It began with my daughter Sarah’s interest in learning more about her ethnic heritage. There is a lot of buzz these days about Ancestry.com, as well as several popular shows on cable TV featuring adoptees and others searching for long-lost loved ones, and/or their genealogical family trees back to Europe and Africa, etc.
Sarah’s cousin on her dad’s side had taken a DNA test, and she encouraged Sarah to take one, which she did. When Sarah’s results came in, she and her cousin eagerly compared their DNA matches. It wasn’t long before her cousin detected that something wasn’t adding up. She had matches that should have been in Sarah’s results, and Sarah had matches that should have been in hers, but they weren’t. She told Sarah that she did not think that they were full cousins. When Sarah told her dad Benny, and me, we just laughed. But the two cousins continued to discuss the situation, and their suspicions were growing.
Shortly thereafter, AncestryDNA.com put their DNA kits on sale. Her cousin bought a kit for her mom, Benny’s sister, and Sarah bought kits for both Benny and me. It seemed like fun, and I had actually been wanting to do one for some time, as I wanted to track my paternal grandmother’s, Mary Gabriel Hardy, immigration to America from Lithuania around 1904.
When the results came in several weeks later, my husband was faced with the jolting reality: He and his sister were coming up as half-siblings. All of their shared DNA matches were on their mother’s side. They had no shared DNA matches on their father’s side. All indications were that Benny’s father—the man whom he knew to be his dad for 59 years—was not his biological father. Both he and his sister were in shock. Both their parents are deceased, as well as most of their generation. There was no one who could solve the mystery and answer the big question:
Who is Benny’s biological father?
His sister, who is 10 years older than him, was wracking her brain for any memory that could figure out the mystery man, but she had no idea. She was very close to her mother, especially at the end of her life, but her mom had never shared this secret with her.
Benny, who is rather easy-going, took everything in stride, but his growing curiosity of who his father is propelled him to go on a search. It is the innate desire of every person to know who we are and where we come from. Benny began looking at the family trees of his closest DNA matches. For weeks, he spent hours at the computer, pouring over scores of family tree branches. Twice he thought he had figured out who his father is, but when he rechecked the timelines of these men’s dates and ages, they did not match the timeline of his birth. Stumped, he contacted the son of one of these men whose DNA was a close match to him, explaining his situation. The man kindly responded that he thought Benny should look at his paternal grandmother’s side and not his grandfather’s. This was a breakthrough which eventually led Benny to the correct family line.
There was still a nagging problem presented by another close DNA match that seemed to be linked to the Knotts’ family. But if he was not a Knotts, how could this match link to him? While in prayer one morning, the Lord spoke to his spirit the name of a particular family on the tree he had been researching. Till then, Benny had not given it much attention, but when he went back over it, he found that the Knotts’ link that was throwing him a curveball had nothing to do with the Knotts who raised him. Another Knotts had married into a family that traced back to the one the Lord had spoken to him. It also linked back to the same family the other man had told him to search.
He now was 99% sure he had found his true biological father.
Further online searches revealed that his biological father had passed away in 2009, and the man’s wife was also deceased. All of the principals concerned were deceased, so there was no reason to perpetuate the secret. Benny had lived 59 years believing a lie, and he wanted to know the truth: Who is my father?
He discovered that he had three possible half-sisters, and he wrestled for a time whether or not to contact them and disrupt their lives with this astonishing information. Eventually, he did make contact, and one of the sisters agreed to take a DNA test. The results showed they are indeed half-siblings. This confirmed what he already knew in his heart: They have the same father.
As Benny and these sisters begin the process of getting to know one another, they’ve already told him they could see the resemblance to their father in pictures of Benny. It turns out that his father and he share similar abilities and hobbies. I myself often questioned who Benny looks like. I saw a little of his mother in him, but I did not think he resembled the pictures of his Knotts’ father. Now I know why. And when I saw pictures of his biological father, even before the DNA was confirmed, I could clearly see a strong resemblance.
You may think this story is wildly unusual, but I assure you, it is not. With the advancement of DNA technology, and the ability to take a DNA test in the privacy of one’s home, this scenario is being played out thousands of times across the country.
Do You Know Who Your Father Is?
I saw a T-shirt that says: I took a DNA test, and God is my Father.
There is no greater parent-child connection than this one. No matter who gave birth to you, who raised you, or what human family you belong to, knowing God is your Father, and having a personal relationship with Him, is what our soul and spirits long for, and without it, we will never fulfil our potential and our purpose in life.
When God is your Father, the family resemblance is unmistakable. You share the same likes and dislikes, the same attributes of righteousness and truth, and these go against worldly trends and viewpoints. Jesus once told a group of religious, but not-right-with-God people: “You are of your father the devil, and his lusts you will do…” (John 8:44). They hated Him and wanted to kill Him, and today true Christians are hated by the world, because they do not want to hear the truth we stand for and speak.
Later, John wrote: “Beloved, what manner of love the Father has bestowed upon us, that we should be called the children of God: therefore, the world knows us not, because it knew him not…. Little children, let no man deceive you, he that does righteousness is righteous even as he is righteous. He that commits sin is of the devil…” (1John 3:1, 7-8). The Greek text uses the present verb tense which denotes continual, habitual action. We all make mistakes, but those who practice sin, living a sinful lifestyle, has the devil for their father.
Maybe this makes you feel like throwing stones at me like they tried to do to Jesus for saying this, but I speak the truth in love. Stop living a lie, thinking your Father is God when you are living in sin. People of the world say that we are all God’s children. This is true only in the sense that we are all created by God, but only those who have been born again have His spiritual DNA. Jesus said, “Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit” (John 3:3-7).
More than likely, you know who the father of your flesh is, but I ask you: Do you know who your Father is? Do you possess His spiritual DNA of righteousness?
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