The Mendelian Principle of Raising Godly Children

          The Mendelian Principle of Raising Godly Children

"Moreover, in those days I saw men of Judah who had married women from Ashdod, Ammon and Moab. ²⁴ Half of their children spoke the language of Ashdod or the language of one of the other peoples, and did not know how to speak the language of Judah. ²⁵ I rebuked them and called curses down on them"  Neh. 14:23,24

After Joshua had dismissed the Israelites, they went to take possession of the land, each to their own inheritance. ⁷ The people served the Lord throughout the lifetime of Joshua and of the elders who outlived him and who had seen all the great things the Lord had done for Israel.After that whole generation had been gathered to their ancestors, another generation grew up who knew neither the Lord nor what he had done for Israel. ¹¹ Then the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord and served the Baals.  Judges 2: 6-11

      Mendelian? What does that even mean? As a Chemistry Pre/med major in college, we had to take genetics. It was tough and I managed to eke out a low B which fortunately didn't keep me out of med school. We learned about Gregor Mendel who in 1865 proposed gene and alleles and how they combine. This was the Mendelian principle. It went something like this. In a codominant situation, lets say sickle cell anemia, two people get together and one is a carrier for sickle cell (Ss) and one isn't (SS) You could illustrate it this way in figure 1 - the top line illustrates the non carrier. They have two genes to give for S or non sickle cell. The person on the side is a carrier. They have anemia but it isn't that bad because the bad gene is balanced out by the good gene. They have one good non-sickle gene (S) and one sickle cell gene( s).When they mate you see the different potential combinations of progeny

     1           S              S                      You can see that you have 2 non carriers and 2 carriers

     ______________________                  or basically a 50% chance of having a carrier child.

     S         SS               SS                      What if a non carrier married a person with sickle cell?

    ______________________                  Then you would have a situation like this. The top

      s        Ss                 Ss                          line is the non-affected and the line on the side is

                                                                  the person with full blown sickle cell ( ss). As you

   2               S                   S                        can see in figure 2, all the progeny are Ss or 

    _______________________              ...sickle cell carriers. If you had 2 sickle cell affected

      s        Ss                  Ss                         people get married, and I don't think I need to

    ________________________              illustrate it, you would have all (ss) children. If you 

     s         Ss                 Ss                          had 2 carriers (Ss) get married , as seen in figure 3,

                                                                 you would expect to see 1 out of 4 disease free (SS),

   3              S                 s                          2 out of 4 somewhat sick as carriers (Ss), and 1

    ________________________              out of 4 with the full blown disease (ss).

      S      SS                Ss                            Lastly, what would you expect to see if a carrier,

    _________________________               slightly sick person (Ss) on top marries a full blown

      s      Ss                 ss                                sick person (ss) on side. Check out figure 4.

                                                                    50% of the progeny would have the disease (ss)

  4           S                  s                               and 50% would be carriers (Ss).

      ______________________              This is one pattern of inheritance that I illustrated

       s     Ss                 ss                              called codominance. There is another form 

     ________________________              called dominant/recessive as seen in cystic fibrosis

      s      Ss               ss                              where everything is the same except the carriers

       aren't sick because the capital letter completely blocks the expression of the lower case gene. 

         So...… What does any of that have to do with raising Godly children or the above verses? Maybe nothing but after observing families in the church over the years and how the children turn out, I think there is something to it especially the codominance pattern. Check out these verses from 1Kings 11:4 and James 4:8;

 As Solomon grew old, his wives turned his heart after other gods, and his heart was not fully devoted to the Lord his God, as the heart of David his father had been.

Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.

     The Bible says several times that David had a fully devoted heart. Joshua would be another one and you can think of multiple other examples throughout the Bible. This could be described as a person fully committed to God and certainly our goal for our lives. I would illustrate that as (HH). Then you have Solomon, the half hearted or double minded man, who had one foot with God and one foot in the world. This is probably most of us and most church members, and certainly there are a lot of examples of this in the Bible, especially Judah's kings. I would illustrate that as (Hh). As you have children with different levels of parental commitment to the Lord, you can see the expected results using mendelian principles. In the Nehemiah verse at the top of this blog, you see half hearted followers of God (Hh), marrying unbelievers (hh) and the result is 50% didn't speak the language of worship (hh) and 50% did (Hh) as seen in figure 4.
       The second verse at the top talks about the people of Israel in Joshua's time. You have Joshua (HH), the Israelites who entered the promised land (Hh), and the next generation (hh). You can see how that happens because Hh x Hh gives 25% hh and Hh x hh (intermarried with people they didn't drive out) gives 50% hh. The hh population keeps expanding and it is hard to find an HH.

      Take a look at your kids. Does this theory pan out? Take a look at the youth in the church. What do you think? When you see Christian marry a non christian or one spouse leaves the marriage for another person, you ever notice how half of the kids follow Christ and half don't?

       Obviously this theory doesn't always hold - it's just a generalization. Also this theory probably leads to pride, guilt, and judging and not much good except if you are convicted that if you want a Godly heritage you and your spouse better get to HH!