Speaking Out column

As the population continues to rise, people ask, How does God want me to care for children? This does not imply that God wants all people to be parents or schoolteachers but draws upon the biblical model of adoption and care for orphans. Although the Bible clearly demonstrates the responsibility of both the mother and the father in bringing up the child, concern for the disenfranchised is certainly a theme in the Bible.

Our mandate, given by Jesus Christ under the new covenant, is to care for the orphaned. He advocated letting the children come to him when the disciples wanted to dismiss them. He had great concern for these children, who were precious in his sight, regardless of their ethnicity, gender or capabilities. Yet there are many children, globally and nationally, who are without mother and father or, worse yet, on the streets fending for themselves.

There are 11-year-old girls on the streets of the world prostituting themselves; doing despicable acts one’s wife would not do, just to have money to feed themselves. In India, parents intentionally mutilate the bodies of their children so they can panhandle on the streets. Young boys steal and rob for food or allow themselves to be violated by perverse men for money.

In this country as well are children who desperately need homes. They are given up by young women who accidentally or forcefully get pregnant. There are even more school-age children whose parents do not emotionally take care of them. Yet all these at-risk children who could be adopted are deemed unwanted because they are “too old,” not of European descent or because potential adoptive parents worry about the orphaned child not looking like one of their own. They are disregarded as unlovable because of circumstances they cannot control. Many children wait for parents to adopt them, but as they get older, their chances of being adopted diminish, and so does their hope.

The facts of displaced children and the sheer amount of couples that want children are undeniable. However, there is a solution both to the ache of the orphan’s abandonment and the desire of couples to have children. Christians have an obligation to form their ethics and actions after what the Bible instructs. The Scriptures paint a picture of selflessness and generosity, not just as a suggestion but also as a way of life. Perhaps the most vivid image of these two virtues comes in the concept of adoption.

The Scriptures certainly speak of adoption, but adoption is used in the Bible in reference to God adopting us. We were unwanted and sinful; God took us in, sanctifying us and giving us life eternal. God not only adopted us but did it by sacrificing his only begotten Son, Jesus Christ. It was through giving up his own Son that we can be called sons and daughters of the Father.

In the same way, through the relinquishing of the ability to have biological children, more children can be adopted as sons and daughters and saved from a life of a hell on earth. How much love a child can feel when parents come and pick them out of a life of destitution! Then with the life example of adoption, the parents can explain how God adopted them into his family.

The question before us is, How can we continue to procreate wantonly when we know there are many children of equal dignity and worth with a life full of pain, abandoned by their parents who did not want them? The Lord Jesus welcomed children to sit on his lap while he blessed them, and he would not have turned a blind eye to the abandoned child.

Why should some children be brought into existence when there are many loving, beautiful children who need homes immediately? Let us remember the words from James, “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for orphans” (1:27). This pure action will glorify the Almighty God more than a thousand live births.

C. Richie is in the Master of Divinity program at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, South Hamilton, Mass.