Ezekiel 20:27-31: in context

God, through Ezekiel, confronts Israel with a persistent sin: they have continued in the idolatrous ways of their fathers. When I brought them into the land, God says, they saw every high hill and leafy tree and offered their sacrifices there to idols, as their fathers had done. And he presses the present generation: do you defile yourselves in the way of your fathers? Do you play the harlot after their abominations to this day? They had inherited and repeated the very sins of the generations before them.

The pointed question God asks is about inherited sin: do you defile yourselves in the way of your fathers? Israel's idolatry was not a new invention; it was the continuation of a pattern handed down from previous generations. The fathers had worshiped at the high places, and the children walked in the same way, inheriting and repeating the sins of those before them, as though the pattern were simply their birthright, to be continued without question. And God calls them to see it and to break from it: will you go on defiling yourselves in the way of your fathers? There is a searching truth here about the sins we inherit and repeat. Many of our sins are not entirely our own invention; they are patterns handed down to us, from our families, our upbringing, our culture, ways of thinking and acting that we absorbed and continue without question, as though they were simply the way things are. The anger, the grasping, the pride, the particular sins that run in a family or a culture, we can inherit and repeat, walking in the way of our fathers, continuing patterns we never chose to examine. And God's question calls us to break from them. We were redeemed, Peter says, from the futile way of life handed down from our fathers. The grace of God frees us not only from our own invented sins but from the inherited patterns, the ways of our fathers that we absorbed and continue. This is worth honest examination: what patterns of sin have I simply inherited and repeated, from my family, my upbringing, my culture, without questioning them, walking in the way of those before me? And the call is not to continue them unthinkingly, as Israel continued the idolatry of their fathers, but to recognize the inherited patterns and, by God's grace, to break from them. Do not be like your fathers, Zechariah says. The ways of our fathers are not to be continued simply because we inherited them; where they are ways of sin, the call is to break the pattern, redeemed from the futile way of life handed down, and to walk a new way in the grace of God.

What patterns of sin have I inherited and repeated, from my family, my upbringing, or my culture, walking in the way of those before me without questioning them, and can I heed God's call to break from the ways of my fathers where they are ways of sin, redeemed from the futile way of life handed down, rather than continuing the inherited patterns unthinkingly?