Estrangement and Ancient Wisdom
God says in Deuteronomy 30:19, “I am offering you life or death, blessing or curse. Choose life, so that you and your descendants may live.”
If you want to make sense of the cultural phenomena of estrangement that no family seems immune from, you can find some answers in the ancient text above.
The Hebrew word for life in Deuteronomy 30:19 is chayyim. Chayyim encompasses more than just biological life, it includes our relationship with God, our wholeness, our flourishing, and our solid connections in family and community. It is abundance.
In contrast, the Hebrew word for death, mavet, stretches beyond physical death into separation from God, being cut of from others, purposelessness, and experiencing the consequences of being cut off from Source, which is curse and loss. Decay.
Families and individuals operate on one of two relational paths; life or death, blessing or curse. Life is a choice. So is death. To choose life, rooted in Source, becomes a blessing that flows to our descendants. Living with Life at Source informs how we love and our willingness to love our way through relational conflicts and differences. There are wisdom principles that guide us as we navigate relational wounds and ruptures, providing pathways to recovery through reconciliation and repair. Those principles, grounded in humility, justice, love, and mercy, often buffer relationships and are protective moves against estrangement.
A major cause of estrangement is family members not choosing to live by wisdom principles. One side or group within the family will not take responsibility for causing pain (we all cause one another pain), and therefore there is no life-giving path forward for the relationship(s). This can happen between siblings, from parents to child, or from children to parents. It can also happen when one person challenges an entire family system to move toward truth and health (Black sheep stuff).
As an example, take an adult child or teenager who, in an attempt to live more wholeheartedly and integrated, desires to heal from past hurts. That teenager or adult child might share with the parents hurts they have caused or are causing. It’s not coming from a desire to criticize, but from hope for understanding, empathy, growth, and repair. Parents committed to choosing life will listen undefended and take responsibility for their part, responding with empathy and, when appropriate, remorse. They will attempt to make a solid repair in both words and follow-through. When this happens, the relationship comes through the challenge even stronger and more full of life and blessing. Hearts begin healing. The family moves forward in health.
However, when the situation I just described doesn’t move toward health, the opposite happens. Parents receiving feedback on the hurts they have caused respond defended and refuse to take responsibility. This is what leads to estrangement. When parents won’t admit shortcomings and shut down feedback regarding their failures, they miss the opportunity to heal wounds they caused. They miss the opportunity to strengthen the connection with their adult child. It takes courage for adult children to surface difficult conversations, often done in hope for the long term health of the relationship. Those who are rejected, ignored, punished, or dismissed have limited tolerance for missed opportunities before they start distancing. There might be contact but minimal connection, or eventually, if nothing changes, estrangement.
Choosing life makes room for reconciliation, boundaries, remorse, and repair. Anything less leads to relationships that can’t go the distance, creating patterns of death that spread across and down generational lines. Cut-off is as much a generational pattern as alcoholism or divorce. Yet it’s not always the fault of the person doing the distancing. Distancing and cut off can result from unhealthy, narcissistic family patterns that interfere with one’s emotional well-being and movement toward healthy individuation. Addicts and narcissists can’t look at themselves and see their part in conflict. It always has to be the other person; therefore they cannot provide a path for relational healing because they are always innocent and never part of the problem. There is no way through cut-off when one side can’t take any responsibility for their part. That’s really sad news.
What’s possible though is starting to live in a new freedom. No longer having to play a certain role to make the relationship work. No longer having to pretend things are okay when they are not. No longer having to perform or hide one’s true feelings and true self to maintain equilibrium in a toxic relationship. Sometimes estrangement happens because someone becomes too healthy and too free to exist in a situation where the only way to stay is to not really exist -to not matter, to have no voice, to live silently among lies rather than truth. In this case, the path to freedom and life means differentiating in relationships that compromise one’s capacity to experience Life and Blessing.
There is a whole other side to this. Sometimes the person initiating cut-off is not coming from a healthy, life-giving place. Where the first example described a person needing to distance from a relationship or family system that refuses to choose life and blessing, some individuals choose estrangement as punishment, control, or emotional blackmail. It’s more about entitlement and intolerance. For example, an adult child might grow intolerant of the parents’ values and views and choose estrangement rather than accepting differences. Or the parents set healthy limits and boundaries with an adult child who has an addiction or has been taking advantage of their goodwill and kindness. In reaction to loving limits and boundaries, the adult child reacts by choosing cut-off. The adult child is choosing disconnection, death and curses as a lifestyle- cutting themselves off from the life-giving blessings of the generational line.
Individuals and families benefit from linking to Source - God, the Source of Life and Blessing. As more families drift with the culture away from connection to God as Source, there will be more cut-off. Estrangement comes from the image of tree branches being cut-off from the trunk and roots. Sometimes those cut off parts replant into new soil and begin a flourishing, lifegiving line of blessing for their descendants. Sometimes the decision to choose life and blessing means distancing from loved ones who refuse to follow the relational rules of reconciliation and repair; distancing can be protective way to bring life back to a generational line. Other times, the cut-off parts have died on the vine because they aren’t living by life-giving principles rooted in God’s ancient wisdom.
If you are dealing with cut-off, the starting point is recognizing where you are and where you need to be when God says, “I am offering you life or death, blessing or curse, that you and your descendants my live.”