Why I Want to Adopt

Every child needs a family. There are children in the world who have no family to care for them. Just as every child needs food, shelter, and clothing, every child needs a family. I want to adopt because every child needs a family. Yes, it is also true that I want to expand my current family, and adoption is a way to fulfill that wish. Adoption, however, moves beyond family planning. Adoption is affirming the dignity and worth of children who are at risk of never knowing the love of a mother and a father. Adoption is about making a permanent and profound difference in the life of another human being who would otherwise exist at the margins of society at a tender stage of life. I want to adopt because every child needs a family, and Christians bear a special responsibility to care for orphans (James 1:27).

Russell Moore, a seminary dean and adoptive father, has urged Christians to become the first in line to support those who are led to adopt and to consider adopting themselves. Moore writes, "Adoption is not just about our couples who want children–or who want more children. Adoption is about an entire culture within our churches, a culture that sees adoption as part of our Great Commission mandate and as a sign of the gospel itself."  He also suggests that adoption and supporting those who adopt "can help us peer into the ancient mystery of our faith in Christ and can help us restore the fracturing unity and the atrophied mission of our congregations." He asks his readers, "What if Christians were known, once again, as the people who take in orphans and make them beloved sons and daughters?" (Adopted for Life, 18-20) Click here to read one of Moore's articles on adoption.

I think Moore is getting at something that may sometimes be missed in everyday conversations about adoption.  If the message of the gospel, which we celebrate, is a story of a people who have been brought near to God, into the household, to be called adopted sons and daughters of God then should we not celebrate adoption of children who have no father and mother? Instead it is viewed primarily as a means for a man and a woman to become a father and a mother rather than a means for the fatherless to become a son and a daughter. If we believe that adoption in Christ ought to govern how we view the meaning of the adoption of children into our families, then adoption is about a child becoming a son or daughter before it is about a man or woman becoming a parent. God never became a father. He has always been the father of Jesus. So when we became his son or daughter, God does not become a father. Since this is so, adoption must be primarily about sonship (and daughterhood) rather than fatherhood.

This understanding of adoption is really rooted in a more basic understanding of life in Christ. The scriptures speak of being "salt and light" to bear "witness." These passages and others strike a chord that is central to the life of every Christian whether or not they are called to adoption. All of life ought to be governed by a sense of responsibility, purpose, and participation in light of the way in which God executes his design for redemption for His creation that is alienated from Him. One way that Jesus spoke of this design was the kingdom of heaven. Of course, we think of salvation as our entrance into this kingdom. However, when one becomes a citizen of the kingdom of heaven, one also becomes a resident alien in the kingdom of the world.

Paul says that we are ambassadors. That is, we are sent into foreign territory as representatives of the  priorities, values, and mission that are dictated by the character and command of our King. We labor not for our own profit but for the reward of seeing the values of the kingdom of heaven being made manifest in this world as a foretaste of beautiful things to come. All of life ought to governed by Spirit driven desire to see the beautiful display of God's character.

Christian adoption is one way that Christians are called to be Christ's ambassadors bearing witness to the character and command of God. Christian adoption is about redeeming those who are profoundly alienated from their family and their community and bearing witness to the love our of the Father who brought us into his household to call us sons and daughters when we too were alienated from Him.