When I was a young girl, I was taught that blood was thicker than water and that the family should protect each other at all costs. As I grew up and really began to think for myself, I wondered why in the Bible, Cain killed his brother Abel out of jealousy. I wondered but would dare not say it in my Christian camp, “How could blood be thicker than water, and this boy killed his blood?”
As I grew and matured, I was introduced to another scripture.
When Cain killed Abel, it was after sin had invaded the body and mind of God’s first two human creations. It is impossible for two sinful people to create a sinless child. According to the Book of Genesis, “Once Adam and Eve had rejected God’s plan for man, shame, cover-up, and sin caused a separation from God. ” Being separated from God makes it possible for bad things to happen in our lives. There are consequences when we deviate from the plan God set for us. Some of those consequences include hatred, drunkenness, lust, unhealthy family relationships, greed, cheating, irresponsibility, dishonesty, jealousy, violence, and other problems”. For the purpose of this post, I say that blood may be thicker than water, but blood does not make us a family. It is love that makes a people family. At times, even now, it is a blood family that causes the most hurt to one another.
As you grow and mature as an individual, as a Christian, you will find that the bond you build with a people, a group of individuals, or one individual will bring you more joy, peace, and comfort than any blood family member gives to you.
For example, I have lost blood family members and I have lost non-blood family members, I discovered that the hurt was deeper and the pain was greater when I lost someone that I love, blood is not the connector, love is.
Jesus demonstrates his love for us throughout the ages, and His love has stood the test of time. I find nowhere in the Bible where God tells us that we are bound to one another because we come from a particular bloodline. The only bloodline that connects us as one is the blood that God’s SON shed for us at Calvary.
I looked up family in the dictionary; a family is a group of two or more persons, related by birth, marriage, or adoption who live together, and such are considered as one family.
For me, that tells me, I create my family. For so long, I tried to make myself fit into a blood family. I wondered how people who have the same bloodline as me could walk past me and not speak, how people with my same bloodline could hurt me so badly. It was not until I got my way of thinking in line with what God set up in his plan for creation that I could begin to ease some pain and disappointment that pierced me in the most hurtful and debilitating way.
Just because the same blood flows through your veins with a person, it does not give you the right to receive love, loyalty, and respect from that person.
For generations, that method has been tried and proven unsuccessful. I am just beginning in all of my learning to accept what the Bible warns me of. Ephesians 6:2 reminds me that “we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, our battle is an unseen battle, we fight for the souls of those who do not believe in God, who constantly bring shame on the word of God.
Further, the Word tells us, through Paul in Corinthians 15:59, “Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor can corruption inherit in corruption.” To our own destruction, we ache and seek to protect those who are often caught up in narcissistic behaviors without giving consideration to how it affects those who love us.
Yesterday, as I sat in a funeral, feeling so much sorrow for a sistermom who was not my blood, a voice said to me, this is love. This lady devoted her life to servicing young ladies and helping us become good women and scolding us when we stepped out of character, this is what loss feels like when you love someone and they leave this world. This is the kind of love that will make you drive for 2 hours, get lost in traffic, and GPS sending you to God knows where. This is what makes me go while I am fighting my own demons, to say farewell to a person God granted long life to and permitted to make an impact on so many lives.
In our organizations, let us not forget the true heroes and heroines in our lives. At the close of Black “Brown” American History Month, I salute Betty J. Baker and all those seniors gone before me who paved the way for me, who mentored me, who loved me enough to tell me how to improve in my face, who called me on my birthday when my (blood) family did not remember to, who said to me if you are coming back into the Daughters, “I am on the investigating team and I will drive to Ocala, all I want is you to feed me when I get there.”
She said, “I am honored to vouch for you.”
I salute you and your work will live on forever through all of us who you impacted. You were your sister’s keeper.
I say to my sisters and brothers in the “Divine 9” and all my PHAmily, “return to your roots, come out of your pride, seek excellence, go out and visit senior members, make them a part of your now, love them as they loved us. They may not have been perfect, but neither are we, but Ecclesiastes 12:3-13 reminds us that” in old age, the body no longer serves one well. Let us remember that the young become old and when young people become old, the way the elders treated others is the way the young will treat you.
Give honor to whom honor is due. We must not conform to this world, but we must renew our minds by being transformed through the Word of God. One may be leading now; but, rest assured, your leading will come to an end. Your end may come by term limit, illness, or death, but no one’s success lasts forever. Unless you prepare the next generation according to the plan God gave from the beginning, your work is in vain. Make sure that you leave an impact. How you treated others when you were in authority will come back to you doubled. Honor your vows.
When we make commitments, vows, or oaths, to God or one another, we must take them seriously. We must be accountable for the promises we make to each other and to God. Let us make sure that we do not injure one another with our words, thoughts, and deeds, lest we cause an even deeper pain than the people who are not obligated to us because of sin. We should not compromise our commitment to the righteous God first and to our sisters and brothers in Christ, the D9, and our other PHAmily second. As sisters and brothers in Christ and our various fraternities, we must be committed to protecting, loving, and honoring at the risk of having to lay down our lives for the character of each other.
We must not be so religious or so extreme in our thinking that we are of no earthly good. We cannot get so caught up following the letter of the law, that we cannot fulfill the spirit of the law. The law is in place to guide us, the punishment comes from God, not man. Being so religious that we cannot have empathy for others is just as bad as not caring for one another.
In closing, we must fear God and not man. We must honor our oaths to each other. If we hold on to the attitude that his or her business is not my business, then we have lost the connections to our oaths and obligations that we are one family of believers who has vowed to give sympathy in sorrows, kudos in our accomplishments, and we have not completely committed to a selfless life of Service to God’s people. JOHN SAID IT BEST. John 15:13, NIV “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. When we produce fruit, we are the disciples of God. He commands us to love each other as He has loved us.
God chose us, and we must love as He has loved us. When we accept Christ and we take vows and oaths, we are no longer bound by blood, we are bound by love and we are obligated to cover the sins of our new brothers and sisters. The world will hate us; but, God loves us, and we are to advocate one for the other and collectively restore them back to the fold as Christ has done for us; otherwise, we are no different from the hypocrites, the scribes, the Pharisees and the Sadducees who rejected the laws of Jesus teaching in the Books of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
Are we not our brothers and sisters’ keepers? IF not are we not hypocrites, when we vow to be?
Thoughts from Dr. Kat Crowell-Grate, PhD.