Bad Ideas: A Curse is Upon You!

by Adam and Renée Benner

For each of his years at Hogwarts, Harry Potter had a different Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher. There was the conniving Quirrell, the haughty Gilderoy Lockhart, the sinister Barty Crouch (disguised as Mad-Eye Moody), the poisonous Delores Umbridge, even Professor Snape. But the one I always felt sorry for was the kind and noble Professor Remus Lupin. He was forced to leave the post after one year due to a minor medical condition of turning into a werewolf. And not a slick, basketball-playing werewolf like Michael J. Fox in Teen Wolf, but a vicious, bloodthirsty one.

Now, as a teacher myself, I can understand how having a staff member who may one day eat some of the children isn’t a great look for your school. But do you know why Lupin was really forced to resign? It was all thanks to a curse! Voldemort had applied for the job himself years earlier and was rebuffed by Headmaster Dumbledore. So, he cursed the position – a curse dictating that no one would ever last more than a year in the role.¹ Cold-blooded murder, splitting your soul into horcruxes, and threatening world domination are bad enough, but taking away people’s job security? Well, that’s as low as you can get.

Bad, Bad Granddads

It’s not just in fantasy books and movies that you find curses passed down through time. A belief in ‘generational curses’ is commonly accepted within some streams of Christianity. The understanding of their exact nature varies from group to group and person to person: some form of affliction, or demonic presence, or bondage transmitted through family lines. They may manifest themselves as physical conditions, or sicknesses, or mental health struggles, or a range of other issues.

Where are these curses said to originate? Perhaps with your grandfather, or great-grandfather, or great-great-great grandfather, or… well, you get it. Turns out, when they weren’t mowing the lawn, or watching the game on TV, or making pancakes for Saturday morning breakfast, they were taking dark and binding vows in the shadowy halls of fraternal society lodges. According to this teaching, these oaths have long-lasting spiritual power, tumbling down the generations to their children’s children’s children. Therefore, they must be intentionally renounced to break that power and cure the resulting conditions.

As fate would have it, one of those naughty guild members was Renée’s great-grandfather, a Freemason². After discovering this in her family history, she began ask questions and explore the concept of generational curses – what the belief entails, where it might originate, what evidence might support it. I’m always up for research, so I joined her in the quest. And we’ve decided to write this piece together based on what we found.

Dogs, √ , Dogma, X

Now, the spiritual realm and its connections with the physical realm are indeed shrouded in mystery, which we can’t hope to fully pierce. There are no doubt countless things about it which we don’t understand. It must also be said we have a number of friends who subscribe to the idea of generational curses and we don’t wish to offend them. We’re sure many would say they have found addressing potential curses and renouncing any binding vows helpful.

Yet for people who are already struggling with illness, medical conditions or mental health issues, we’re not sure it’s helpful to saddle them with the added baggage that they or their forebears may be responsible for their woes. We’re not sure it’s sensible or beneficial to treat what may very well be natural epigenetic factors as ‘curses’. We’re not sure it’s healthy or useful for people to embark on potentially endless investigations through their family lineage for dark spiritual explanations for their problems. And if no change in health or situation occurs once renunciations are performed, what then?

Most importantly, we don’t find helpful the absolutism, the certitude, the dogma surrounding generational curses and ancestral oath-taking that’s widely exhibited across the pentecostal world. As Renée says, we all like cute, friendly dogs, but dogma is nobody’s friend. There’s a tremendous amount of certainty regarding ideas whose foundations appear tenuous at best. So, at the very least, we think such ideas should be submitted to examination and questioning. It’s in that spirit we write this piece – and, after an open-minded reading, we would appreciate feedback and productive discussion in the comments.

To the Third and Fourth Generations?

Where in scripture might we find the concept of a generational curse? Those who espouse the idea often point to passages like this one:

...for I, YHWH, your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and fourth generation of those who reject me...

Exodus 20:5 / Deuteronomy 5:9, NRSV

This verse specifically deals with idolatry (something we can easily connect with various oath-taking ceremonies) and, at first glance, seems a knock-down reference in support of generational curses: progenitors’ sins affect succeeding generations. However, with scripture, the first glance is rarely the best glance and shouldn’t be the last glance. A careful reading raises several issues.

First, in the world of the ancient Israelites, people married and bore children at a young age (by modern standards) and didn’t ‘move out’ of their parents’ households in the same way we do. Thus, children, their parents, their grandparents, even their great-grandparents often lived together in the same dwellings. So when God speaks of punishing the ‘third and fourth generations’, there’s a strong chance the reference is to a single household – and the idea that the consequences of our actions affect those close to us shouldn’t be controversial at all.

On that note, secondly, this verse clearly envisages the judgement of YHWH upon idolators, not the residual effects of a ceremonial curse. It would indeed be an insidious thing to imagine God is punishing you, the child of God, for the sins of one of your (many) ancestors.

Finally, this verse is simply the first half of a poetic line, which reads:

 ...for I, YHWH, your God am a jealous God, 
punishing children for the iniquity of parents, 
to the third and the fourth generation of those who reject me, 
but showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation 
of those who love me and keep my commandments.

Exodus 20:5-6 / Deuteronomy 5:9-10, NRSV

Therefore, the passage doesn’t really stress punishment as much as it stresses the steadfast love of God. It’s the love of God, not the curses, that transcends the generations.

Curse of the Gibeonites (Wait… Who?)

Another Old Testament passage which might be called upon in support of this theology involves the Gibeonites. It’s a bit complicated, but basically, the story goes like this: When Joshua enters the land of Canaan with the Israelite army and begins to exterminate the locals, a group called the Gibeonites effects a ruse and acquires Joshua’s vow of alliance with them. A few hundred years later, King Saul brutally kills many Gibeonites. When David becomes king, a three-year famine strikes the land and he learns from YHWH the famine is due to Saul’s blood-guilt. So David cuts a deal with the remnant of the Gibeonites, turning over 7 sons of Saul to be impaled upon spikes, thus breaking the famine. (You can read about it in 2 Samuel 21.)

Well, if we follow the logic of this passage, then it seems we should be far more worried about blood-guilt (something Renee will address later) rather than curses. Apart from that, if you think this single, very violent Old Testament incident, written very much from the cultural perspective of ancient Israel, is a lot to hang your curse theology on, you wouldn’t be wrong.

What Some of You Used to Be

What then, if anything, can we draw from New Testament passages? If we turn to, say, Paul’s letters, what do we find? Remember that Paul’s audience included Jewish Christians, Gentile God-fearers and ex-pagans. Those ex-pagans, in their former lives, would have immersed themselves in all manner of idolatry, temple rites, temple prostitution, and yes, oath-taking, all of which were part and parcel with pagan practice. Their parents, their parents’ parents, their ancestors of countless generations would have indulged in the same things. It’s striking, then, that Paul says nothing in his writings about the need to renounce generational curses – which, if a reality, would no doubt have been rife in the community.

We might assert this is an argument from silence. After all, many issues aren’t addressed in Paul’s letters. That’s a fair point. Yet, again and again, Paul insists our change of allegiance to Jesus, our participation in his death and resurrection, is the thing that breaks our link with the past. In Christ, we become instead something new.

Do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived! Fornicators, idolaters, adulterers, male prostitutes, ἀρσενοκοῖται3, thieves, the greedy, drunkards, revilers, robbers—none of these will inherit the kingdom of God. And this is what some of you used to be. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God.

I Corinthians 6:9, NRSV

What then are we to say? Should we continue in sin in order that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin go on living in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptised into Christ Jesus were baptised into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.

Romans 6:1-4, NRSV

So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us.

2 Corinthians 5:17-19, NRSV

Now, some might argue that something can be true which isn’t found in scripture. Yes, and we agree. Many things the biblical texts don’t address are nonetheless real and true. Yet scripture isn’t simply silent on generational curses; the passages above seem to directly contradict the belief that the past or the distant past affects our lives in Christ by way of curses.

So what do we do with that? What solid ground do we stand upon to support these beliefs? Where can accountability be found? The origins of these ideas are difficult to trace. It seems they have been passed down for so long (ironically, like generational curses), through teachers like Derek Prince and Bill Johnson and others, that many in pentecostal circles simply accept them without question. Because of that, we’re forced to ask: are generational curses supernatural, or superstition?

Worse Sins

As we were considering this teaching, we reached out to a number of people, both here (in Australia) and overseas. One brother in the United States responded, ‘Imagine being a blood-bought believer in Christ and thinking you’re cursed! God ain’t that strong, I guess…’ He later pointed out that nobody seems compelled to renounce family members from previous generations who slaughtered indigenous people or owned slaves (very poignant, considering this friend is African American). It led me (Renée) to think about why we place so much emphasis on what ancestors have said and not what they have done? Imagine thinking that rape, murder, slaughter and enslaving human beings is less significant or impactful than speaking an oath. Is there really a more lasting legacy on our ancestors’ words, and not on their actions?

Do we carry responsibility or guilt for the things our forefathers have said or done? We can see them, we can learn from them, and decide not to participate in such things. We can nurture the self-awareness to exercise great care in how we treat ourselves and others. But do we really have a share in our ancestors’ sins? Do they really hold power over us?

Dark Thoughts and True Light

When we focus on generational curses, we can easily become fixated on darkness – as I (Renée) found myself doing at the start of this exploration. We find our minds give way to troubling thoughts and anxieties: what unexpected curse-driven illnesses or conditions might strike me down? What else could be lurking in my family history? With extensive family lineage and so many unknown factors, how could we ever know? And where does the search end? Such questions seem to arise more from fear than from a productive space.

But Jesus is light. He is the game changer, through his death, resurrection and ascension. If his blood is enough to remove all sin, oaths, vows, idolatry, there can be no ‘if’s, ‘but’s or ‘maybe’s. It’s done.  It’s complete. And it was done when we first turned toward Jesus, pledged allegiance to him, participated in his death and resurrection. We are people of the light! This is what we are called to be.

But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin. 

1 John 1:7

The Bad Kids

There you have it. We’ve taken the can of worms from the shelf and prised it wide open with a mallet and a screwdriver. Yes, this is a controversial piece. Hell, we feel like the bad kids even bringing it up. That said, we’re convinced of this: we have to examine questionable ideas in order to avoid perpetuating suspect teaching.

Now’s your chance to set the dogs (or the dogma) loose on us.

---

1. Didn’t know about Voldemort’s curse? That just proves you relied on the movies for your information. Read the books!
2. There are many fraternal societies out there, but the Freemasons have always been ‘Public Enemy No. 1’ for a number of Christian denominations.
3. In many of your translations, this word is rendered ‘homosexuals’. But given what we know about Koine Greek, that rendering is rightly controversial. I’ve chosen the safe and careful road in simply leaving the Greek ἀρσενοκοῖται untranslated.