Here's an opposite perspective from my last post on change where change was all around us but not always necessary. Some background first...my wife is in social work, and she has been almost all of our married lives. There is certainly part of our culture or the broader human race where what has happened in the previous generation repeats itself time and time again. You see this in cycles of abuse or with addictions. You see this in marriages with roles or even with faithfulness. Cycles tend to repeat themselves.
But here is the great thing with the gospel...these cycles can be changed. This type of change I would suggest is beneficial and necessary. This is the type of change that churches should be working for. Let me rest on that thought for a minute...churches...agents of change to toxic generational cycles...
Have you ever been on a vacation or to some exotic place and tried to describe the pictures to someone else who hasn't been there? It's a difficult situation. The awe and enjoyment you had when you went is somehow hard to transfer to the person you're describing it to. But what if you had the funds to actually take them there...to show them in person the things you've experienced? It would then be something you shared...a common experience...the conversations would go on forever as you would recount the time you had.
It's one thing to say someone ought to change...to describe to them how they ought to do it, why they need to do it, why they will benefit, etc. It is entirely another to live with them through their current experience and bring the light of Christ to where they are. As followers of Jesus, we can bring the reality of hope into hopelessness, not flaunting it as something they don't have but demonstrating it in such a way they understand it is something within reach, no matter how desperate the situation.
But just as generational cycles repeat themselves over and over, this type of change (although good) does not happen quickly...it may not even happen at all. The cost of showing Jesus in this way is high. It's not programmatic. It's messy. Recently I've been privileged to see God work in the lives a few individuals in very dramatic ways...this was after a year or two of being with them and working through very hard things...but the reward was beautiful...life they never knew was possible, or at least they couldn't see it from where they were standing.
All that to say there is change that is good and for the better...change that is salvific and life transforming.
