Adoption: The period to the pro-life sentence
Adoption: The period to the pro-life sentence
Adoption is the period to the pro-life sentence. Without an adequate discussion on adoption, the pro-life conversation is merely a fragment instead of a complete sentence.
Within the pro-life community, it’s now in vogue to discuss orphans and adoption. Churches have a Sunday dedicated to it (Orphan Sunday), pictures of orphans float around the internet and people get warm, fuzzy feelings from discussing adoption. But the fact of the matter is, the topic is more talked about that acted upon. We are faced with the reality that there are more than 150 million orphans around the world without a home, a caring family, love or hope.
The solution is not as simple as slipping on a trendy bracelet, running a 5k or attending a benefit concert. While those are all good things, the solution is much deeper, more challenging and yet, incredibly rewarding.
The solution is the church.
Why should the church love and care about the orphan? Because God does! It’s as simple as that. We should care about the things that God cares about. We should love those whom God loves. As Psalm 68:5 says, “God in his holy dwelling is a father of the fatherless and a champion of widows.”
We should allow our hearts to be broken for the things that break God’s heart. God designed the family specifically and intentionally to have a mother and a father. But as a result of the fall and sin entering the world, the family structure that God intended doesn’t always happen. As children of the most high we must seek to bring restoration through Christ to a broken world–including to the orphan.
Who did Jesus intentionally seek out while he was doing his earthly ministry? The least of these. The sick, the outcast, the children, the sinners. Those who most Americans shy away from, those who most Americans build their perfect little lives in order to avoid. We don’t want to “get dirty”, we don’t want to love until it hurts and we don’t want to sacrifice.
The Great Commission is beautifully and accurately displayed in adoption. God commands his followers to go into all the world making disciples. One of the best ways to make disciples is through the family.
Not everyone is called to adopt, but everyone is called to obey James 1:27. Just as every Christ follower is commanded to obey the Great Commission, everyone who identifies themselves as God’s child must also seek to obey God’s commandment to take care of the orphan.
There are a few ways that orphan support can look like:
- Adopt a child.
- Assist others in their adoption of a child by providing emotional and spiritual support.
- Give. This can include so much more than just money (although that is desperately needed since adoption can be expensive.) Providing a meal, babysitting so that new parents can have a date night, or any other host of things that might help out and show the love of Christ.
The Lord has chosen for his church and his people to carry the gospel to the ends of the earth. John Piper said it well when he stated that, “The gospel is not a picture of adoption, adoption is a picture of the gospel.”