The sins of the fathers…and quantum physics

One of my daughters-in-law recently shared a CNN article about the increasingly devastating effects of Agent Orange on children in Vietnam and the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of American veterans of that war.  The deformities get worse; what we did then affects those being born now.

Reading the article brought to mind the words from Scripture about how the “sins of the fathers” will be visited upon the children for generations to come. I used to think this was meant to describe the actions of a stern and terrifying God, but I realize now that it simply describes what actually happens: our children inherit the unintended consequences of our behaviors. Generationally, they live with climate change and national debt and, if their grandfathers were exposed to Agent Orange, with the potential for inheriting debilitating deformities.

Once again, here is a place where Scripture and science agree: everything is interconnected. As the physicists say, “Action in one place, even at a distance, affects action in another place” because “at a level we can’t discern, there is an unbroken wholeness.”*  As St. Paul says, “If one member of the body suffers, we all suffer together.”

This interconnectedness, by the way, isn’t just about the bad things; it embraces the good as well.  The smile, the vote, time spent reading to a child, faithfully going to a difficult job, raising money or awareness for a good cause – all these, too, have far-reaching effects.  Everything -- the physicists say, Jesus says -- everything is interconnected.  “Whatever you do to the least of these, you do to me,” across time, across space, across generations.

So what should we do today to tend our children – and the universe? We can’t do one without affecting the other because they are, after all, part of an unbroken wholeness, all of it held together in God. 

*(from Margaret Wheatley)