The Patriarchs

When you think of the Patriarchs of Israel, what do you think of? I used to picture them as great men of God who were almost perfect. They lived their lives the way that God wanted them to live, they were the moral compass for all the peoples and nations around them. I knew that Genesis showed their faults, just not so many of them.

It seems that you can't get through an entire story about Abraham or Jacob without one of the later Levitical laws being broken. They were shrewd business men, bartering with locals, appeasing those angry with them with gifts and promises.

When Abram meets with God for the first time, he was a man out of the center of civilization at the time, the city of Ur in Mesopotamia. He trusted God's promises that if he went to where God told him, he would be made into a great nation, be blessed and a slew of other blessings. Abram does this. He shows two weaknesses during his life. The first takes place almost immediately after he leaves Ur ( as told in the story... there were over a thousand of miles walked between the events.) Abram doesn't trust that God will protect him and his beautiful wife from the Pharaoh, so he instructs Sarai to pretend to be his sister. The pharaoh is cursed, discovers their true relationship and sends Abram and his family on their way. This same deception is repeated after the change of his name from Abram to Abraham. The other area of weakness is Abraham and Sarah's trust that God will provide them with an heir. They take things into their own hands and as is typical when we do these things, make a mess of the situation. Abraham's life doesn't smooth out until after he encounters God on the mountain in Moriah. It is at this encounter where God affirms his conditional covenants with Abraham and makes them everlasting promises.

The change in Jacob's life are more visible than that of Abraham's. The first stories of Jacob, until he is given the name Israel, are of a man who does anything to get what he wants, deceiving his father to get his blessing, bribing his brother for his birthright, even wrestling with God with hopes that he might win. He was given an appropriate name (he deceives). After the encounter with God, Jacob was a changed man. Every story of Jacob's life before this encounter with God (except for the story of his dream at Bethel) involves deceit on one side or the other. Not one story of deceit is recorded after he meets God at Peniel. As a symbol of this change, God changed his name to Israel ( he struggles with God.)

As Hebrews states, it isn't that they were great men of God, being perfect in every way. They had faith in God. That faith was credited to them as righteousness and since they were made righteous, they are able to be in God's presence.

Peeling back the Skin.

I realized long ago that I'm not like other people. I didn't understand why at first.

In Elementary school, I moved back to Connecticut from Belgium. My family spent 3.5 years of my early Elementary time period in Northern Belgium. I grew to think of this area as my home. Going to an international school, I had friends from all over the globe. We were all children in a foreign environment. There were very few social prejudices, the children were liked or disliked for personality or character, not for societal concerns. I was comfortable and flourished in this environment. I was incredibly outgoing, I had some good close friends who were inseparable. Additionally, I had been raised Christian and accepted Christ at a young age. I didn't have full knowledge of the implications of that decision, but I knew it right to follow Christ and that He cared and died for me.

Then came The Move.

We moved to a mid-sized town in Connecticut that believed that it was still a small town farming community even though most of the population commuted to work. I don't know if there was anything unique about the community (that it was any more sheltered than other communities: there were few minorities, and the ones that were there acted "white") that contributed to my struggles. I was immediately ostracized by my classmates. I was a small smart kid with a funny british accent. I didn't know about all American things like football (soccer?) or Thanksgiving (what about Guy Fawkes day?). I also didn't know about other American things like discrimination or intolerance or even cruelty or blatant hatred.

I knew then that I was different. I didn't fully know how different, but I knew I was.