Afterword

As I finished the last edits of my new book, All the Families of the Earth: Therapists in Bible Times, I began to see what I’ve written somewhat differently than I would have guessed at the start. At first, I thought I was using the stories of scripture—stories many of us are familiar with—to describe family systems theory. Now, I have realized that family systems theory has helped me to interpret scripture.

            It is beautiful to behold how the stories of scripture portray the concepts of family systems thought, as though a primer had been written for us, if we could but grasp it. If we could each see our sensitivity to the pressure to be part of the group and the pressure to be a separate individual, maybe we could balance our needs to be individuals with our needs to be together with others. If we could take our great intellectual prowess, and apply it to our own relationship systems, perhaps the animosity between groups of people could dissipate. Maybe we could find a new capacity for group cooperation—a cooperation with a built-in respect for differences—providing for the use of strengths that each of us, as individuals nested within families, congregations, other networks, and nations, offer.

            As a prime example, I note the historic joint–American–Russian Space Shuttle mission on the spaceship Discovery, involving Charles Bolden as the ship’s commander and the participation of a Russian cosmonaut, Sergei Krikalev, as a mission specialist. The capacity of Bolden and Krikalev to work together led to a great story about resourcefulness, which I hope to talk more about another day. It also led to the success of the mission, which achieved 130 orbits of the Earth. Few of us will be astronauts. How can each of us, though, in our own walk of life, follow their example? The scriptures tell us that it is possible to work together with others while each being our own person - and they challenge us to find the way.