Adoption Insights
In Star Wars, Luke Skywalker discovers who his true father is, who his true mother is, and that changes his identity and his destiny. It does the same for everyone, whether you are religious or not. But the Christian faith explores this change deeply.
Adoption in the Christian faith is the relational, familial way of describing all the blessings of the gospel. Fundamental to our faith is that what was lost in the fall, is relationally restored through adoption, as Paul explains in Romans 8 and Galatians 3-4.
But adoption also speaks of surprising new human relationships. I just met my half-brother and two half sisters. Before the end of March 2022, I had not met any of them, and if it wasn’t for my half-sister Lauren, I don’t know if I ever would have found them. I never knew my birth mother; she passed two years ago today. It means I may never meet my birth father.
Whether you are adopted or not, understand that those who are involved in adoption have insights not just into Star Wars, but into what it means to be transformed and changed by understanding more about the family you’ve known and treasured, and the family you suddenly discover you are a part of. We should listen to them.
A theme that’s present in adoption, that everyone can listen and learn from, is a different relationship to institutions than we might think. I was in a hospital and in an orphanage from September 15, 1966 to January 15, 1967. For those months, I competed with other children for the attention of the nurses and caregivers. I probably learned their shifts, I learned which ones I liked and did not like, I learned to adapt to various way of holding a bottle. I probably learned that the lights went off at this exact time and it didn’t matter if I cried or not, they stayed off. This experience of having a home in an institutional, and a group of professionals as your parents has a variety of effects on those who are adopted, a variety of effects that are impossible to predict but also impossible to deny. And by considering this, we can perhaps see how we have an uncomfortable (or far too comfortable) relationship to institutions.
Perhaps you are the parent of an adopted child—thank you! It's important to be ready to tie that part of the story of your adopted child into the fact that God has created an institution for his adopted children to live in—the church. It’s a place filled with mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters to know and love. For those who are adopted from positive institutional settings, there’s probably something sweet and special about finding a new home in the family of God in the church. For those who did not have good experiences in institutions, then there may be mistrust initially, or maybe forever. But God’s kindness working through the local church then becomes a way of redeeming and welcoming them in their brokenness and hurt to the family of God, where that evil done to them may be undone by the grace of God.
Robert Barnes
