CrossTalk: Fight Family Strife God's Way

We live in unsettled times. Everyone, it seems, is at everyone else’s throat. It’s not just politics – although the political world has become especially ugly. We also see it in the community, at work, and in homes. It even affects the church.

One thing that happens to us is that we forget family connections. Family affection is a powerful emotion for the good. The love between mother and child, husband and wife, brothers and sisters in the home can cover over “a multitude of sins” (1 Peter 4:8).

When we remember that we are family, we remember that we are deeply connected despite the frustration of the moment. It re-centers us to think long-term. Friends may come and go, but family will always be family. Familiar memories and familiar roots bind us together.

This is even true when you first meet distant relatives. The very fact that they are family automatically opens our hearts to them. Family relationships provide a built-in starting point of love and connectedness. Remembering family relationships can help us treat one another with love, respect and forgiveness.

The Bible, in fact, reminds us that we are all one big family. Each of us can trace our ancestry back to Noah. Beyond that, we are all sons and daughters of Adam and Eve. These are more than fairy tales. It is our history, told in the Bible and proven by recent scientific studies of mitochondrial DNA.

The false claims that we evolved from primates have made many forget our family connectedness. When we forget our common genealogy, we forget to treat one another as family. That’s a tragedy.

But we can do something about it. We can teach our children the truth that every person they have ever met is a relative. We can also remind ourselves of this fact every day.

Before you act out in anger, before you bad-mouth your boss, before you write a rude comment, before you dismiss someone as a Neanderthal, remember that he or she is family.

Here’s another pro tip to fight against the seething anger of our world: Repent.

That’s right, repent! Anger and hostility toward others is always felt in proportion to our own unrepentant sins. When Cain killed Abel, it wasn’t about anything Abel did, it arose from Cain’s own sins against God. “So, Cain was very angry, and his face fell” (Gen. 4:5 ESV).

If you look honestly at your own anger, you will find that the more you confess your own sins to God and receive His forgiveness in Christ, the more peaceful and calm you can be in the face of family that sins against you.

The flipside is also true. The more unconfessed sin you are harboring within, the more easily you lash out at the littlest thing that happens to you. I am convinced that the reason our world is so filled with seething anger is because there is so much unconfessed sin.

Every day we are told by Satan not to confess sins. In arguing we are told “never admit you’re wrong.” In living we are told, “if it feels good it’s not sin.” When we follow Satan’s advice, we do not confess our sins. That makes our own anger seethe like Cain’s.

So fight back against anger in both ways: 1) Remember that everyone you meet is a member of your own family. 2) Spend a lot more time confessing your own sins than dwelling on the sins of your relatives.

The forgiveness that comes from Jesus’ cross is forgiveness that rebuilds the human family.