Bible Verses About Family: And Why Yours Might Be Bigger Than You Think
So here we have an inspiring possibility: the possibility that the same God who looked at Adam and said "humans shouldn't be alone" is again bringing more people--well beyond Abraham and Israel--together.
Salvation in the Old Testament? How Non-Family Became Family.
Abimelech, Melchizedek, Jethro, the Egyptians, the Ninevites, Rahab, Ruth. While the Bible doesn’t apply the term salvation to Gentiles, it’s clear non-Israelites were sometimes granted belonging and identity among God’s people.
The Problem With the Tower of Babel Story
The Babel narrative definitely contains some corrective disbursement, but the connections God originally introduced via families seem to progressively bleed out onto others.
Am I my brother’s keeper? Why Genesis suggests we were meant to live inter-connected lives.
This is not necessarily surprising since God, by the Biblical writers admission, seemed to want humankind to feel instinctive bonds to one another. Think about how Cain's behavior and Noah's generation, for example, are portrayed as offending God's sensibilities. The fact that they broke ties of interrelationship and harmed their fellow humans grieved the heart of God. God did seem in fact believe that humans are their brother's keeper.
If we are made in God's image, and thus some likeness of God is present in each of us, perhaps God and his intentions are even more evident when a few or more God-imaged-people come together. Or to put it in familiar language, where two are three are gathered in my name, there will I be.
What Does Be Fruitful and Multiply Say About Friendship?
God, Genesis tells us, passed on his likeness to human beings. He put some characteristics of God in us. And thus, some of what is in us is also in God.
Mind-blowingly, we share some percentage of image or makeup with God himself.
As follows, there is likely some theological weight in being imprinted with bits of God. If we really pause to think this through, it's almost as if people are sacraments; that our very bodies are symbols of a spiritual reality. That in doing as God commanded Adam an Even--in serving as guardians, in clinging together in tribes, in distributing God's blessing--perhaps we even mirror little bits of God to each other.
That in knowing each other, perhaps we are able to know some of God.
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