Sour Grapes and Their Long Term Consequences
In Ezekiel 18, God takes umbrage with what was apparently a common expression in Israel at the time. “The parents have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge.” This expression points to the sad reality of children suffering because of the sins of their parents. It may have specifically pointed to the belief that God was punishing the children, as if the children had sinned themselves, but when misfortune befalls us, whether it comes from God or from bad luck doesn’t make a great difference those who are suffering. It is miserable either way. God rejects this proverb, saying that everyone will be punished for their own sin, and children can escape the consequences of the sins of their parents.
There are a couple problems with this passage. On a theological level, it seems to work against the doctrine of original sin, which states that we are all born sinful. Everyone is guilty by nature of the human condition. Whether you believe in a literal Adam and Eve who ate a fruit and plunged the world into the rule of sin, or whether you believe that humans simply are short of God’s righteousness by our very nature, Christians generally believe that our sinful nature is inherited. Now, this passage doesn’t necessarily reject the idea of original sin. One could argue that only “actual sin” is being referred to here. Ezekiel is only concerned with punishment for the sins that we actually do during our lives, and inherited guilt doesn’t factor in. If that is the case, however, it certainly seems like Ezekiel suggests that inherited sin doesn’t get people killed. God will only punish people for the sins they actually commit.
But there is another problem with this passage. It simply doesn’t match the reality we observe. Psychologists have observed that trauma received during childhood has life long impacts. People may have trouble making and keeping friends, balancing a budget, getting healthy amounts of food and sleep, and other normal functions of life simply because of the way their parents treated them when they were a child. Many people pass on the trauma they get in their childhood to their own children. Some children live in broken homes, plagued by poverty and are forced to grow up too fast. Some are lured or forced into illegal activity to provide for themselves or their siblings. There are even particularly tragic stories of teenages being sold to human traffickers by their parents to pay for a drug addiction. While many of these situations are the fault of systems that crush people with poverty and hopelessness and the specific parents of children may not be directly to blame, their generation certainly is. As a population, the systems and structures that we either support or allow to go unchallenged, result in the suffering of children.
Perhaps the most extreme example comes in the form of climate change. If climate scientists are correct in their projections, the end of this century will see massive migrations of people as a changing climate drives them away from their homes. With mass migration will come violent conflicts over space and resources. Long term changes in rainfall and temperature will impact farmers and potentially disrupt our food supply. The world will change in ways that will cause suffering for many people. The people to bear the brunt of this will be the children and grandchildren of my generation. If climate change has the impact that many people are predicting, then our actions today and over the past hundred years will impact future generations who will have no say in the matter. The sins of greed and poor stewardship in past generations will see deadly consequences for generations not yet born. So, in fact, the parents have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge.
Twice in this chapter (verses 25 and 29), God quotes the people of Israel complaining that “The way of the Lord is unfair.” God responds that it is actually their ways that are unfair. We could look at the way children suffer because of their parent’s generation, and sometimes specifically because of their parents, and agree with the people being quoted here. If God were fair and just, God would have constructed the world in such a way that this wouldn’t happen. But then again, God did construct the world to be good. The first chapter of Genesis is clear that God’s creation is good. God made the world so that it could bountifully provide for all. We could live in harmony with nature and with one another and enjoy the generous provision of God. It isn’t the world that God constructed that punishes children from the sins of their parents, it is the sinful systems we have laid on top of that perfect creation.
Exploitation of the natural world and other humans is the result of greed, pride, and arrogance. The endless desire to have more, coupled with the belief that we deserve more than others, has spiraled us into seemingly permanent systems that continue to reinforce wealth disparities and pollute the earth. Our unwillingness to keep our own desires in check, to attend to the needs of others before our own wants, has deeply scarred the world. This is not what God desired. This is not what God called good. Our ways are unfair. We have fed parents sour grapes: poverty, desperation, hopelessness; and their children’s teeth have been set on edge with trauma, malnourishment, and abuse.
Though we may want to cry out to God, arguing that it's all unfair that God should just fix it as if these problems are God’s mistake, we must listen to God’s voice in this passage crying out to us, weeping over the children who our negligence and greed have crushed. God continues to speak to us today, reminding us that our ways are unfair, our ways lead to injustice, oppression, destruction, and death. The only antidote is God’s Way. Christ came to us to bear with us in our suffering and oppression, to face injustice and death on the cross. In Christ, we are reconciled to God and see a new way to be in the world, a way no longer characterized by greed and pride, but a way of selfless love for the neighbor. Through Christ’s mission, God’s Kingdom comes, a Kingdom in which the injustices of our world are reversed and sour grapes no longer plague either parent or child.
