This is a ploy used often in Christian circles. Most Christians don't realize that the idea that our life experiences cause us to act in certain ways, is based in humanistic psychology.
Excusing or justifying is not, nor ever has been, acceptable to God. If we think that mankind sins because of their childhood problems, then what excuse could we give to Adam and Eve for their sin against God? After all God the Father was the perfect Father, the original couple lived in a perfect environment without worries!
Every child has difficulties in their growing up years, mostly because of their own youthful sin and partly because they have imperfect fallen parents, every single one.
Very few children grow up in a Christian home and even those have their challenges. No parent is perfect, neither are any children. Children who blame their parents for their own sin, are forgetting that they were also sinful and often rebellious, resisting teaching and training from parents who loved them.
The perspectives of children are often based on their own ignorant and skewed idea of right and wrong, propelled by their own desires. They lack self control, do not honor their parents and seek pleasure more than upstanding character. If not guided properly by parents or if the child is guided but refuses the instruction, then we end up with an future adult who will follow his natural bent toward sin.
As adults we cannot blame any of our sinful behavior on what happened to us in childhood. We have all had challenging circumstances, some have even had evil perpetrated on them, when they were tender and vulnerable, however, as adults we have choices we can make, no one can claim that they have to be completely controlled by emotions from the past.
We can ignore our emotions to carry on to do what is right before God, we can even diminish our emotions by choosing to divert our attention to more productive matters and most of all we can saturate our minds with the Word of God that diminishes the pain.
Philippians 2:5 "5 Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus:"
Ephesians 5:26 "That he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word,"
The Word of God washes our minds, makes us think a different way.....God's way!
We may not be able to completely forget about the past, but we do not have to let it control us. The more we cogitate on what happened earlier in our life the bigger it gets, most likely much bigger than it actually was, not always but often. When we have not taken the time to ask questions and listen carefully to the perspectives of others in our life, we are left to our own faulty memory and residue feelings.
God never told us in His Word to follow our emotions, or to indulge in a bitter thought life concerning the past, quite the opposite. God knows that our memories are deeply flawed as we fostered anger in our heart toward our parents, often unjustly. I am sure that those who use their childhood as an excuse to sin, causing the uninformed to feel compassion for them, know it was not their childhood that caused them to sin, it was their own sinful character. When we stand before God we will not be asked "what did your parents do that caused this?"
It is possible that those who are holding things over the heads of those they have contempt for, are forgetting that they too could not earn love, it was a free gift from God even before we were saved. We had to accept that gift, but we didn't deserve it, neither do we deserve it now even after salvation.
It is uncanny the way a child can remember something as a negative, keeping that in their mind forgetting that the only reason they saw it as a negative was because they just didn't like the decision or discipline of the parent at the time. The memory of what happened faded or morphed but the power of the recollection was based on the anger they felt rather than the reason for the chastisement of their parent. A child almost never sees the instruction, correction or discipline from the parents perspective. If they have harbored bitterness long enough they won't even have a desire to speak to the parent to hear their side of the story.
2 Corinthians 10:5 "We are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God, and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ,"
When we feel bitter about how we are raised, it is best to own that bitterness, cry out to God for cleansing and ask Him to show us the truth, even if we have to admit we were in the wrong in some way. And, never forget, it was God Who gave us the parents we have, He has a purpose in all things, if even just to show us the anger that we still have inside, that needs to be cleansed.
Psalm 51:10 "Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me."
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