Tuesday, April 19, 2011

I had a friend who was struggling with some feelings of anger for God and for her husband. He had been physically, verbally, and emotionally abuse and had continued to do all of those things until she moved out, but she was having a hard time dealing with her feelings. I told her that it was never in God’s plan for her husband to abuse her. He chose do it himself and that the wisest thing for her to do was to get out from that terrible situation. He had no remorse and was continuing to do it when they had any interaction. I share this because we live in a fallen world where bad things happen, and we sometimes have a difficult time making sense of why those things happen to good people. It was never in God’s plan for us to be abused, but God gave all of us free will and because of our sinful nature, bad choices are part of what we have to experience from others, and even sometimes our own bad choices.

Today as I was reading I came across a choice of a mother that caused me to ponder. It’s a little confusing, but Athaliah was the mother of Ahaziah and the wife of Jehoram who had been king for eight years. He was the one that killed all his brothers after taking the throne. Jehoram had more than one wife, but Athaliah was one of his wives. Her son (Ahaziah) was the youngest of Jehoram’s children and was chosen by Jehoram to follow him as king. Ahaziah was 22 when he took the throne and he reigned one year before he was killed. Rather than one of his son’s becoming the next king, his mother took control of the situation. “When Athaliah the mother of Ahaziah saw that her son was dead, she proceeded to destroy the whole royal family of the house of Judah. (II Chron. 22:10) Can you imagine this. A woman killing all her family, her relatives, her step children, boys and girls, aunts and uncles. She killed the WHOLE royal family. Like husband, like wife.

As I try to get my head around this, it’s hard to imagine killing anyone, let alone relatives and family. Unfortunately, when we are around people who practice patterns of destructiveness, there is a tendency to take on those same patterns in solving our own problems. In order to break the chains of destructive patterns from our past, it is critical that we look outside ourselves to the Creator to give new insight and wisdom  how to do things differently. I think it is healthy to look at the patterns we were raised with and the structures we have seen to analyze whether those patterns are healthy and God honoring.

On this journey, sometimes it is essential to cut away patterns that are destructive to family connection and fellowship with God so that future generations don’t copy our destructive behavior.