Alex Haley’s book ROOTS includes a scene in which an African tribal leader expresses shock over any child unable to recite from memory his genealogy to the tenth generation. I have never met anyone in America that can recite from memory ten generations of their genealogy. I can’t do it. In fact, my written record of my father’s line stops at generation six (Larkin Wales, born 1808, Kentucky, died 1884, St. Helena Parish, Louisiana).[1] I guess I would be the dunce if I went to school in a village in Gambia, Africa.
The Bible contains 25 lengthy genealogies, and many more brief genealogies. As I have written elsewhere, God is interested in you as an individual. But the pages and pages dedicated to genealogies in His word would seem to indicate that He is also interested in you as a member of a lineage. He sees those who came before you and those who will come after you and God understands the role you play in that unbroken line.[2]
But understanding such things or why they matter is harder for us. Not simply because we lose track of records.
Our identity as Americans rebels at what a family tree represents.
Sure we are curious about these people. But we are offended by the notion that their lives could have any impact on our own. America is the land of independence and nowhere is that impulse felt more passionately than by youth struggling to escape the “boring” lives of their parents.
Governor Nehemiah records an interesting story about family trees. After the Israelites returned to Jerusalem from Babylonian captivity, Nehemiah had them counted. There were 42,360 people. Nehemiah put the people to work, often giving them duties according to their family lines.
But during those 75 years in a foreign country, some families (or probably both the families and the nation’s historians) had lost the relevant genealogical records. After all—when you are dragged off to a land a thousand miles from home, where no one speaks your language or worships your God, you will lose many things. Your connection to the past is broken. You have NO CONTINUITY.
These Hebrews lost touch with ancestors because they had NO CONTINUITY.
“These were they who came up from Tel-melah, Tel-harsha, Cherub, Addon, and Immer; but they could not show their fathers’ houses or their descendants, whether they were of Israel: the sons of Delaiah, the sons of Tobiah, the sons of Nekoda … Of the priests: the sons of Hobaiah, the sons of Hakkoz, the sons of Barzillai … These searched among their ancestral registration, but it could not be located; therefore they were considered unclean and excluded from the priesthood. The governor said to them that they should not eat from the most holy things until a priest arose with Urim and Thummim” Nehemiah 7:61-65.[3]
God had given Moses strict orders regarding the priesthood. Priests had to be members of the tribe of Levi. And to perform select priestly duties, they had to be not only Levites, but directly descended from Aaron.
But these folks could not even prove they were Israelites. Nehemiah the governor and Ezra the priest were not about to resume the offering of sacrifices without verifying the ancestral lines of every priest.
Nevertheless, those without papers were not without hope. Nehemiah would summon a priest to bring the Urim and Thummim, the “holy dice” Moses placed inside the breastplate of the High Priest’s robes (Exodus 28:30), and the priest would ask God for answers about the lineage of each potential priest.
But does knowing a genealogy or a family tree make any difference? Does God expect you and me to be able to recite our family trees?
No. Given the mobility and immigration in today’s world, given the job transfers around the globe, adoptions, the forced breakup of families during generations of enslavement, and numerous other disruptions, it is rare to find families who live in the same city for more than three or four generations. We barely know our ancestors.
Like the Hebrews without family trees, Americans have NO CONTINUITY.
Any family tree an American draws up is likely to look about as broken as Charlie Brown’s Christmas Tree.[4]
But even if you are privileged enough to know your grandparents or even great-grandparents, Americans simply don’t talk about family trees. It’s not part of the way we think. Where the billions of people living in Asian nations care about these things so much they actually call it “ancestor worship,” Americans and the people of Western Europe see themselves as islands in an archipelago, every person disconnected from every other person.
The poet-pastor John Donne may have told us “No Man is an Island,” but Americans do not believe it. We are obsessed with our own independence, committed above all else to a life of passionate self-determination.
And perhaps that is the lesson here. Not everyone knows their ancestors. We have no continuity. We live in broken homes. Foster homes. Adoptions. Absent fathers. Divorces. Blended families. Job transfers. And people on the run. People off the grid. Fugitives.
And for all of the above, there is grace. GRACE. Lean-in to God’s amazing grace.
But later on …
When you can, and as the Lord provides, …
Consider learning more about your lineage. It will bless you, as it did Timothy, to whom Paul writes:
“I am reminded of your sincere faith, which first lived in your grandmother Lois and in your mother Eunice, and, I am persuaded, now lives in you also” 2 Timothy 1:5.
Like abilities and talents, even faith and spiritual gifts can be passed from one generation to the next.
Search for the good traits in your ancestors and God will use that search to reveal the good traits He placed in you.
AΩ.
[1] I can locate (but have not memorized!) ten generations of the Henderson clan, beginning with Thomas Henderson, Father of Colonel Richard Henderson. Thomas was born in 1650 and died in 1709 in the Colony of Virginia. Today I stumbled across an unexpected entry in the Courtenay line at generation ten: “Cherokee Indian Usaan,” DOB 1700.
[2] (The Bible, an Eastern text, is not nearly as individualistic, independence-oriented, or Western as many of its readers.)
[3] Ezra 2:59-62 records the same account word-for-word.
[4] Having mentioned my own family tree, I should note that I benefited from a tremendous amount of work done by many other people, including people on the internet that I do not know.
Household Words: 