The reason
it is hard for you to change...
I don't think
we realize how much of our parents
(and grandparents)"live"
inside of us. The other day, I started thinking about
things I do, and I said to myself almost shocked, "My dad
does that!" All this time, I thought I was just "me
being me." I thought of many other things that I am a
carbon copy of my mom on. For one thing, I don't like
to wear makeup, so if I have to dress up, I just put on a
little lipstick. Mom did that too. In fact, I
really don't like to dress up at all and my mom was like
that. When I think about it, it's downright scary.
All of this can be a good thing if one has good parents with
first-rate character and not so good if one doesn't.
I saw a show
about twins that illustrate this. Twin boys were born
to a Jewish mother and a German father. The marriage
failed early on, so each parent took a child to live with
them. The mother raised her son in Israel and the
Father raised his son in South America. Years later, the two
grown boys decided to finally meet. As the one twin
stepped off the train, they both gasped as they saw that
they were wearing the exact same outfit, down to the shoes.
That might seem strange, but something similar actually
happened to me.
My sister and
I both went shopping in a huge clothing store. We
separated in the store and met back at the car. When
we compared what we had bought, we had both bought the exact
same pink blouse in that huge place. What are the odds
of that?
The Bible
speaks of something called, "the sins of the fathers."
It is not really complicated. It is the particular set
of "sins" that our genetic code passes down to us from past
generations. Some people are thieves by nature, some
have sexual deviancies by nature, some are liars by nature,
etc.
We are a
"mix" of 4 separate sets of DNA (our grandparents). We
may have gotten grandma's green eyes and who knows, we may
have also gotten her tendency to lie about things too.
It is hard to fight something that you are born with.
Do you naturally have a streak of anger? Are you cold
by nature? All these things do not happen by accident.
You inherited these things from your "fathers."
What can we
do? Pretty much, we have to recognize that we are
trapped by our human nature in some ways. It is
automatic, and the only way to fight it, is to recognize
that this is how it is. We thankfully have an override
button called "free will." If we want to, we
can change. I'm not saying that it is easy. It
takes thought and effort. I can't tell you where you
need to change because the sins of your fathers are
different than mine, but we can change--if we recognize
where we need to change and we really try to change.
We won't
succeed at it perfectly, but the effort is what counts.
Converted individuals have an extra tool that can be used to
help change their inherited human nature. Through
Jesus Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit, we can work
diligently to emulate the nature and character of the God
Family. We must diligently seek the character of Jesus
Christ and God the Father and want to be like them.
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