Families and Fairy Tales
God designed our natural family to be the place where you and I learn to live in grace. Drawing on what we now know about grace helps each of us better understand His intention for grace in the context of our spiritual families too. For those who have received Jesus, family is a space where relationships remain bigger and more important than our problems. Here, grace can form bonds, attachments, and identity in the good ways that you and I need. Unfortunately, the family that raises us can also be a place where bad things happen. That being the case, you can count on it: the grace you and I experience through family interactions has been—and will be—formed and tested through good times and stormy, alike. Grace points to a profound relational need—a reciprocal one. Each of us is born with it. Naturally, that need is magnified in families.
NO FAIRY TALE
Made up of imperfect people, family life is no fairy tale. Sometimes we can get pretty off the plotline God would prefer. Though we may love the characters in our own, families can be a mess (granted, some more than others). Thanks to the personal sin, iniquity, and transgression inbred in the legacy of our lives, there aren’t as many happy endings as God would like. Though fairy tales seem to work out well for most princes and princesses, let’s be honest: the majority of the time, the roots of said protagonists are generally just as whacked as our own.
I mean, really, who
sends their two young kids into the woods with a loaf of bread and no warnings about hot ovens, witches, and stranger danger?
hightails it out of a haunted castle to save himself, leaving his beautiful daughter in a beast’s dungeon?
kills off her stepdaughter with a poison apple just so she can be “the fairest in the land”?
MESSY
Consider what happened in the perfection of the garden. The first family tested things. Under the most superb circumstances, they experienced a delightful everyday relationship with God. And then—BAM!—Adam and Eve slid out of the ideal with a snake. Instead of unspoiled divine connection, in their judgment the couple chose what they thought would be a better way for themselves. Exposed, their fickle relationship with God and one another quickly spiraled into excuses and blame. And let’s not even mention the kids. Their storybook strolls with God forever changed course, and it affected all who came after.
Don’t forget, that’s us! You and I descended from their lineage.
Thankfully, all is not lost in this chronicle. The Author’s plotline includes a hero who models grace and us able to guide us in grace-based interactions with others. Over my next few blog entries, I’ll explore some relational direction that Jesus has given us in Scripture. Or, better yet, get the full story in my upcoming book, Beyond Becoming, releasing March 2022.