My Father's Name And My Father Was Not Good

I am going to say the hard part in the first minute, because a man in this position has been waiting a long time for somebody to say it plainly.

Some fathers do real harm. Not difficult. Not distant. Harm.

And a son of one of them, standing in a hospital in a few weeks with a form in his hand, is expected by custom, by a family, and sometimes by his own mother, to write that man's name on a boy who has done nothing at all.

Nobody in that family will say the harm out loud. That is usually the arrangement. There is a version of the man that gets talked about at gatherings and there is what happened, and the two have been kept apart for thirty years by everybody's agreement.

So the son cannot give a reason. And a refusal with no reason attached reads, to everybody watching, as bitterness.

That is the trap, and I have sat with men in it on more porches than I would care to count.

And before anything else: if what happened is still happening, to anybody, this page is not the thing you need first. Go and get help from somebody trained for it, today, and let this wait. There is no shame in that direction at all.

For everybody else, let us take the trap apart, because it is not as tight as it looks.

The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father

There is a sentence in Ezekiel that was written for a whole nation and lands squarely on one man in a workshop.

The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son. (Ezekiel 18:20, King James Version)

You are not carrying what he did, and Ezekiel 18:20 has never once let one man's account be charged to another. The Holy Spirit is the one who makes that land on somebody who has been half expecting to become him, and the written word says it in both directions in a single line.

The chapter around it exists because people had a proverb: the fathers have eaten sour grapes and the children's teeth are set on edge. Everybody said it. It was accepted as how things go.

And God tells them to stop using that proverb, and then spends a whole chapter dismantling it.

You have been living under a proverb rather than under Scripture, and the written word takes that proverb apart deliberately. Ezekiel 18 refuses the inheritance of guilt line by line, and the Spirit of God is the one who does that dismantling in a person.

Honesty or revenge

Now the question that keeps a man awake, and it deserves a real test rather than reassurance.

Is refusing the name honesty, or is it revenge.

You are entitled to ask that of yourself, and Ezekiel 18 has never once shamed a man for examining his own motive. The written word spends a whole chapter separating what belongs to one man from what belongs to another, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes an honest look survivable.

Here is the test, and it is one question. If nobody would ever know the reason, would you still not use it.

If the answer is that the refusal only satisfies when somebody understands why, then there is something in it aimed at a person, and that is worth knowing about honestly, without self hatred, because a man who has been through what he has been through is entitled to some anger and it does not make him wicked.

And if the answer is that he simply cannot put that word over a cot, and would still not use it on a desert island with nobody watching, then it is not revenge. It is a man declining to say something he does not mean, four thousand times, for eighteen years.

You are able to know your own motive in one question, and no verse anywhere required a man to name a child after somebody who harmed him. The Holy Spirit is the one who gives a man an honest reading of himself without contempt in it, and Ezekiel 18:20 separates the two accounts entirely.

And here is a thing worth saying about the word honor, because it is doing damage in this house.

Honoring a parent is a real commandment and it does not evaporate. But nowhere in Scripture is honoring defined as naming a child after somebody. That is a custom in a family, and a good one in many families, and it is not the commandment, and the two have been welded together in that kitchen by people who meant well.

You are able to honor a man and still not use his name, and Scripture never once made the two the same thing. Ezekiel 18 keeps the accounts separate, and the Spirit of God is what lets a man hold a commandment and a decision in two different hands.

Nothing is owed to a form

So here is the practical thing, and it is the assignment on this row.

Write down your father's name and the name you want, side by side, once.

On one sheet, same handwriting, nothing else. Not to compare them and not to be fair to anybody. Because right now one of those words is not a name at all. It is thirty years of a specific man, compressed, arriving with everything attached. And the other one is a thought about a boy.

On paper, side by side, they get to be two words for a moment, and something usually becomes clear in about nine seconds that has not been clear in nine months.

You are able to look at both without owing anybody an answer, and Ezekiel 18:20 has never once put a debt on a son. The written word says the son shall not bear it, and the Holy Spirit is present at a bench where a man writes two words down alone.

And on the giving of reasons: there is no obligation to explain. A man may say, we have chosen this, and stop. A refusal does not become truthful by being justified, and a family that would demand the harm be described in order to accept a decision is asking for something nobody is required to hand over.

You are permitted to give no reason at all, and Scripture never once required a son to publish his father's account. The Spirit of God is the one who keeps a man steady in a room where he says nothing further, and Ezekiel 18 makes the account his father's alone.