Is your family dysfunctional? For a season, people started conversations with, “I come from a dysfunctional family.” When they explained their story, we who listened to them believed them. Have you ever known anyone who came from a functional family? Some of us grew up watching Ozzie and Harriett or the Huxtables, thinking that some families were completely happy and functional. When we compared them to our own, we may have wondered, “What is wrong with my family?”
The first family in the Bible was dysfunctional. Adam and Eve disobeyed God. After the fall, Adam and Eve loved each other and God blessed them with a son. Apparently, God’s prediction came true. Eve felt pain in childbirth and found help in the Lord. Then God gave them another son. Abel kept flocks and Cain worked the soil. Cain and Abel, from the same gene pool, one generation removed from creation, turned out to be very different from each other. God accepted Abel’s offering but rejected Cain’s.
Did Adam and Eve teach their kids about the Lord? Cain and Abel came to know and worship God in the context of their family. Each had a relationship of worship with the Lord. God spoke to Cain, encouraging him to do right and to overcome sin. The Lord had a relationship with each member of the family, even after the fall. One result of the fall was that the children were born with sin natures. The first child in the Biblical narrative grew up to be a murderer.
Which family in the scriptural narratives is a perfect family? I don’t find one. What I find are parents who love each other, seek the Lord, and teach their children about the Lord. But even in those families there is conflict in marriage and between children. And there is grace to redeem the brokenness. Even when God is displeased with our families, he seeks us out and teaches us. We can choose to obey. But we must not be discouraged if our families do not live up to the “functional” ideal. There are no perfect families. But we do serve a gracious God who pursues us even when we sin.
