Dysfunctional Families, and Why I Can't Stand Abraham

Since I was old enough to know what the term 'dysfunctional' meant, I have described my family as such. Living at home has always felt like living in a war zone, and every conversation is like wandering through a minefield. Recently, as a result of the book Boundaries and a seminar called "Marriage Matters" my home is somewhat at peace. Even though all is quiet on the home front at present, when I go home I feel like a World War I era farmer going home after the war and finding only trenches and craters.

Sometimes it's good to see my parents having a whole conversation without yelling or to have my mom come home and not be afraid that she's going to blow up. At the same time, this armistice has in many ways been harder than the war. While I was lying in the trenches, I didn't really know how much damage was occurring to my family and my soul. Climbing out and walking through no man's land, the devastation crushes me. I had hoped so much more would survive the war, but everything is gone, at least on this battlefield. Trust, affection, safety, hope, strength... all casualties of a twenty something year war. Everything that I have is built outside of this home, outside of this family.

This is not as bad as it sounds. I have a good Family. I have the Church. I have brothers who love me, whom I love. I have father figures here at Moody, and I have a Father. This makes everything okay, really. I want to have a warm, peaceful, safe, loving home. But I'm 20 now and however many hopes I have for what my family will be in the future, I am done growing up in my parent's home. The home I grew up in now lives in the past, and I will always have grown up in that war-torn home.

I have been reading through Genesis, and it has been both shocking and comforting. I have read it before a couple times, but I think I must have been asleep, because I have never been so emotionally engaged. I give most of the human credit for this change in how I read the Bible to Dr. Penley, who has really helped me understand how to read and apply the Bible.

Often as I read, I felt shocked that the characters in the story were such bad examples. I taught Sunday School for a long time, and our children's pastor (and the curriculum we buy) holds up people like Jacob, Abraham, and Sarah as good Christian role models. I was not raised in the church, and so I didn't know a lot about the Bible, and assumed that presenting heroes from Bible stories was a good way to teach kids to be more like Jesus.

I felt angry because these people I was reading about were not the warm, fuzzy, sanitized rolemodels that are in my Sunday school curriculum. I felt angry because from what I read, we should not be asking young boys to be like Abraham or Jacob nor young girls to be like Sarah or Rebekah. I was intrigued. I felt like I was reading Genesis for the first time. I am realizing things that seem so obvious now, but that I had never noticed when I read before.

And I was comforted. I was comforted because all the people I read about were really messed up, and God used them greatly despite how totally screwed up they were. And honestly, I think that might be the point of the narrative. I think whoever wrote Genesis (Moses, perhaps) is trying to say, "Look at how hopeless all these people were, and look how much God used them in spite of it, and know that God can us you." And it was comforting, because if God can use Jacob and his messed up family, maybe there's hope for me and my family.

The story starts with a married couple, Adam and Eve. Adam is a passive, cowardly man who lets Satan come and spiritually assault his wife, and he just stands there watching it happen instead of manning up and taking a stand. Then, when she tries to get him to join in her sin, instead of standing up to his wife like he should have, he bends to her will and joins her in sin. When God comes and asks Adam to give an explanation, he ducks responsibility and blames his wife, and then he blames God for not giving him a better wife. Eve isn't much better. She is manipulative, controlling, unsupportive, and irresponsible.

I was talking to my friend Chelsea about this, and she pointed out that Joseph is the only good role model in all fifty chapters of Genesis. All of the other men follow Adam's example. They are cowards and fools who will not stand up for what is right. All of the women (except perhaps Hagar) follow Eve's example. They are manipulative, deceptive, and catty.

Together, they make up a tragedy depressing enough that it would be a comedy if we forgot that these were real people. The Children of Adam are the most dysfunctional family I've ever seen.

Abel cares more about God than his brother, Cain, does, so God is pleased with Abel. Cain decides to fix this by this by killing his brother. Noah gets drunk and winds up lying around naked, his son checks him out, Noah curses him and makes him a servant to his brothers. Which brings us to Abram in Chapter 12.

Abram, who becomes Abraham, seemed like a nice guy when I first started reading. He doesn't commit a lot of really noticeable sins like his sons do. At a second glance, he bugged me more than anyone else in the story.

Apparently, his wife was really attractive, because Abraham was worried that if the kings of the lands he visited saw her they would kill him and forcibly take her to be their 'wife.'

So he comes up with a really clever plan. He decided that whenever he meets new people, he's going to tell everyone that his wife, Sarah, is his sister, so that instead of killing him, kings will pay him if they are going to steal his wife and rape her. It's not a clever plan to protect her, it's a clever plan to sacrifice her for the sake of his safety and prosperity.

Abraham has every reason to stand up for his bride. He is wealthy man, having many servants and goods and apparently a private army. On one occasion Abraham's brother, Lot, is captured in battle by, "Kedorlaomer king of Elam, Tidal king of Goiim, Amraphel king of Shinar and Arioch king of Ellasar. [They] carried off Abram's nephew Lot and his possessions, since he was living in Sodom. [...] One who had escaped came and reported this to Abram the Hebrew. Now Abram was living near the great trees of Mamre the Amorite, a brother of Eshcol and Aner, all of whom were allied with Abram. When Abram heard that his relative had been taken captive, he called out the 318 trained men born in his household and went in pursuit as far as Dan. During the night Abram divided his men to attack them and he routed them, pursuing them as far as Hobah, north of Damascus. He recovered all the goods and brought back his relative Lot and his possessions, together with the women and the other people."

If Abraham had wanted to take a stand for his wife he certainly could have. When he took a stand for his brother he took out the armies of four kings, but apparently he's too scared to take a stand. I suppose he also could have just kept his wife in the tent or had her cover up, if he was that worried about her. But apparently he would rather risk her for his benefit. That gets me pretty riled up, but I'll move on for your sake.

Abraham seems to have some issues within his marriage as well:

"Now Sarai, Abram's wife, had borne him no children. But she had an Egyptian maidservant named Hagar; so she said to Abram, 'The LORD has kept me from having children. Go, sleep with my maidservant; perhaps I can build a family through her.' Abram agreed to what Sarai said."

This really ticked me off. Firstly, what kind of wife asks her husband to sleep with another woman? I understand that this is culturally acceptable, but it's still a terrible idea. I think Abraham already knows it's a bad idea, because God has already told Abraham that he's going to have lots of kids, but Sarah is getting impatient, so she tries to make the process happen a little faster. She twists her husband's arm into distrusting God, which apparently wasn't very hard, because not only can Abraham not stand up for his wife, he can't stand up to her either.

So Abraham marries Hagar and has a kid with her, and Sarah freaks out. She gets all bitter and jealous about it. She abuses Hagar (who is still her slave) and Hagar's son. She berates her husband to get him to get rid of her. Eventually she does break up the relationship. Abraham can't seem to stand up for Hagar any better than he can stand up for Sarah, and he sends her away to pacify his jealous and manipulative wife, which is the first mention of divorce in the Bible.

Sarah is also too cynical to believe God when He tells Abraham to that she will have the child she longs for, and then she does some lying to Abraham about it. Together, Abraham and Sarah are quite a team. They disregard the promises of God, they mistreat their servants, they keep getting people cursed...

Now, Lot is Abraham's brother, and apparently just as much of a coward. Note that he is a good man, he's too passive to stand up for what he believes in. He offers his daughters to be raped by the men of Sodom so that they don't rape his dinner guests, which is only avoided because angels save his family and destroy Sodom.

Then, his daughters are really worried that they will never have kids, because it is apparently really hard to find a good husband in 2000BC. (Some things don't change.) Even though their father offered them to the Sodomite to be raped, they seem to think he's good enough, and they conspire together to get their father drunk and sleep with him. Lot, who is even more easily manipulated than Abraham, consents and gets drunk with his daughters and then gets them both pregnant (on two different occasions.)

Abraham's kid, Isaac, gets married to Rebekah. He also pretends that she is his sister, and she also gets taken by a king, who gives her back when he finds out the truth. They have two kids, but Rebekah doesn't like the older one because he has an interracial marriage. (Two of them, actually.) The younger son, Jacob, is a momma's boy, and she teaches him a lot about deception and trickery, apparently, because he tricks his older brother out of his birthright (inheritance) while his mom engineers a way to manipulate his elderly father into blessing Jacob instead of his older brother.

Together, Rebekah and Jacob manage to trick Isaac because he's old and can't see, and he blesses the wrong son. Then Rebekah gets Jacob to run away from home so his brother won't kill him for doing what she put him up to do.

Jacob falls head over heels in love with Rachel the first time he sees her. Apparently he's never read Joshua Harris, because he kisses her the first time they meet. Then, he works for her father seven years to earn the right to marry her. So far, he seems like a decent sort of man, loving, hard-working, etc., if not the best with words: "Jacob said to Laban, [Rachel's father] 'Give me my wife. My time is completed, and I want to lie with her.'"

However, Laban and tricks Jacob into marrying his older daughter, Leah, even though Jacob and Rachel were in love. Jacob is apparently so head over heels in love that he lacks sound judgment to stay sober on his wedding day, and he accidentally marries the wrong girl. "When morning came, there was Leah! So Jacob said to Laban, 'What is this you have done to me? I served you for Rachel, didn't I? Why have you deceived me?'"

So, Jacob stays with Leah for a week, and then he marries her little sister and sleeps with her. I can't imagine that went over very well with Leah, but then I can't imagine Rachel being very happy that Leah tried to steal the love of her life. So Jacob's lovely household is him, his two wives, who are sisters, and their two servants. Not content to live and let live, Jacob's wives start a child bearing feud. My favorite part is when Rachel trades a night with Jacob in exchange for some mandrakes from her sister... I mean, geez...

Leah, being pretty upset that she is sharing a husband with her little sister, and that her little sister is better liked, takes comfort in the fact that she is the more fertile of the two. She gives Jacob a whole bunch of kids, but Rachel doesn't seem to be able to have kids, so Rachel feels like a really bad wife. She decides to pull a Sarah, and get Jacob to sleep with her servant girl so she can have kids through her servant. Not to be outdone, Leah pulls the same trick.

Finally, Rachel has some kids, Joseph and Benjamin, and they are Jacob's favorites. Jacob favors Joseph so much that his brothers conspire to kill him but end up selling him into slavery to an Egyptian family instead. While working there, the mother of the family tries to seduce Joseph, but he refuses her, making him the first man in the Bible to successfully say no to a woman. (And really the first man to stand up to temptation in general). In return, she manipulates her husband into throwing him in prison.

In the mean time, Joseph's half-brother Judah has kids, one of who gets married to a woman named Tamar. Now, apparently Judah's kid was really bad, but we don't really know how, all it says is, "Er, Judah's firstborn, was wicked in the LORD's sight; so the LORD put him to death." Then Onan, Er's brother marries Tamar, and refuses to father a child with her. "What he did was wicked in the LORD's sight; so He put him to death also." Tamar wants to marry Judah's third son, but Judah resists giving him to her and, at the end of a very convoluted story, ends up sleeping with her instead. It's worth noting that Jesus is descended from this Judah.

Now, the story ends well with Joseph becoming the chief administrator in Egypt and being reconciled to his brothers, but it's pretty messy along the way. It's been encouraging to see how God can use even themost screwed up people, but it's also made me rethink a lot of how we teach the Bible, especially to kids. I don't like that my church's children's ministry is sanitizing the Bible. Chelsea and I had a long conversation about it, but didn't come to much of a conclusion. Thoughts?