Every father (and mother) desires only joy and success in life for his child. He therefore passes on his greatest wisdom, hoping, like every great teacher, that the child will soar beyond whatever he has learned and achieved in life. Who has not seen the joy and pride in a father's eyes when watching his son graduate or achieve success?

When we are little, father seems to know EVERYTHING, and we "honor thy father" by accepting and following his wisdom teachings without question. By adolescence, however, we start to think WE know everything. I am reminded of a joke where a young man in his late twenties says "When I was a teenager my father knew nothing. Now he seems so wise. How did he learn so much so fast?"

Yet despite our questioning and developing our own wisdom as we grow, there always remains a remnant of childhood within us, where we accepted everything father knew as unassailable fact. This is especially true of the things we never questioned or examined, and the reason WHY "the sins of the father are passed to the son, generation after generation". We can teach only what we know ourselves, and so fathers continue to pass on to their sons what they truly believe is true. Sins are merely errors, false beliefs that are not raised to the level of doubt or question. While we do learn to challenge many of our father's beliefs, there are many more that are subconsciously accepted.

This came to light this week when a dear friend had a cancer removed from his colon. He told me his father had colon cancer, and it had spread to his liver. My friend, therefore, also feared HIS cancer may have spread, and the doctors were "watching" his liver for signs and suggesting chemotherapy might be helpful even though it appeared all of the cancerous tissue had been removed.

It was suddenly clear to me that my friend accepted the "truths" of his father without question, even though he is a student of ACIM and espouses a (somewhat wavering) belief in metaphysics. At his subconscious level, the belief in the inevitability of cancer and death was accepted and never challenged.

I was blessed with a wise and loving father who continued to learn and grow throughout his long life. In his last ten years on earth, the father/teacher-son/student relationship had changed, and we were "best friends" and equal students together, sharing and questioning all of the "truths" of life.

We are here to FULFILL our father's desire for us to exceed his wisdom, and we can only do that by examining and challenging EVERY belief that contradicts our world view. It is only here that the sin STOPS, and is no longer passed on to future generations. Only then do we truly honor our fathers.