One of the fascinating phenomena of the internet era is the purported possibility, with the manipulation of a person’s DNA, to trace one’s ancestry. Are the results factual or just imagined? Factual or not, it is interesting to know from where one comes from. In my case, I am a Filipino, but my ancestry according to Ancestry.com goes as far back to the Incas of Peru! How is that possible? What is a plausible explanation of that if it is true? I venture to widely imagine that there was a Spanish gentleperson who traveled to the Americas during the Spanish colonization of that part of the world. The gentleperson married an Inca lady. They have several children and one of them traveled to the Philippines, a colony of Spain for four hundred years. The person from Peru married someone from the country’s Pangasinan-Ilocandia region. From that marriage came several generations of Martinezes.
The question is, if one can go as far back as possible, will he/she end up with Noah? The biblical revelation is clear that all human beings are kin. Though we are from different nations, we are all Noah’s children. It is both our privilege and responsibility to pray for all nations, to help people who are in need, and to live peaceably with each other. The refusal to recognize this is what causes the conflict between tribes and between nations. It is the root cause of the present conflict between Israel and Palestine and the rest of the Arab world.
Let us hope for a world that is built on freedom and love rather than force and hatred, on peace and justice rather than war and prejudice.
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