Bet this title got your attention. No Crystal and I aren't adopting a child so don't panic. But I did figure I would get your attention. This post is about something different. My brother-in-law came to visit Crystal and I last night. He will be leaving for a mission trip to Nepal this Thursday and just wanted to come see us before he left. It was a great visit with him. As some of you know however it always seems that him and I end up in some kind of in-depth spiritual discussion that I think mutually challenges us both. However this is not the reason for this post. He was presented with an interesting question and he posed it to me. This question got me to thinking and thus I think it would be good to discuss this in a public forum. NOTE: the key word in this was discuss...there will be no argueing and if I since that going on in comments I will delete them!
Question: What if a 35 year old single woman with no kids and no family came to me(in the context of the conversation is me = pastor) and ask what I thought about her adopting a child?
My Thoughts: WOW what a loaded question this is. I will present my viewpoint in this but first let me start with saying there is nothing in scripture that speak 100% directly to this situation. Thus any points made are merely my feeble interpretation of the Holy Scriptures of our Lord. Also this is a complex question and I am not sure that any answer we come up with is completely right or completely wrong. Reason I believe that....simply put is the context and matter of the situation.
1) Jeremy stated that he would advice in a gentle and loving manner against the adoption on the grounds that it was not the way God designed the family to be. This is a very scripturally supported point and I don't think him wrong to make it. The ideal biblical family is not a single parent. Key word there is ideal! That is not to say that a single parent is not Godly nor is it to say they can't raise their children in the Lord. Simply stated I agree with him in that the best design(if marriage can be defined this) is how it is defined in scripture which is both a man and a woman not one or the other.
2) We live in a non-ideal world. In our creation we were designed not for this world but for perfect harmony with God(this can be summarized in a number of words but you get the idea). At the fall that all changed thus we are not living in the ideal. Now this does not change the gospel at all. To me this realization makes the gospel much bigger and a much more central point to our theology. So if we do not live in the ideal how do we reconcile this problem about a single woman wanting to adopt a child.
3) Maybe to me the most critical question to ask is what is the woman's desire for this child rooted in. Does she want a child because she wants a child or what if this desire was sincerely God's desire. Some are going to say well God desires the ideal thus could not want anything less than the ideal. You would be correct there except as I stated previously ideal is not possible until the second coming of Christ. I would also say that this is a very narrow approach to the interpretation of the characteristics of God. Thus point 3 answer is what is the motivation behind the desire. I think it has to be taken in to account. If the woman wanted a child out of selfish motives then I would also have to advise against it.
4) What if this woman's motives are pure. Now granted this is not something we can fully know because we aren't God but all intentions that we can logically see are pure. Reason I ask is simply this....is it not better for this child to be raised with one parent that is loving and willing to bring them up in the Lord than to not have one at all. Are we willing to say that the foster care system is more loving and caring that a single mother could be. I am not willing to go there.
So to bring all this to a close I am not fully against a single Godly woman adopting a child but I am also not fully for it either. In this situation One size cannot fit all. As with scripture everything has to be put in to context thus every situation would be different. Let me hear what you think because I am truly interested to get some feed back about this topic.
1 comment:
I guess I would be challenged, and would put force the challenge, of what the potential positives might come out of the situation. Within an North American context (which I am guessing you are using as background for the hypothetical situation), with thousands of unwanted children are either aborted or (perhaps worse) kept, the main positive would be to save a child's life and to love an actual person.
I am reminded about one of the first aspects of what Christianity did for the change of society. The exposure of babies (particular baby girls) was a true crime against humanity within the Roman Empire (we see similar things happening today in China especially). The Christians took it upon themselves to care for all children, and adopted them. This produced large, and hard to control families of course. But within the Christian community's support, this proved to be a blessing. Since people were cared for, and babies not exposed, and marriages that were kept holy, Christians were able to literally out-breed those of other religions. We see this happening in countries where Islam is on the rise, for those very same reasons.
So I agree with you man. It may not be the ideal situation, but we by no means live in the ideal world. The positive that comes from the situation would be to take an unwanted child from the ideal world, and to lovingly raise them with the hope of the ideal world in the future. As it is, however, American adoption laws are extremely tough, and under the guidance of Godly pastors, Christians especially should fight for those unwanted, since our culture stems from Jesus eating/etc with the unwanted of society.
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