There is something within the human being that wants to know the whole story of his or her life, and to feel a biological part of it traced to previous generations, perhaps to enhance the meaning for identity. Some persons, because of the circumstances of their lives may mute the urges for continuity, but we seek the meaning of our interests and drives from those who are serious about knowing who they are and what they were meant to be. That knowledge is partly found in the family, the highest meaning of teamwork with obvious social beginnings in family biology. My half-sister, now deceased, was taken with desire to find her mother decades after they last saw each other. Living in the area of Atlanta, Georgia, Annie Laurie found that her mother was living in Cleveland, Ohio. She made contact, flew to Cleveland and met her mother forty five years after separation caused by divorce, in which our father was granted child custody for three small children. He promptly took them to his mother, and returned to Akron, Ohio. They were well nurtured by our grandmother. Annie Laurie deeply regretted her visit to her mother. The mother had not improved her general conduct in the intervening decades, had sunk lower in the context of her life, asked her long lost daughter for money, and found nothing affirmative to offer in her daughter’s search. The story became tragic. Annie Laurie later told me that the worst decision she ever made was to search for, and find, her mother. Returning to Atlanta she never communicated again with her. My half-sister did not feel fullness in that she could find no tradition of virtue or family context from her mother.
The basic institution of mankind is the family. It came first in the order of all institutions. Each person is partly defined by his or her family. It is not chosen, but inherited. Even our biological structure includes it in DNA, and other forces of nature, even our natural (human) spirituality. As is often repeated in these Pages, the family is the idiom of the Bible. From Adam and Eve, all persons in the ensuing millennia have a connection. We human beings belong to each other, are responsible to serve each other, and that both personally (individuals) and as a block (populations) – the divine/earthly concern of a loving God. Our problem is mirrored in that of Annie Laurie – a Grand Canyon rift between the parent Creator and children. The situation is from the separation of the children, in this spiritual meaning, and not from the parent, in the natural meaning. Our concern is to repair relationships, which we cannot do on our own. Father God provides the way for us. It is in the reconciliation of God’s redemption. That is most likely to happen in families that begin with family unity. With obvious exceptions sophisticated families opt for sophisticated generations, and crude families opt for crude generations. God can be introduced to our infant children.
What is the point in this summary? It is found in the attempt on the part of mankind to play god even with family. An article appearing in The Atlantic magazine recites the story of a champion sperm donor. His history (family) has given him an attractive set of characteristics transferred in his sperm. Making contribution to a sperm bank, with a description of his physical characteristics, he has no control of what will be done with the sperm. Bank records show that a number of women have been artificially impregnated with this donor’s sperm. Some have asked for a second, and a number of children have resulted. For his specimens the donor made about ten thousand dollars, and did not give much thought to outcome. He googled his sperm number for response. He even received a photo of one of the infants. He sold it to the bank so to show future clients what his sperm produced. Even the mothers from this donor had formed a community among themselves – children half-brothers and sisters. So the story goes. One takes a deep breath, looks to God, and prays for a culture that turns robotic presumably to improve on family, tradition, love, identity and meaning. We must wait to see if mankind has found a new way for deliberately orphanizing children. (Mother is married to my ‘Dad.’ I never met my father.) The answer to this mechanization of humankind is found in the dignity of humanity to follow the biological relationship of the genders in love that will offer tradition, history and virtue from parents to child so to repair some of the tragedy of lostness not only related to the individual person, but to the family itself. Christ offers fullness. *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020