Adoption: Where Love Is Not Dictated by DNA
I could never love an adopted child like I love my biological children.
This is the thought that would go through my head for 6 months as I wrestled with the question, “Should our family adopt a child?”.
It was my wife, Laura’s, desire to grow our family through adoption, but she was certain that it was not God’s will for our family unless I affirmed her desire with my own.
I committed to thinking about the idea, but I could not kick the thought that there would be an invisible barrier that would exist between myself and any child that Laura and I did not create together. It didn’t matter that I love kids—my own kids, my extended family’s kids, kids from church, and even strangers’ kids that I meet in random places—if a child didn’t share my DNA, the hugs would be forced, the snuggles would be disingenuous, and my favor would always lie with my two biologicals.
Let me state right now that these thoughts that seemed so logical and true in my mind are categorically false for the follower of Christ.
As I was gaining different perspectives on adoption, I was reading a book by Russell Moore titled Adopted For Life. In the book, there is a chapter discussing this very topic; loving your biological children enough to die for them, but perhaps not feeling the same about your adopted children. Russell Moore responds with this:
“This makes sense only for someone who’s never seen adopting love that is willing to die. You have. As we discussed earlier, your adoption in Christ came through a Father willing to sacrifice his only begotten Son, an older [soon to be] brother willing to bear the weight of the sins of the world, to bring you into the household. And once you arrived, you found you have the exact same standing as the children who were already there (Eph. 2:19). There is no reason why, through the Spirit, you would love or favor your children “according to the flesh” any differently than you love the children you’ve adopted. You are indeed designed to love “your own flesh and blood,” but your design is redeemed in Christ to see as your flesh and blood those whom you previously didn’t recognize as such.”
Does God instruct us to “look after orphans” (James 1:27) or “to defend the weak and fatherless” (Psalm 82:3), and then not provide us with the ability to do so? Has he not given us the Holy Spirit, which bears fruit that describes the characteristics of a loving parent (Galatians 5:22-23)?
I had to answer the question for myself, “Has a life of comfort trumped compassion for those who have no life or future?” While pondering those very thoughts, the Holy Spirit birthed in me the ability to love a child that I did not yet know.
Believer, there are many reasons why you can’t or should not adopt; the ability to love is not one of them.
For the one who defines love has not only demonstrated the perfect adoption of you into His family, but He has literally given you Himself so that you know what love is, and how to give it.
Thanks be to God for his inexpressible gift!
To learn about the number of orphans in the world and how to advocate for them, start here: https://cafo.org/ovc/statistics/