Ok so recently I read an article in time Mag about Epigenomes called "Why Your DNA Isn't Your Destiny" These epigenomes are what "tell our genes to switch on or off, to speak loudly or whisper. It is through epigenetic marks that environmental factors like diet, stress and prenatal nutrition can make an imprint on genes that is passed from one generation to the next."
What they are discovering is that our choices can effect our future generations in a positive or negative fashion. And these choices can be hard wired onto our DNA to impact future generations. As I read the article this passage Numbers 14:18 about iniquity being passed on to the third and fourth generation kept coming to mind. I used to think of this passage, and others like it, in terms of situations where let’s say a girl grows up in a home where the father abuses the mother and then she will have a tendency to marry someone who is abusive. But what they are finding is that our choices have an even deeper a genetic impact on our future generation. And these choices impact the Epigenomes of those who come after us.
What do you think?
Numbers 14:18 (ESV) ‘The Lord is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, forgiving iniquity and transgression, but he will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, to the third and the fourth generation.’
inadequate?
Added 9/21/2009 Posted by Doug Seletzky at 7:40:15 AM
"It is not God’s intention that we should in ourselves be adequate for our tasks, rather He wants that we should be inadequate. If we only accept the tasks which we think are adapted to our powers we are not responding to the call of God. The church is always in a crisis and always will be. There will be difficulties, limitations, insolvable problems, lack of people & money, a menacing outlook, endless misunderstandings & misrepresentations. We are not only to do our work despite these things; they are precisely the conditions requisite for the doing of it."