Week 28 Ezekiel
In Ezekiel’s time people were using a parable that said: the parents have eaten sour grapes, but their children’s mouths pucker at the taste.
When they used it people were basically saying that they were suffering because of their parent’s bad actions.
Ezekiel’s chapter eighteen tries to explain that the parable is a crazy one to rely on.
He illustrates by mapping out a three-generational example:
Let’s say there’s a man who’s a good guy. Outcome: he will surely live.
That good guy has a son who’s a bloody and violent man. Outcome: he must die and must take full blame.
But then the vicious guy has a son who makes good choices. Outcome: he will not die for his father’s sins; he will surely live.
Ezekiel’s point is that every single person is singly and personally responsible for his own personal and singular decisions and actions.
I have no doubt that I’m floating in a simmering symbiotic soup of all the things that affect and influence me. I guess everything that’s non-me in the world affects me one-way-or-another.
But none of them exonerate me from my own self-serving stupidities. My blundering evils are all mine.
Note: quotes from Ezekiel 18:2, 5, 13, 17 (NLT). On the other side I’d be pretty surprised if Ezekiel is saying that environmental things like my mom, my siblings, my social & economic circumstances are 100% irrelevant. It’s just that his focus in this chapter is on the person who unilaterally shifts personal blame onto someone else.