Let me tell you a story today about a dysfunctional family and an environment that, according to what the “experts” tell us today, should have produced offspring that were colossal failures through no fault of their own.
The dad was an illiterate farmer, poorer than a church mouse, and the lowest on the poverty scale in the community. Through land disputes, he lost at least three of his farms. He was a fair cabinet maker and was able to occasionally make some extra money through this venture. He is also described as a strict disciplinarian, overly harsh, and he took out an ample amount of his frustrations on his son.
The mom was a kind, gentle woman and described as “highly intellectual by nature,” with a “strong memory” and “acute judgment.”1 However, after 12 years of marriage, she became sick and died, leaving her husband with two children.
Fourteen months after her death, he married a widow from Kentucky who had three children of her own. The family has now grown to five! This man’s success in farming has not yet improved, though, and his children are brought up in abject poverty.
“There were times that the only food in the house was potatoes, and the children did not have sufficient clothes to wear. The dad’s son was not invited to a wedding because he did not have appropriate clothes to wear. The dad’s daughter was taken in by a local family and earned her room and board by performing housekeeping chores. Their lives were considered “one of hard labor and great privation.”2 The son could remember “when my toes stuck out through my broken shoes in the winter; when my arms were out at the elbows; when I shivered with the cold.”3
The young man’s stepmother would be a Godsend in his life. She recognized that he was intelligent and fostered his hunger for learning and education. Though he only attended school for a year, he thirsted for knowledge and read with a voracious appetite. Dad, on the other hand, reprimanded his son for all the learning and punished him for neglecting the chores in order to read.
You can imagine that the young man wanted nothing more than to escape his father’s grip. No love was lost between the two. The strained relationship was fostered by the dad’s favoritism of his stepson. The weight of responsibility was thrust upon the son while the stepson received kindness and compassion. When the son married, his parents were not invited to the wedding. When the dad became sick, the son sent a reply: “If we could meet now, it is doubtful whether it would not be more painful than pleasant.”4 And when the dad died, the son did not attend the funeral.
By today’s rationalization, nothing good can be expected from the life of a boy growing up under these conditions. While he may turn out better than the father, there wouldn’t be any grand expectations because he didn’t have the advantages that others had. He didn’t get the love, affection, and affirmation needed to grow into a well-balanced, emotionally stable individual. His environment wasn’t conducive to him achieving great things in life.
This man proved that modern therapists don’t know what they are talking about.
After leaving home, he started working in a general store. He was a Captain in the Illinois Militia. Just before going into the militia and immediately afterward, he was campaigning for public office. He bought his own general store and tended bar. He was soon serving as a postmaster and a county surveyor. All the while, he kept learning, eventually becoming a self-taught lawyer.
At the age of 32, he marries and soon afterwards, a family begins. As his law career was growing, so was his aspirations to higher elected positions. He spent eight years in the Illinois legislature and two years in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Seems like he is doing really good in spite of his upbringing, doesn’t it? There’s much more to his story but his greatest claim to fame is that he became the 16th President of the United States. He is none other than Abraham Lincoln, born on this day in 1809.
Our past does NOT define us. We choose to define ourselves. We determine the path we will take. And that includes whether or not we will choose to follow Jesus who does the greatest work of overcoming our past and setting us on a new course. Isaiah 43:18-19 says, “Remember ye not the former things, neither consider the things of old. (19) Behold, I will do a new thing; now it shall spring forth; shall ye not know it? I will even make a way in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert.” Though spoken to Israel concerning their renewal, it has great application to our lives.
If anyone had a past to overcome, it was the Apostle Paul. Acts 7-8 gives a moderate explanation of his life before Christ. When Paul was saved, I’m sure he had lots of baggage and unresolved conflicts. What did he do about them? He said in Philippians 3:13-14, “Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, (14) I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.”
Jesus is the answer for righting the wrongs of yesterday and pointing us in the right direction today with new desires, goals, and priorities. Don’t play the victim card. Let Jesus make all things new. “Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.” (2 Corinthians 5:17)
1https://www.history.com/articles/abraham-lincoln-family
2https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Lincoln
3Ibid.
4Ibid.
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