Family Beginnings

Table of Contents

What’s your family’s history?

After my dad quit farming, he and my mom traveled to Germany with his sister. The goal of that trip was to meet some distant cousins with whom they were corresponding, and to research their genealogy as far as they could in the town from which their grandfather had emigrated.

It was an enjoyable trip. The connections with family were strengthened by lots of family meals and gatherings. The genealogy search was fruitful to a point. It ended at the local church records, where a Wickert was registered as marrying a girl from the neighborhood in the 1600’s. There was no previous information on this Wickert, only lists of his descendants’ baptisms, marriages, and deaths. It appears he showed up in town and fell in love. For our Wickert line, that is where our family history begins.

But that’s not where your family history begins. Yours is likely very different from mine. Every person’s family history is different because each person is unique. While my siblings and I have the same Wickert history, our histories change with us, because we are very different from one another, even my twin brothers.

Not everybody can trace their family history back through four centuries. Many Americans cannot trace their roots back beyond their grandparents, or their ancestors were brought to America against their will. Most slaves lose contact with their families when they are taken.

Our inability to track our family histories doesn’t mean we don’t have them, just that we can’t track them. If I am allowed to skip a few generations beyond the 1600’s, I would judge by location, skin tone and language group, that the Wickerts can able pick up our genealogy with Elishah, Tarshish, Kittim, or Dodanim, the great-grandsons of Noah. There are a lot of assumptions in that supposition, but there we are.

The Bible give us the rest of our genealogy from Noah to the first man, Adam, in Genesis chapter 5 and repeats it in 1 Chronicles 1 and Luke 3. This genealogical claim depends upon my presupposition that the history in the Bible is true and accurate.

Bodie Hodge, an author and speaker at Answers in Genesis, can trace his genealogy back to the royal families in England (he’s a 42nd cousin to the Queen). Because many of the royal families of Europe kept meticulous ancestry records, the Queen’s family traces itself all the way back through Japheth and Noah to Adam. So by Bodie’s calculations, he is the 87th generation from Adam. It’s an interesting genealogical history that most of us don’t have.

Does Ancestry Matter?

Should we care about our ancestry? Does it really effect us today? Most people would say, “No, it doesn’t matter.”
However, I suggest that it matters more than we realize, for three reasons:

1. Everybody has a History

Recognizing that EVERYBODY’s family history goes back through Noah to Adam means that we all have something in common. Since Adam was given a family before he sinned, the best principles for family life were established while humans were sinless. I examine those principles in my first book, Families from the Beginning. Read a sample HERE.

2. Our History Includes Sin

Because we are all descendants of Adam, we all inherit Adam’s sin nature.

Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned… Romans 5:12

Even so, because we are all descendants of Adam, we are all given the opportunity to be redeemed by Jesus’ obedience.

…For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so also by one Man’s obedience many will be made righteous. Romans 5:19

When we recognize that our family is fallen, we can see why we struggle with sin in our daily lives, and we can understand our need for Jesus. Paul described the presence of Adam’s sin in his life like this:

I find then a law, that evil is present with me, the one who wills to do good. For I delight in the law of God according to the inward man. But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? I thank God—through Jesus Christ our Lord!
So then, with the mind I myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin.
Romans 7:21-25

3. Our History Affects Us

Considering our more recent family histories, I discuss their power in my newest book, “The Story Farm”. In the chapter about my family’s mixed heritage, I state:

“Our ethnicity ties us to families in other nations and gives us a canvas on which to paint the pictures of our lives, but the background that provides context to our pictures is the United States.”

HERE

I fully believe that our family histories, both genetically and culturally, are a part of who we are. We should understand those histories, both the good and the bad, because they contain lessons for our futures. If you don’t know your immediate family history, you can certainly rely on the parts of your family’s history that are recorded in the Bible.

Remember the days of old,
Consider the years of many generations.
Ask your father, and he will show you;
Your elders, and they will tell you:
When the Most High divided their inheritance to the nations,
When He separated the sons of Adam,
He set the boundaries of the peoples…
Deuteronomy 32:7-8

here

Families from the Beginning sample.

Click

here

The Story Farm

*All Scripture quotations for this article are from the New King James Version (NKJV).