Many of us believe that we can go to the Bible for guidance for living our daily lives. After all, we know that it contains wisdom for marriage enrichment and family life education.

Sadly though, many of the Bible’s family stories do not always seem edifying—and often, not suitable for emulating. In these stories we discover weak, scarred, scared, struggling, failing people who have suffered and survived horrible ordeals, many of them self-inflicted.

Yet God used them.

The stories of families in the Bible are raw and uncensored, bitter reminders of how awful family life can become. Though these families lived in a distant time, in a far-off place, with social customs and rules that sometimes mystify us, when we peel back the surface differences, we discover that people and their family problems seem not to have changed much at all.

Once we begin to understand them, their stories and experiences may seem to mirror our own lives. We see reflections of ourselves in their messy and troubled circumstances.

So, why bother with these biblical stories? What can they teach us, and how can we use them in our parenting journey?

Why Read These Stories?

The biblical stories that we are so familiar with, and which we often teach our children, are vital to our understanding of God, our faith, our relationships, ourselves, and our world.

This is because they portray real flesh-and-blood human beings struggling with past histories, fallibilities, foolishness, and sinfulness. In these stories, we see people battling for survival and fighting for a future for themselves and their children. The twists and turns of relationships, and the brokenness of being fallen humans, are all there.

As we and our children read or listen to these stories, we can see the hand of God silently reaching in to touch the wounds.

Yet, it is in those broken places that we catch glimpses of God’s grace and healing.

As we and our children read or listen to these stories, we can see the hand of God silently reaching in to touch the wounds. And we can see how these fragile and broken people step up to do what is right.

Sarah and Hagar: A Story of Divine Provision and Protection

The story of Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar, as found in Genesis 15–16, is a good example.

Sarah, as we know, was barren, but was promised descendants that would constitute a great nation. The years flew by, then they slowed to a crawl, and nothing happened.

English synonyms for the word “barren”—such as unproductive, unsuccessful, fruitless, desolate, and dry—convey how Sarah would have been regarded and would have felt in her context. This was a time when no woman would have chosen not to have children.

Sarah probably longed not only for the fulfilment that a mother would feel, but also for the honour and respect accorded to mothers in a society where women did not count for much otherwise.

God acted on behalf of Sarah, because He is a God who acts with justice and compassion for those who are mistreated and struggling.

Her identity as a woman, as someone of worth, depended on her producing and nursing babies. She did not gain value in men’s eyes by being a righteous and faithful human being, but by producing male heirs for her husband. An empty womb meant an empty life.

Yet, we see how God protected her. Earlier, when Abraham took the family to Egypt to escape famine, he was afraid that the Egyptians would kill him because Sarah was such a beautiful woman (Genesis 12:10–13).

Abraham seemed to care only about being treated well himself—not about what might happen to Sarah. He even used her as a shield, putting her at great risk to protect himself (see how selfish man can be!).

The Lord was not consulted about this plan and did not like it, to say the least. As an expression of divine displeasure, He inflicted on Pharaoh and his household a plague of terrible diseases.

God acted on behalf of Sarah, because He is a God who acts with justice and compassion for those who are mistreated and struggling.

Hagar: A Reminder that God Does Not Forget

But what of Hagar, the slave-girl who suffered at the hands of Sarah?

In Genesis 16, we can see how God takes care of Hagar. Sarah, being barren for such a long time and growing really old, came up with a scheme of going through the surrogate-motherhood route. Her Egyptian slave-girl, Hagar, would be her stand-in.

So, she instructed Abraham: “The Lord has kept me from having children. Go, sleep with my slave; perhaps I can build a family through her” (Genesis 16:2). And Abraham listened to the voice of Sarah rather than the voice of God.

On the run from her mistress and in the unforgiving wilderness, she met the God who often shows up during dire personal crises to bring assurance of divine care and mercy.

Hagar conceived, which began tensions in their relationships—between Sarah and Hagar, and between Abraham and Sarah. As a result, Sarah dealt harshly with Hagar (reasoning “she was just a slave-girl” and “baby incubator”)—bad enough to make Hagar run away into the wilderness, even while she was pregnant. Her name means “flight”, and she lived up to it.

Alone in the wilderness, Hagar had put her life and the life of her baby at risk. But an angel of the Lord came to her and rescued her (Genesis 16:7). On the run from her mistress and in the unforgiving wilderness, she met the God who often shows up during dire personal crises to bring assurance of divine care and mercy.

Getting A Glimpse of God’s Grace

Our families and these ancient families are flawed by disagreements and divisions, physical and emotional abuse, infidelity, petty jealousies, and mean-spiritedness. They are far from perfect.

Yet, it is exactly in those flawed places that the Spirit of God moves, and it is in them that we can catch a glimpse of grace.

In the accounts of these biblical families, we do not attempt to distil “three easy steps leading to a happy family life”, or “six ways to avoid pitfalls leading to family disaster”.

Instead, we dig into the complexities and difficulties of their lives and try to understand them, and as we do so, we will begin to see God’s ways of working in their broken places.

As we explore the stories of the families of the Bible, we can make connections to the experiences that we face ourselves. As we read and hear of their stories, we can tell our stories to one another—stories of defeats as well as victories, of fallenness as well as of grace, so that we can truly know each other, walk with one another, and be an authentic community for one another.

We find hope for ourselves—not in the beautiful, bigger-than-life statue of a perfect family, but in the twists, turns, and crises of these “normal” biblical family relationships.

Their stories reveal how God works through darkness and struggle, through shattered lives. God’s grace often seems hidden, like yeast that silently and imperceptibly brings about change in and through us.

And so we find hope for ourselves—not in the beautiful, bigger-than-life statue of a perfect family, but in the twists, turns, and crises of these “normal” biblical family relationships.

If we ask, “What is the purpose of featuring such flawed and broken families in the Bible?”, then the answer is: to show God’s grace and His work of transforming them into a people of faith and character.

And if I could add, to show the glory and power of God.

Paul captures it well in 2 Corinthians 4:6–7: “God . . . made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of God’s . . . But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us.”

This article was originally published at https://thequadc.com/reflections/flawed-families-in-the-bible. Extracted and adapted with permission.