VERITAS MARCH EDITION: Genealogy (Lineage)
GENEALOGY (LINEAGE)
In simple terms, genealogy or lineage is about our family line and history as far as we can remember, or as recorded by our parents or ancestors and handed over to us. Members of the same genealogy, lineage, or family share similar genes and DNA, temperaments, gifts, and talents, and are susceptible to similar virtues and vices.
A classical example of genealogy, lineage, or family line and history is recorded in the Bible: Matthew 1: 1 – 17. It is the account of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, and the opening sentence refers to Jesus Christ as “the son of David, the son of Abraham.” The genealogy of Jesus Christ as recorded spans forty-two (42) generations, and in this genealogy, we have holy people, people with shortcomings and limitations, and married women who were not Jews. Despite the shortcomings and limitations of some persons in the genealogy of Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ still fulfilled His mission on earth. However, the significance of Jesus’s genealogy is that He is the fulfillment of the promise made to Abraham, and David.
Each person on earth has a genealogy or lineage. Knowing your genealogy or lineage is a pointer to your purpose within your family line, and it is paramount to your overall success in life, materially and spiritually, because it is analogous to someone walking in the light, and surviving by the light of knowledge and sound reasoning. Ignorance of your genealogy or lineage spells doom for you because it is analogous to someone walking in total darkness, and surviving by trial and error.
An adequate knowledge of your genealogy or lineage helps you to understand the following:
(a) family resemblances: You can know why your siblings, cousins, nephews, and nieces are fat, slim, tall, short, light or dark in complexion, etc.
(b) Degrees of Longevity: You will begin to understand certain illnesses that run in the family including the degrees of longevity or shortness of life. Such knowledge, when wisely employed, can aid you in avoiding, overcoming, or meliorating certain genealogical illnesses and increasing your longevity.
(c) Temperaments: Your understanding of your temperamental strengths and weaknesses, and those of other family members will grow. You will know the temperamental strengths to enhance or grow, and the temperamental weaknesses to minimize or meliorate towards becoming a better and a more productive person. Also, knowing your dominant and less dominant temperaments can help you to know your gifts and talents, and possible ways of growing and enhancing them towards a profitable future career.
(d) Virtues and Vices: There are some truths in the saying that certain blessings and curses run in families. Philosophically, this can be understood ethically as the effects or consequences of certain virtues and vices that run in families. Virtues beget ‘blessings’, and vices beget ‘curses’. To know the virtues that run in your genealogy, lineage, or family and to sustain them will attract more blessings to you and those after you. To know the vices that run in your genealogy, lineage, or family and to continue them will attract the curses that run in your family, and the curses will ruin you. But if you know the vices that run in your genealogy, lineage, or family and you negate or meliorate them with their corresponding virtues, then you can stop the curses from getting to you and your children.
The Role of Prayer: As Christians, we can approach God in prayers based on the knowledge we have of our genealogy, lineage, or family history. Such prayers can give us the grace to enhance and vivify our efforts and help us resolve some negative currents or energy in our genealogy, lineage, or family. But for prayers to be effective, we need to know what is in our genealogy. Let us not take our genealogy or that of those we are married to, or that of the person we will get married to in the future for granted. In this regard, let us learn from Matthew who began his Gospel with the genealogy of Jesus Christ. So, know your genealogy, lineage, or family history. Know all that is positive in it, and all that is negative in it. Subject the negative energy, curses, or forces in it to the power of your will to develop the corresponding energy, blessings, or forces towards a positive change, and accompany your efforts with prayers. Note that prayer without the corresponding positive actions and sacrifices you must make on your part, cannot yield the desired answer because “grace is built on nature.”
Next month, we shall be discussing temperaments, beginning with Sanguine. Biblical personalities whose dominant temperament was sanguine will be our guide.
(Sylvester Idemudia Odia, Ph.D., VERITAS: The official Newspaper of the Catholic Archdiocese of Benin City, Vol. 15, No. 138, March 2024, p. 33)