Is Adoption for Everyone?
Shaun Groves is a talented and thoughtful guy who operates a great blog at shaungroves.com. Yesterday, he posed the question of whether adoption is a universal or individual calling for Christians — the post is a quick read but is good food for thought.
My guess is that most of us would agree adoption is an individual calling but that orphan care is a universal calling, and maybe that’s the point Shaun is trying to make. Maybe by leading folks to insist that orphan care, not adoption, is a universal calling, Shaun is hoping those same folks will start believing and practicing that which they’re insisting.
Shaun Groves says:
Bingo.
Thanks for pointing people to the discussion. My hope was that some adoption savvy folks would show up and teach us a thing or two. I wasn’t disappointed. Thanks.
Brian says:
The assumption for Christians is orphan care, and adoption is one very obvious practical application of that.
However, I think we do adoption a disservice by simply treating it like an option “out there” that we may or may not consider. Many couples thinking about children ask themselves, “Should we adopt?” This is good, but I don’t think it’s the best way to go about it.
Instead, I believe that they might better get at the heart of God’s love for orphans by asking, “Why SHOULDN’T we adopt?” If you can’t come up with any biblical answer to that, then you should probably pursue adoption.
If more people thought of it in this way, we’d have far fewer excuses for not adopting, and far more children in permanent, Christian homes.
Michael Monroe says:
I love the question that Shaun poses (and the discussion on his blog that followed is quite interesting).
Many, if not most, that commented to Shaun’s thougths agreed that orphan care is the universal will of God. But isn’t adoption a form or expression of orphan care? So isn’t it possible that we are all called to care about that which God cares about (in this case, the orphan), but how He works in and through us to accomplish His will can be very different according to how He has called and equipped us?
Related but unrelated is also the idea that there are so many different opportunities for us to be tangibly and meaningfully involved in adoption apart from becoming adoptive parents. Isn’t is possible that many of us have been called to adoption in some capacity other than as adoptive parents – advocating, educating, making it financially possible for others to adopt, etc.
So much to think about, and yet so much more to be done.