Family Fights

If you grew up with siblings, somebody at some point heard a variation of these words: "You're not really in our family. Mom and Dad found you and they're gonna take you back pretty soon." Depending upon the age of the victim, this news resulted in a tearful race to Mom or a fist fight.

Unfortunately, the family of God hurls similar accusations at each other. The availability of the Internet seems to provoke an insatiable desire to take these family fights embarrassingly public. It doesn't matter whose name you Google. From world-renowned Bible scholar to up-and-coming preacher, everyone is under attack by someone. The word "heretic" is tossed as liberally as confetti on New Year's Eve, often by a young seminary student with a short-sleeved dress shirt and a big Adam's Apple, holding court in a musty church basement with a camcorder. However, bigger names are now joining the mudslinging, as though any one person holds the patent on every truth. Doesn't the Bible call that pride? No matter how minuscule the doctrinal difference, disagreements are seen as grounds for name-calling and the childish taunt: "You're not in our family!"

Heretics and false teachers do exist. In abundance. They should be called out because they are preaching "another gospel." Any teachings that directly contradict scripture, such as universalism or questioning the divinity of Jesus, should be rejected because they are touted by those who are merely neighbors and not brothers. But much of the inner-family conflict is just that--inner family. We are brothers and sisters in Christ, redeemed by the blood of the Lamb, headed to the same eternal home. We are going to disagree. All families do. It's healthy. It means everyone has a voice and everyone is thinking about what matters.

Big Brother Jesus knew this was coming. It is rather telling that the theme of His longest recorder prayer in John 17 was unity. Of all the requests He could have made of His Father in those hours before the crucifixion, He asked "that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me..." (v. 23) Isn't it interesting that the way the world will believe in Jesus is when it sees our unity?

Is being "right "on some non-essential issue more important than loving our brothers? Is proving our point before a scoffing world more important than demonstrating the humility and kindness that should characterize the family of God? Jesus didn't think so. If unity among His family is that important to Jesus, why is it not more important to us?

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Family Resemblance

They've grown up together. Each guy is 8 months apart in age, the youngest in the middle. Sam and Luke and Tim. Cousins. They don't get to see each other very often now, so when we all get together we moms compare and analyze which family members they look like.

My sister's son Luke has the Davis eyes and Tim looks like his dad, my brother. My son Sam is all McCombs, but there is something about the eyebrows that looks like both Luke and Tim.

Family resemblance. We all look for it. We like finding similarities in those of our blood and find a sense of belonging when we see it in ourselves. It's part of what makes us family. We look alike.

God's family is no different. When we are bought into the family of God through His Son, we start to take on His family resemblance. We can't help it. It's part of what Jesus meant by being born again. We are born into a new bloodline and we start to look like our Father.

Jesus said, "If you've seen me, you've seen my Father." He was that confident in his identity because he knew that his life and actions were the same as His Father's would be.

Wouldn't it be wonderful if all of God's adopted children could say the same thing? What if you could say with humble confidence, "If you've seen me, you've seen my big Brother."

That is God's plan for us. He loves to see Himself in us. He delights in finding a family resemblance. That should delight us too.

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What Are You Doing Down There?

Family can be a source of acceptance and joy.

A soft place to fall.

A Norman Rockwell, flickering firelight, gather-round-the banquet table experience.

And then there is the other kind.

You're nodding. Do you have one of those kinds of families? Know someone who does?

Grownup kids still fighting over who's getting Grandma's rocker when she goes. Brothers who haven't spoken in a decade. Sisters who'd rather stab each other in the back than let the other one have a bigger piece of cake.

Most of us have a little of both, so the story of Joseph and the brothers-from-Hell in Genesis 37 has a little something for everyone.

When jealousy had gotten the best of them, the Bible says "they stripped him of his brightly colored robe and threw him in a pit. The pit was empty, with no water in it."

Well, at least the well was dry. How thoughtful of them.

As a counselor, I deal often with people who know exactly what it feels like to be stripped of every ounce of their dignity and thrown in the pit by the people who were supposed to love them.

The problem is that often their story ends in the pit. They've decided to live there permanently, stripped of everything that makes life livable, abiding in a dark place void of anything that makes it useful.

The greatest lesson from Joseph's story is what he allowed God to do with the pit. He didn't stay there. He went somewhere worse.

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Not only was he stripped of identity and respect, but he became a slave in a foreign land. Yet, the Bible makes sure to tell us that God was with him. Even there.

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The secret is that he refused to let others dictate his value.

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He was told by everyone in his world that he was nothing. A slave. A reject. An outcast. They took his fancy coat, the symbol of his identity, but they could not take his worth because that is determined only by God.

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He knew God was for him and that was enough. You know the rest. With God's blessing on him, he remained humble and faithful to his Lord and God set him up as a ruler over all of Egypt.

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Had he not remained steadfast in his faith while in the pit, God could never have used him when he climbed out. But he trusted what he could not see and God honors that kind of faith.

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What about you? Do you still bear the scars of a less-than-perfect family? Are you wearing them as a label, defining who you can be?

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Or are you still in the pit, wondering if anyone knows you're down there? Have you chosen to stay there, allowing others to determine your value?

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They can strip you of everything else, but no one can take your value because that is already set by God.

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Listen to my favorite worship leader put it a different way and remember that if God is for you, no one can be against you.

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Kari Jobe

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