Tribalism—A Practical Doctrine (Genesis 10:31-32)

Meditations on Genesis #26

Genesis 10:31b-32

…By their clans, their languages, their lands, and their nations. These are the clans of the sons of Noah, according to their genealogies, in their nations, and from these the nations spread abroad after the flood.

In your mental concordance of theological terms, somewhere between the words “Transfiguration” and “Trinity”, you should have the word “Tribalism” in bold font. Unlike other doctrinal terms that will keep seminarians’ pens busy for years to come, this term is more straight forward, more down to earth, more elementary as it were, more 2 + 2 = 4 than E = MC2. Ah, but just as we can’t progress into quantum physics without learning basic arithmetic, we can’t become proficient in Theology without understanding basic anthropology. I suggest that whenever we read terms like tribes and clans and families and nations, even in a genealogical context like Genesis 10, we should remember that no man is an island unto himself. Every human being from Adam till now is born with an invisible ambilocal cord that can’t be cut off. Day after day, hobby after hobby, ambition after ambition, in different ways, and to varying degrees, we each follow an internal gravitational pull toward some community, some fan club, some church, some stadium seat, some political chair, some matrimony, some sport, some collaborative art, because life in a fallen world is an oscillation between a wilderness of wandering and a state of belonging. The irony here is that philosophers who’ve tried to evade this tribalistic tendency by storming away from the artifices of their societies—I’m looking at you, Thoreau—are even there, in their solitary revolt, as much a part of a tribe as all the others. Theirs is an exclusive club of anti-socials: of Essenes and Stoics and monks who live out a shared isolation.

Cynical observers consider tribalism a bad thing, thinking it the reason why Christianity seems so sectarian and discombobulated and a patchwork of disconnected fragments—like a coat of many cloths sewn together but coming apart at the seams. But does the existence of differing worship styles and liturgies and baptismal programs and ecclesiastical structures and denominational distinctions necessarily make the tapestry more a mess than a masterpiece? Consider the United States military as an example. The military is one fighting force made up of different branches, and although all branches compete with each other to an extent, their distinctions are ordered toward a common goal. If the Navy Seal and the Army Ranger and the Marine Raider join together in a unified task force, using their unique skills to form a more potent fighting battalion, then the picture that emerges isn’t one of division but dynamism, right? Unity in diversity is both a powerful and a beautiful force. Uniformity is neither. Consider also that Christ’s eleven disciples were very different men, and they disagreed often, and they all went different ways after the Resurrection in performance of their unique commissions, but an unbreakable bond held them together, and they all sacrificed their lives to the cause in equal measure. Maybe it helps to imagine the Church as a sort of nation, a bloodline, with many sons and daughters, and many different clans, and many different genealogies, and many different tribes and tongues, all bonded together by the wounds of Christ’s redeeming love despite the miles between them. Or we can imagine the Church as a rainbow, with bands of shimmering colors, neither like the other, but all joining in harmony and balance to reflect the wider beauty and bounty of divine Light. That’s the ideal anyway. And by the grace of Christ working in our midst from day to day, we occasionally get it right.

Friend, marvel at the thought that again today Almighty God will once again stoop down low enough to commune with you, pouring out His infinite Being in provision of your present needs, and providing spiritual nourishment through the music and motions and methods that your heart understands most. Oh, but don’t stop at marveling! Imitate that same humility toward your brothers and sisters! And whatever hill you find yourself resting on, whatever traditions and denominations and occupations you find a sense of belonging in, remember that your little place in the world is only one peak in a vast mountain range—one stream in an endless river—one tribe in a divine family that has been spreading out across the earth ever since our Savior opened the deep wells of His heart to flood the world.

*The photograph above is from a grove of pine trees on the outskirts of my church’s property where I like to sit and write. This is my tribe—my place in the local body on most weekdays. I love seeing the hustle and bustle of church ministry: kids playing soccer on the fields, home schoolers leaving classes, landscapers prettying up the gardens, pastors meeting church members for counseling, seminarians studying in the library, AVL crews getting gear ready in the sanctuary, etc., but I find solace here in this quiet amphitheater of nature. Albeit, the part I play here, the role of thinking and writing and illustrating, isn’t all that special. In fact, it feels rather marginal—just like this grove in relation to the wider church landscape. Ah, but the older I get, and the more I yearn like Robert Frost to walk a less travelled path through a mountain meadow, and more I heed with John Muir the call of the mountains, the more grateful I feel toward my brothers and sisters who do a different work. Even now, as I stare down this private corridor into the wider expanse of local church ministry, I think of how blessed a thing it is that not everyone else is out here with me. For if everyone was out here, if everyone was like me, if everyone pined after the serenity of the pines, then the most essential work of Christian ministry would lie undone. And I can think of only one thing worse than a world without a tribe of poets and philosophers and ascetics; and that’s a world where everyone’s in it.