Defend The Orphan – Wall Street Journal

Although I often make ‘tongue-in-cheek’ criticisms of our northern friends living in the so-called ‘land of the free and home of the brave’, I was impressed by the Wall Street Journal article about adoption. It is in part a encouragement (if not endorsement of) to John McCain to take a stand on matters relating to adoption as an opportunity to promote “adoption is part of a holistic sanctity-of-human-life ethic”. However it reveals that the anti-adoption philosophy so entrenched in Australian society is prevalent also in America.

The opening paragraph is something that Australian authorities should seriously consider:

In 1993, the McCains adopted a daughter from Mother Teresa’s orphanage in Bangladesh, and the senator has co-sponsored legislation to aid adoption, including measures that would provide tax credits for expenses and would remove barriers to interracial and interethnic adoption.

The self-appointed politically-correct authorities here in Australia, whilst claiming to have the “best interests of the child in mind” when managing and screening applicants for adopting also have onerous and obstructive policies. In our experience, rather than encouraging and promoting adoption as a valid means of creating or extending a family, they to seek to prevent as many as possible from adopting. Thereby denying orphaned / relinquished / abandoned children the world over the opportunities to grow up in a loving, nurturing, family environment. The result of their argument is that it is better for the child to remain in their own culture and continue to suffer a life of poverty, slavery, abuse, neglect etc.

The WSJ article, as also alluded to by Al Mohler yesterday, also mentions the contradiction of these same authorities when it comes to dealing with racial discrimination. The do-right-ers who want a society of tolerance, peace and harmony are the same pundits who regularly oppose trans-racial and cross cultural adoptions. Quoting a Ms Rosati:

“Both are saying the same thing, ‘Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.’ And both pretend they’re just being realistic about racial discrimination.”

Join the cause Defend the orphan and help all children reach their God given potential!

 

Care for the fatherless

Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world. ~ James 1:27

 

An Adoptee Investing in Champions

Troy Matthews, or Dr. Matthews as he is better known today, was Dean of Students at my Bible College and was also Associate Pastor at my church in 1989/90. Troy was adopted at birth and always spoke openly, positively and generously about his experience. Although I was only 17/18 years old when I was one of his students and not really thinking about my future family too much at the time, his example influenced me significantly when the time came that my wife and I were considering adopting.

There are some heart-breaking stories of cases where adoption hasn’t been approached sensitively or lovingly (towards both the child and the birth parents). Unfortunately, some of those stories get a little more air time than the great majority of ones where children and families flourish through their experience with adoption. Troy is a fantastic example of a man who not only flourished, but is now helping others flourish also.

Together for Adoption recently published Troy’s story:

Troy was born to a young mother in Snyder, Texas, and because of the closed adoption he doesn’t know much more than that about his fraternal parents. Simultaneously to this woman’s pregnancy, a young couple had battled several miscarriages and were urged by a local pastor in Snyder to consider adoption – particularly the adoption of Troy. They quickly realized that this was their “gift from God.”

Today, Troy puts it in his own words, “They were his gift from God.” …

Dr. Matthews is now a professor of “Contemporary Issues”, a course required by all majors at Liberty. The subject matter directly approaches one’s world view – affirming a Biblical world view and also applying it. Topics such as adoption, abortion, and a Christian’s moral responsibility to such topics and understanding of absolute truth’s found in Scripture. These courses are designed to affirm a believers responsibility to the world around them.

Troy is “a champion, … reinvesting in others to be young champions as well. – just as (he) was invested in.”

If you’re in Australia and considering investing in adoption, National Adoption Awareness Week can provide you with the starting point. Click on the link for your state to find out more. If you have already been involved with Adoption there are many opportunities for networking and support with other families and adoptees.

In the USA check out the links on the Together for Adoption site.

Karen’s Adoption Links has information for other countries.

 

Do orphans need saving?

This question is complex and volatile. There is a tendency to be over simplistic when talking about adoption using terms and phrases like “saving” the orphans. However it is important to distinguish between advocating adoption as a vital means to helping and serving children in need of a permanent family and “saving” them. Lets be clear about this, there’s only ONE saviourand it’s not me nor is it any other adoptive parent, advocate or ambassador.

Kawale Orphan Care in Lilongwe, Malawi

Kristen Howerton has a lengthy blog post about this and she deals with the issue with substance and sensitivity.

I don’t like the savior narratives applied to adoptive parents.  I don’t like people telling me I’m amazing just because I’ve adopted.  Because I’m not.  I am a very human mom who is sometimes shrill and selfish and impatient and just plain mean.  I did not “save” my adopted kids.

I am very careful to never give my adopted children the feeling that there is some extra gratitude required from them.  They are a part of my family just like my daughters.  They have every right to be ungrateful, or resent me, or wish that they had never been adopted.  I don’t talk to them about where they came from as if they needed to be saved.  So on the one hand, I do take care to avoid the savior meme.

Citing a detailed example from Haiti arising from the recent turmoil caused the earthquakes she urges readers, it’s time to sit up and take notice:

This is a long post.  I hope you will read the whole thing, and I hope you will read it without judgment of the people involved.  People who serve in Haiti face the awful task, every day, of how many people they can help.  Orphanages are overcrowded simply because some very good people have a hard time turning away one more helpless child.  If this outrages you, then think about what part YOU can play.  There can be no outrage at people who serve in Haiti, as we sit at our computer screens in our comfortable homes in America.  But you need to know that this is real.

… Please, read the full post

 

Was Joseph an Adoptive Dad AND Adoptee

When reading the genealogy accounts of Jesus in Matthew and Luke of the New Testament, an apparent contradiction surfaces. Each list uses a different perspective, one starts with Joseph and goes back to Abraham and then to Adam and the other starts with Abraham and then goes down to Joseph. There are also differences in the list of names in-between David and Joseph. The name of Joseph’s most immediate forbear is of particular interest. Matthew says Joseph is the son of Jacob (Matthew 1:16). In Luke’s account he is the son of Heli (Luke 3:23).

Robert L. Redmond provides the following explanation in the ‘Baker Encyclopedia of the Bible‘:

A widely held explanation is that Matthew gives Jesus’ ancestry through Joseph and that Luke gives his ancestry through Mary.

… many scholars prefer to regard Luke’s genealogy as that of Joseph rather than Mary, since it is to Joseph’s ancestry that Luke calls the reader’s attention (1:27; 2:4). Furthermore, nowhere in Scripture is Mary said to be of Davidic descent. …

A major difficulty for the view that regards both genealogies as Joseph’s is related to Joseph’s two fathers. One solution is that Matthew gives the legal descendants of David, but Luke gives the actual descendants of David in the line to which Joseph belonged. This would mean that Heli was Joseph’s [biological] father and that Jacob was his legal foster father.

… One other major objection to the view that regards both genealogies as Joseph’s is that, because of the virgin birth of Jesus, one may in no sense speak of Jesus as being literally the seed of David, a proposition that Scripture seems to insist upon. This objection has been adequately countered:

1. because of the realistic manner in which the Jews looked upon adoptive fatherhood; and
2. because the relationship in which Jesus stood to Joseph was much closer than a case of ordinary adoption, there being no earthly father to dispute Joseph’s paternal relation to Jesus.

Jesus could and would have been regarded as Joseph’s son and heir with complete propriety, satisfying every scriptural demand that he be the “seed of David.” ~ (Elwell, W. A., & Beitzel, B. J. 1988. Baker encyclopedia of the Bible (850–851). Baker Book House: Grand Rapids, Mich.)

This understanding of Joseph as an adoptee was also advocated by Augustine in his Reply to Faustus and The Harmony of the Gospels.

Any one can see as well as you that Joseph has one father in Matthew and another in Luke, and so with the grandfather and with all the rest up to David. … the practice of adoption is common among our fathers, and in Scripture, … frequently in human life one man may have two fathers, one of whose flesh he is born, and another of whose will he is afterwards made a son by adoption … Careful students of sacred Scripture easily saw, from a little consideration, how, in the different genealogies of the two evangelists, Joseph had two fathers, and consequently two lists of ancestors.~ (Augustine Reply to Faustus 3.3 in Schaff, P. 1997. The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers Vol. IV (159-160). Logos Research Systems: Oak Harbor)

Joseph may have had two fathers,—namely, one by whom he was begotten, and a second by whom he may have been adopted. For it was an ancient custom also among that people to adopt children with the view of making sons for themselves of those whom they had not begotten.

… here is nothing absurd in saying that a person has begotten, not after the flesh, it may be, but in love, one whom he has adopted as a son. … It would be no departure from the truth, therefore, even had Luke said that Joseph was begotten by the person by whom he was really adopted. Even in that way he did in fact beget him, not indeed to be a man, but certainly to be a son ~ (Augustine De Consens Ev. 2.3.5-7 in Schaff, P. 1997. The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers Vol. VI (103-104). Logos Research Systems: Oak Harbor)

We can’t be too dogmatic about this. However it does reconcile the differences between Matthew and Luke and provides some insight into the character of Joseph. Perhaps this is why he was willing and ready to accept and adopt the unborn Jesus as his son and give them protection and care when Jesus’ life was threatened by Herod. It would also explain the power and significance of his influence on his other son, James, who would later describe authentic faith and Christianity as caring for widows and orphans. The formation of Joseph as a man came from first hand experience with adoption and care of children, both as an adoptee and an adoptive father. He passed this legacy to his sons and continues to give us a challenge and example to champion the cause of the defenseless.

 

 

An adoption connection with the tribes of Israel

In reading the Old Testament, when a geographic region is mentioned, it is usually referred to in terms of its tribal allocation. Depending on your attention to detail, you might get a bit confused when you try to line up these tribal allocations with the original sons or family heads of Jacob (later renamed, Israel). For the majority of us, the most familiar son of Jacob is probably Joseph (i.e. the owner of the multi-coloured coat). Yet, there is no ‘tribe of Joseph‘ so to speak. Instead, Joseph’s two son’s, Manasseh and Ephraim, form two new family tribes and receive a land allocation along with ten of Jacob’s other sons. K. A. Matthews in The New American Commentary on Genesis offers the explanation that Jacob adopted Manasseh and Ephraim and gave them the same legal recognition and inheritance of his other (direct biological) sons.

Jacob claims the sons of Joseph as his own, making them full recipients of his inheritance on the same order as Jacob’s other sons (Gen 48:5–6). … Ephraim and Manasseh will have full status as Jacob’s sons (not merely grandsons), receiving their rightful legacy. The [text] reinforces the new standing that Ephraim and Manasseh receive. This adoption extends to Joseph’s first two sons only, not those Joseph may produce subsequently; future offspring will not have their brothers’ elevated status, meaning that their inheritance will fall under the territorial designations of Ephraim and Manasseh (Gen 48:6; Josh 14:4). …

… the sons of Joseph also receive firstborn rights as the adopted sons of Israel (1 Chr 5:1–2). … The adoption of Ephraim and Manasseh as the “sons of Jacob/Israel” also had implications for the configuration of the “twelve tribes of Israel.” … the Blessing of Moses counts twelve tribes by deleting Simeon and dividing the house of Joseph into Ephraim and Manasseh (Deut 33:17). In the idealized count presented by Ezekiel (Ezk 47:13–14), the land divides into twelve equal allotments with two going to Joseph, since the tribe of Levi receives no portion (Ezk 44:28). ~ (Mathews, K. A. 2007. Genesis 11:27-50:26 (electronic ed.). Logos Library System; The New American Commentary. Vol. 1B (874–876). Broadman & Holman Publishers: Nashville)