a little tongue-in-cheek because that was not our intention or should I say, attitude, but that's what we ended up trying to be anyways.
Almost every week some minister would go up to the podium and start blasting wives and children with blame and criticism instructing them on the words of God teaching us to obey our fathers and husbands, and not just obey, but to obey because men were (we were told ad infinitum) given to us as part of our families to be our human version of God himself. We were to obey our fathers and husbands because fathers and husbands ARE God! Yay! Do I sound a little sarcastic here? Yes? Good! Are we agreed that this idea is bad? Yes? NO!? Really? (Looks left and right checking for the fundamentalist mafia, finding the fundamentalist mafia strangely missing, finds the puppet strings, pulls scissors out of my pocket, cuts puppet strings.) We good now? Yes? Good!
This was the thrust of most of the human relationship/family sermons. Every 10 years or so, the above mentioned verse, or another similarly worded verse elsewhere in the bible, would be dragged out of mothballs and the manly household figure would be reminded, ever so gently, that God wanted men to love their families. Men didn't get the full-featured head bashing over these verses that the rest of the family members got from the obedience verses. (Insert longing sigh for the good old days here.) (Too much, huh?)
The point of my post is not dragging fundamentalists through the mud on this, even though perhaps well deserved. Instead I want to talk about the meaning, and importance of the verse itself and a surprising discovery I made while pondering it.
Most bible verses focus on the hearts of the subjugated, the ones that must always take the role of welcome mat. They are constantly told to be loving and kind. My ears ring from the constant use of the word "gracious." I was supposed to be 'gracious' in the face of my back being dirtied with someones boots. It's one thing for a minister to mention these verses in passing only half-heartedly every once in a while, but it's truly toxic when it's constantly lorded over your head every waking moment. Unfortunately, there are multitudes of truly toxic parents and caretakers out there who feed on the attentiveness they feel God is affording them by those verses.
I know of many people who feel their souls are genuinely drained dry of any sense of emotional connection to other people. They feel such an abyss because they have no sense of self-esteem. They spend their lives glomming onto other people to fill themselves with some sense of feeling loved, and no matter how much they are loved, they never feel it. They never will. Their own sense of worthlessness, and self-loathing is so overwhelming and pervasive, that it drowns out all else except their own pain. Toxic parents and caretakers create toxic children. None of their hearts ever really go out to any other person's pain or suffering because they can't. They're empty. Their hearts are just a big abyss. And toxic children grow up to become yet another generation of toxic parents. Emotional toxicity springs from a person's sense of feeling rejected as a real person by someone who they adored and idolized. The result of emotional toxicity is the creation of more rejection of the real selves of the children who are subjected to this type of upbringing. Feeling rejected for their real inner selves, this rejection gets reflected back to them every time they try to feel their hearts, and the continuation of new toxic generations of children is complete.
Fundamentalists
are conditioned to cringe from any mention of God putting a curse on
the land, or in other words, on the people living in such a land. They
unconditionally believe that God curses lands and the people on them. I have to ask myself what is the purpose of cursing people who already live like this? Isn't living this way curse enough? Isn't feeling cursed a natural psychological result of living like this? I can't help but wonder why God would curse someone or all people who can't seem to dig themselves out of this misery and already feel cursed.
But this is only part of the discovery I made just recently. I've known this for many years. It's common knowledge among psychologists. Toxic parents ignore this. Additionally, as part of a fundamentalist religion, they chalk this information up to being part of humanism, a pervasive new ideology that mainstream christian churches are adopting, and therefore considered by fundamentalists as being unholy and ungodly. Fundamentalists usually believe humanism to be unchristian, unholy, and to be avoided at all costs. Humanism is the belief that we are all human and not capable of absolute perfection. Humanism allows for imperfection. Humanism promotes loving someone in spite of imperfection and accepts that imperfection as natural. Some fundamentalists see humanism as a form of atheism. My church certainly did. Sadly, they are blind to the fact that the rejection of humanism continues the cycle of toxicity, and the abyss of their own pain, from generation to generation.
Another part of the discovery was the symptoms of someone who is emotionally toxic. When a person feels rejected by their loved ones, their idols, their parents, or their caretakers, their reaction is to pull away. For most people, this is short lived, temporary. But when toxic parents are consistently rejecting the inner selves of children, the children become more consistent with their response. They don't touch. They don't hug. They don't allow themselves any vulnerability. They never put themselves out on the line, out in the path of more possible rejection. They presume all consequences of putting themselves out there to be more rejection.They are emotionally too fragile for that. They can't handle it. It's too painful. They cannot afford the luxury of attempting vulnerability. That's dangerous territory. They have been taught to always expect more rejection. And how can they be blamed? They have been thoroughly trained by experts in feeling rejected!
Also, sadly, emotional toxicity does not always start in the environments of toxic parents and caretakers. Sometimes, this emotional wasteland begins, or worsens, from the aftermath of acts of crime, and inadequate psychological help after a crime.
Sadly, there are a multitude of ways people medicate themselves in their attempts to live with the ravages of such emotional toxicity. Such self-medication ALWAYS, AND I REPEAT ALWAYS, makes this toxicity worse! It sets it in concrete. It carves it in stone. Such self-medication includes alcoholism, drug-abuse, food-abuse, eating disorders, gambling addiction, and any other addiction that comes to mind. They are all forms of self-medication without exception. Self-medication does not always come in the form of substances but may also come in the form of addictive and self-destructive behaviors.
That's not to say that self-medication is only the result of toxic parents. There are other causes too. Many things can inspire such behaviors. People experience many types of losses. They usually all create the same destructive downward spiral. But these other issues are not the subjects of my post.
The bible verse at the top of this post speaks to the opposite end of the spectrum, the ones responsible for the general well being of minors, the ones responsible for initiating whatever corrective measures that are needed and required: the parents and caretakers. This verse clearly puts the responsibility of repairing relationships squarely on the shoulders of the figures of authority: the parents and caretakers. This verse presumes a DEMAND aimed at: adults. It demands corrective action by the responsible adults, the ones who are supposed to know better.
But when thinking about it, my question became "What about the adult children?" The parents and/or caretakers are in the same abyss. The parents and/or caretakers are still suffering the same pain they always have. The parents and/or caretakers are still feeling the same rejection they have always felt. The parents and/or caretakers haven't gotten whatever the message was all these years, and chances are they still don't. The parents and/or caretakers are still self-medicating the same as they always have. Are the adult children supposed to just accept being consigned to living in that same abyss forever? How can we expect, or yet, how can God expect the parents and caretakers to suddenly snap out of whatever mental hell they are living in and fix those relationships they have destroyed when clearly they haven't done so in all those years? Are the adult children supposed to just wait for that epiphany their parents are supposed to experience.....someday.....whenever?
Then it dawned on me! The answer had been in front of me all my life. I hadn't seen it! And now I did.
When I was young, a minor, living in my parents' house, the one thing I wanted more than anything else in the world was to be considered an adult. I wanted to be treated like an adult. I wanted to be given the responsibilities of an adult. I wanted the same privileges as an adult. I wanted the same benefits as an adult.
Every person on earth wants that same thing. Not every person on earth can handle that same thing.
Emotionally toxic adults are emotional minors. They think and feel and react emotionally immature. They have never stopped being emotionally children! They never stop being too young for the responsibility of instilling emotional maturity in their children. One can only instill emotional maturity in their children if they can put themselves on the line, express vulnerability, touch, hug, love and risk receiving potential rejection from others. By not doing these things, their increasingly emotionally unstable children never learn how to do these things either in addition to only feeling increased pain from their rejection. And the cycle continues!
So whose responsibility is it to repair a relationship? If you're smart enough to recognize the pattern, and smart enough to know the hows and whys of the ways things got to be the way they are, do you have to continue to wait for someone to act who clearly is never going to?
And my epiphany came! If you are that intelligent, that smart, you are wiser than either your years or experiences. You have what every person on earth wants. You are an ADULT! BE ONE! ACT LIKE ONE! Take the initiative and take on the responsibility you always wanted afforded you. You can start the healing! You can repair the relationship, or at the very least, begin that process.
For myself, my personal pain did not start with toxic parents, but from two crimes committed against me by outsiders, but no matter where the original cause lies, the fact is, when it starts, it snowballs. Every person you meet, and hurts you even a little bit, makes it worse, and the pain grows and festers, like a wound that becomes infected. But the end result is the same, no matter where it starts. I'm not saying healing necessarily has to start with confronting the most dangerous people, particularly if they are criminals. What I am saying, is that this healing process has to start somewhere.
So how do you do that? Yet another exasperating question! How? I can't say I really know. I know way too well the parts of this up to this point. I have way too much experience in this matter. But I have never known how to fix it. Perhaps it starts with doing what comes most painfully, what I hate to do the most. What I fear to do the most is face the pain and do what emotionally paralyzed people never do: touch, hug, tell those I love that I love them, take the risk of more rejection, and allow myself to be vulnerable. You never know. Maybe this can snowball too?!
I see a grand experiment in my future. (Whine) Oooooooooowwwwww! (Insert long painful groan!) Will it work? I don't know. But there is one thing I do know. As an adult, responsibility sucks! Why did I ever want to be an adult?
