Some Bible families would have felt at home on the Jeremy Kyle show.
Would you want Lot and his incestuous daughters in your house group? Or how about hanging out with Joseph’s barbaric brothers, or Eli’s sex-mad sons?
The Waltons they were not.
Violence, vendettas and villainy are common in God’s families. They didn’t need to watch Jeremy Kyle on TV. They wrote the scripts.
Episode 1 saw Adam and Eve at war after the issue with the apple. And we’re not talking iPhones here.
But they had to argue their case to God, not Jeremy Kyle. And God’s verdict was tougher.
He cursed them and kicked them out the garden – and they didn’t even have Kyle’s psychotherapist to help them.
Then Adam and Eve’s eldest boy, Cain, provided compelling content for Episode 2.
He was so jealous of his brother, Abel, that he killed him. Sorted. No ‘Sorry mate’ chat over a pint. He became the world’s first hit-man.
But, like his mum and dad, the consequences marked him for ever.
Are you from a fractured Jeremy Kyle family? If so, God is right there with you.
He doesn’t sit in audience. He joins in.
He doesn’t take sides. He takes over.
That’s why Joseph assured his barbaric band of brothers in a family therapy session in Genesis 50:20: ‘You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good.’
Jesus works uses everything for the good of those who love him. We don’t go through the grim grind for nothing. We do it for someone – the other people on the sofa.
Our suffering can be their salvation.