Adoption and Fear

Russell Moore:

I will never forget seeing her pull the measuring tape out of her purse as she talked about the skull of her child.

The woman, standing in an airport in Russia with my wife and me, was, like us, an American. She, like us, was in the former Soviet Union to pursue adoption. But she was worried. She had heard “horror stories” about fetal alcohol syndrome and various other nightmares. She said that the measuring tape was for gauging the size of the craniums of her potential children, to “make sure there’s nothing wrong with them.”

The reason I think about this conversation so much these days is because I am finding—more and more often—that one of the primary obstacles for Christians in advocating for the fatherless can be summed up right there in that measuring tape: the issue of fear. As much as we might not want to admit it, many of us don’t think much about orphans because, frankly, we’re scared of them.

He continues...

Right now, there is a crisis of fatherlessness all around the world. Chances are, in your community, the foster care system is bulging with children, moving from home to home to home, with no rootedness or permanence in sight. Right now, as you read this, children are “aging out” of orphanages around the world. Many of them will spiral downward into the hopelessness of drug addiction, prostitution, or suicide. Children in the Third World are languishing in group-homes, because both parents have died from disease or have been slaughtered in war. The curse is afoot, and it leaves orphans in its wake.

Not every Christian is called to adopt or to foster children. And not every family is equipped to serve every possible scenario of special needs that come along with particular children. Orphan care isn’t easy. Families who care for the least of these must count the cost, and be willing to offer up whatever sacrifice is needed to carry through with their commitments to the children who enter into their lives.

But, while not all of us are called to adopt, the Christian Scriptures tell us that all of us are called to care “widows and orphans in their distress” (Jas. 1:27). All of us are to be conformed to the mission of our Father God, a mission that includes justice for the fatherless (Exod. 22:22; Deut. 10:18; Ps. 10:18; Prov. 23:10-11; Isa. 1:17; Jer. 7:6; Zech. 7:10). As we are conformed to the image of Christ, we share with him his welcoming of the oppressed, the abandoned, the marginalized; we recognize his face in the “least of these,” his little brother and sisters (Matt. 25:40).

Read the rest.

My two cents:

I have experienced this fear in our adoption of Mya.  Irrational thoughts can easily creep in and haunt parents of children adopted from different biological genes.  Much could be said in response to this fear, but I am usually arrested by one simply question, "What is the alternative?  That they rot away in a third world orphanages or cycle through the American foster care system?"  That is no alternative.  I preach to myself that God always provides the resources for his people to do what he has called them to do.

There is something to say though for a robust theology of suffering to be married to a robust theology of adoption.  I fear that if we don't work to have these concepts as parallel strains we'll set ourselves up for disillusionment and pain.  For most people, adoption is not sexy.  It is not easy and it is not "fun".  What part of the Christian life is those things?  But obedience always leads to blessing and the Cross always leads to a resurrection but these realities might not be fully realized even in this life.  We long for the One who will come and make all things right.

So let's proceed in faith as God's people on God's mission to declare and demonstrate the truth of his word to those who are most needy and broken among us.  It won't be easy and our fears will always tempt us to despair but an onlooking world needs to see radical generosity and God is pleased when we display the reality of our adoption to those who most need it.