New Theses, New Reformation

Thesis 34- We must teach our children that the Bible is their family story.

A gracious friend recently gifted me with what may have become something of an anachronism. We in these United States are awash in Bibles. We have study Bibles for just about every station in life, and just about every theological conviction. We have more translations than we can use, and more paraphrases than you can shake a stick at. What we seem to have fewer and fewer of is what were once known as “family Bibles.” These Bibles, of course, contained the Word of God. But that also served a different purpose. The family Bible was where a family recorded the most significant events in that family. The family tree was kept there, and anyone, wanting the see a shorthand version of their own corporate history could find such there at their fingertips.

What may be lost in our plethora of Bibles is this fundamental truth, that every Bible is the family Bible, because the Bible tells the story of our family. If push comes to shove, and we are willing to look at it from something of a scientific perspective, we might be willing to accept this. Adam and Eve, after all, are the very root of our family tree. We all trace a common ancestry back to Noah. Genetically speaking, we have a connection. But there is far more to it.

Our children are constantly being seduced into other faux families. The culture sees our children in demographic terms, as members of particular markets. The culture wants my 14 year old son to see himself as a 14 year old boy, with all that means in terms of clothing, music, even language. But his identity is in Christ. He is an heir of the king, and a child of Abraham.

Which means that when we come to our Bibles we are not coming to study the history of a distant people, and how they related to God. We are not coming to a list of truths. Instead we are reading the story of our own people, and how God related to them. My paternal grandfather served in the African theater in World War II. My grandfather, however many greats back, led our people out of bondage, out of Egypt. My father has served for decades as a teacher of the Bible. My fathers, so many generations back, were prophets called by God to call my other ancestors to repent for their unbelief. Our children sing along with us that father Abraham had many sons, many sons had father Abraham. I am one of them, and so are you. And I am the child of the children who sat upon the knee of Jesus.

The Bible isn’t simply something we believe. It is instead our own story, and the story of our children. It, like a family Bible, defines what and who we are. It marks our boundaries and sets our paths. It sets our place in space and time. Jesus said to His disciples that they would be His witnesses in Jerusalem and Judea, in Samaria and the outermost parts of the world. God, by His grace, brought His grace to a cold and misty northern edge of an island in the North Sea, to Scotland. And there He brought my people in, and better still, made us His people. Our children need to understand that the promise to Abraham that he would be a blessing to the nations is fulfilled in them, and that because of that promise, we who were once not a people are now not only the children of Abraham, but by faith are the children of God.

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