What Does the Bible Say About Family Alienating You
The fairy tale pushed past bedtime stories, Disney movies, and traditional values in general is that we grow up, observe that special someone, ally, and have children. Only as central equally marriage and childrearing are, especially for Christians, as far back as biblical times families have e'er been about something more than the couple, their 2.5 children, and their family dog.
Scripture shows us a broader definition of the family—including siblings, cousins, and young man Jesus followers—that reflects the realities of childlessness and infertility in the ancient earth. Barrenness is the preeminent inability that afflicts women in the Hebrew Bible. The case of Abraham and Sarah is well known: Sarah is in her 90s when she conceives and gives nativity to Isaac. Excluding Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist, there are iv other barren matriarchs in the Bible: Rebekah, Rachel, the unnamed mother of Samson, and Hannah.
The offset words God speaks to humans in the Bible, in Genesis i, are the approval "be fruitful and multiply," then we might presume that infertility in the Hebrew Bible is some kind of curse or punishment. After all, in the biblical text, impairments are often associated with sin: The pare disease that afflicts King Uzziah in 2 Chronicles 26:xix–21, for case, is the direct consequence of his efforts to usurp the role of the priests. But the infertile women in the Bible are utterly blameless. They have done null to deserve their state. Indeed these are some of the about beloved and admired women in all of scripture. Their barrenness is no curse or punishment. It is, rather, simply the state in which they detect themselves. You might say that even though having children is a blessing, being childless is value neutral.
The (ancient) medical language used past the Bible to describe the process of condign pregnant makes pregnancy a collaborative thing between humans and God. God does non merely intervene in cases where a woman might exist assumed to exist postmenopausal. Every pregnancy, be it the first or the fifth, is ascribed to God'southward ability. Sarah, who bears Isaac at 90 years old, says, "God has brought me laughter" (Gen. 21:6). When Leah, notwithstanding in her relative youth, bears Issachar, her fifth son, she also credits God: "God has given me my reward" (Gen. 30:18). For her sixth, Asher, she says, "God has given me a choice souvenir" (Gen. 30:20). In the aboriginal Israelite view, God is involved in every homo conception.
The fact that God is involved in every pregnancy is connected to the ancient belief that for a woman to remain pregnant her womb must be finer "opened" and "close." In the thought-world of the Bible the player that opens and closes the womb is God. In fact, circumcision itself is instituted equally a "sign" in lodge to remind God to make the people of Israel fertile.
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When it is recognized that the default state of all women—at all times—is infertile, and that God needs to exist reminded to open the womb every time an Israelite couple has intercourse in guild to let formulation to occur, the idea that infertility should exist regularly understood as divine penalization tin can hardly exist maintained. In fact, the explanation suggested by the Hebrew Bible seems to be rather more than banal, if somewhat more theologically difficult for the modern reader: Infertility is the consequence non of divine penalization, but of divine inattention. That is, despite having created a system to jog the divine memory, God is still sometimes forgetful.
The demand to get God'due south attention explains some other chemical element mutual to the stories of these women. When Rachel's womb is finally opened, the Bible declares that "God remembered Rachel" (Gen. 30:22). The word used for "remember" here, zakar, is the same give-and-take used in the story of the flood: God volition "remember," zakar, the everlasting covenant. Hannah prays that God will "remember me and not forget your maidservant" (one Sam. 1:eleven). With Sarah, a shut synonym is used, paqad: "The Lord took note of Sarah" (Gen. 21:1). In every case, of course, circumcision has already taken place; yet God still has to farther remember his obligation.
When all of the pieces are put together, it is clear that, from the perspective of these biblical authors, infertility is not a human shortcoming but a divine one. The Hebrew Bible does nowadays infertility as a religious miracle, to be sure. Information technology is, however, not the religious miracle normally causeless. With only the rarest exceptions, God does not decree infertility in the way that he brings about other afflictions. Those who accept never borne children, who have never been able to conceive, have non been punished for whatever mysterious sin. They have done nothing wrong. It is non their deportment that are at the root of their infertility but rather God'south inaction.
In the New Attestation childbearing is rarely a priority, as the followers of Jesus endeavor to spread the good news. The Apostle Paul rather famously tells the Corinthians that information technology is better not to marry, because wives and children are a significant distraction from their spiritual work. Simply perhaps a more than significant and often-overlooked passage is the Apostle Philip's encounter with the Ethiopian eunuch in Acts viii:26–29.
In this story, the disciple Philip is traveling from Jerusalem down to Gaza when he encounters an unnamed eunuch on the way. The Ethiopian had journeyed to Jerusalem to worship and was struggling to interpret Isaiah as he journeyed home. Directed by the Spirit, Philip approaches the chariot and helps the eunuch interpret a passage from the book of Isaiah equally a prophecy about Jesus. As they journey the eunuch sees some water and exclaims, "What is to prevent me from being baptized?" (eight:37). The chariot stops; he is baptized by Philip, and when the eunuch comes up out of the h2o Philip is snatched abroad by the Spirit.
At that place are all kinds of interesting avenues to pursue in our reading of this story, but the well-nigh currently relevant is the recognition that this man is non "healed" of the condition that has rendered him infertile. Unlike the manifold impairments cured even by the shadows of the Apostles elsewhere in Acts, at that place is nix improper about his body. Nosotros practise non know if the man was born a eunuch or had been made i, but his resulting disability to procreate is not something that Philip thinks needs "fixing"; the eunuch is already perfect for the Kingdom of God.
The variety of biblical perspectives on infertility—it is by and large neutral, it is sometimes negative, it is occasionally positive—is mirrored past the varieties of models of parenting offered by our authors. To exist sure, biological procreation takes center stage, but as every apologist of the perpetual virginity of Mary knows, Jesus has brothers and sisters who may well have been cousins. The world of the Bible did non distinguish between siblings, stride-siblings, and cousins as clearly every bit we do. If in that location is one clear example that deconstructs our modernistic obsession with genetics, information technology is surely that of Joseph.
In modern taxonomies Joseph is Jesus' stepfather, but the Gospel of Matthew wants united states to think of Joseph every bit Jesus' genealogical connection to David. Joseph is the means past which Matthew and others tin claim that Jesus is the Davidic Messiah. The distinction between biological parenthood, legal parenthood, and simply being at that place is very much eroded. Fifty-fifty God shares the parental stage with other father figures.
In a culture in which contraception, small families, and childlessness are deeply politicized, infertile people can suffer twice: from the disappointments and pain of their condition and the social alienation and judgment they receive from their communities. The Bible, however, presents a more complicated picture. It is one in which voluntary childlessness tin be an deed of obedience to God, in which infertility is morally and religiously simple, and in which barrenness is fundamentally neutral.
This article also appears in the April 2018 issue of U.S. Catholic (Vol. 83, No. 4, pages 17–xix).
Image: iStock.com/Strekalova
Source: https://uscatholic.org/articles/201803/what-does-the-bible-say-about-family/
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