We can be different
Dr Bruce Manners
Senior minister
Avondale College Seventh-day Adventist Church
There’s an important truth here because all of us can find things in our past—and our present—that we don’t want to make the focus of our future. Theodore Dalrymple (in Our Culture, What’s Left of It) wrote this in the context of growing up in his home.
He tells of how his parents had “created for themselves a kind of hell on a domestic scale.” In the 18 years he lived at home, he never heard them speak to each other. Yet they ate at least one meal together every day.
When he visited his father on his deathbed, he was told his mother could come and visit “if she wants to.” After passing the message on, she told him, “Tell him I’ll come if he asks me.”
“They stuck to their principles and never did meet: for what is mere death by comparison to a lifelong quarrel?”
He says because of his home life, he pitied himself for a long time, with a “most sincere compassion for myself.” But then it occurred to him: his experience had in a sense liberated him from the need or excuse to “repeat the sordid triviality of my parents’ personal lives. One’s past is not one’s destiny, and it is self-serving to pretend that it is.”
He now believes the only thing worse than having a family is not having a family.
It’s true we’re shaped by our past and its consequences, but they don’t have to control our present or our future. We can choose a different course. We can be different.
And there’s help says the apostle Paul: “Let the Spirit renew your thoughts and attitudes” (Ephesians 4:23, NLT). One’s past never has to be one’s destiny. Thankfully.
Tags: Bruce Manners