adopt.a.

beebe: a manifesto

A confession is needed at the foundation of this adoption manifesto: my

personality is one of probing big decisions, often asking “why” or “how” before
asking the needed but cautious “so when do we start”. There is a good chance
that, whatever curiosities you might have about international adoption, those
same curiosities have already been filtered through my head…some with
conclusions and some left irresolute.

On the fascia, adoption sounds like a “nice thing to do for someone who is in
need.” International adoption typically elicits a response of “oh…wow, we have
some friends who did that…that’s neat.” Here is the problem, as one of the two
decision makers in a serious adoption discussion, we are not allowed the
distance of those two responses; this is real, this is serious and this decision has
no “return policy”.

This manifesto is not meant to unearth the emotional thoughts and feelings of our
adoption decision and process, but instead to learn my interpretation of the
Biblical idea of adoption and how it correlates to the reality of adding an already
existing life to our family and vice versa.

Adoption Is God’s Normative

The Bible, emphatically the New Testament, is rich in adoptive language; the
volume of which testifies to its commonality within God’s Kingdom. Paul, an
early Apostle and author of many of the New Testament letters, utilizes vivid
familial language throughout including sons, heirs, children of God, sons of God,
brother, Father, etc. The word adoption (υ ι ο θ ε σ ι α ) means “to place as a
son”. Of course, many of the relationships that he speaks of in his various letters
to the Galatian, Ephesian, Roman and Corinthian Churches are not biological in
genesis, but adoptive; taking root post-birth requiring the choice to place as a son
or daughter.

How do we achieve this adoption or ‘sonship’? John says that “to all who did
receive him, who believed in his name (“him/his” being Jesus Christ), he gave the
right to become children of God” (John 1:12). Paul says that being a child of God
is reserved for those who are being led by the Holy Spirit (Romans 8:14). The
leading of the Holy Spirit is available to those who are not continuing to live
according to the flesh (Romans 8:13), which is to live under the influence of
“sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, witchcraft, enmity, strife,
jealousy, angry fits, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies
and things like these” (Galatians 5:19-21).
It is a fact that a person’s birth through the womb of a certain woman does not
guarantee him to be a son/daughter of God, but those who identify themselves
with God through the mediator, His son, Jesus (Romans 9:7-8). God adopts us,
so it is understandable that some will also share this like desire since we are
created in His image (Genesis 1:27).

God’s offer of adoption is something to celebrate loudly due to our lot prior to our
adoption. The Church in Galatia received a letter from Paul (Galatians 3:23-29)
saying that prior to our becoming children of God, the personality-less and
emotion-less law was our custodian; our guardian. While we appreciated the
confines of guardianship, this law was more prison than freedom. The
emergence of Christ (as human) affords us the opportunity to take the prison
keys, open the door and walk out; “for where Christ is there is freedom.” It is
hard not to be swallowed by emotion at the thought of a child who has been
deemed a confined life of emotional and sociological prison, to all of the sudden,
and through no effort of her own, walk out into a world of freedom with a family
who desires to invest, lead, teach, train, develop and mobilize. That is the
picture of God through Christ; namely, you were in prison, God offers the gift of
adoption through Jesus, followed by subsequent and ongoing investment…all
motivated by love, not by what you have done (Ephesians 2:8,9).

Adoption Is The Granting Of Full Rights, Responsibilities And Privileges

New Testament word pictures provide us the visual of the pre-adoption

experience as slavery; “…that we might receive adoption to sonship…So you are
no longer a slave…” (Galatians 4:5b, 7a). Adoption was actually quite common
among the surrounding Greco-Roman culture for a number of reasons, the least
of these as a means for wealthy Governmental bourgeois to carry on their
genealogy, thus their power, through a son. If the boy would be made a son and
carried on the Father’s involvements, then the son would logically have had to be
commissioned as “fully son”, not a hired sit-in.

It is a human invention to think of the adopted child as the “lesser” or

“subsequent” person in the order of family rank. God’s idea of adoption seems
not to offer such system of ranking, instead providing all with the same access to
love, discipline, investment, relationship and inheritance

“…that we might receive adoption to sonship…So you are no longer a

slave, but God’s child; and since you are his child, God has made you
also an heir.” (Galatians 4)

John emphatically writes, “Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what
we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ
appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.” In as much is Jesus
is God’s Son, so we, through adoption, have son-like access.
Many of history’s enlightened leaders were adopted, and provided with full and
complete access to the “family business”,

• Jesus of Nazareth adopted by Joseph (Mary’s Husband)

• Moses, a Levitical Hebrew, adopted by Pharoah’s (Egypt’s most powerful
leader) daughter
• Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus (Augustus Caesar) was adopted by his
Great-Uncle Roman Emperor Julius Caear which led to a 200 year Roman
tradition of the Emperor’s attaining their position via adopted:
o Tiberius
o Caligula
o Nero
o Trajan
o Hadrian
o Antoninus Pius
o Lucius Verus

Literally, there is no distinction between “biological” and “non-biological”, adopted

children immediately lose the tag “adopted” and become simply, “children”
regardless of status or geneology.

What are the privileges and benefits of sonship?

• Parents (James 1)
• Communication (Matthew 6:9)
• No longer a slave to poverty (Galatians 4:7)
• Care for daily needs (Matthew 6:32, 7:11)
• Understanding (Psalm 103:13-14)
• Inheritance (Galatians 4:7, Romans 4:17, 1 Peter 1:4
• Discipline (Hebrews 12)
• Family members (Romans 1:13, 1 Corinthians 1:10)
• Mentors (Ephesians 5:1, 1 Peter 1:14-16)

Local and Global

Are there examples of human to human adoption in the Biblical narrative? Yes.
Intra-racially, Jesus of Nazareth was adopted by Joseph who was engaged to,
and eventually married Jesus’ mother Mary. Interracially, Moses was born at a
time with there was a global mandate of infanticide by the Egyptian government
on the heads of all Hebrew newborns. Moses’ birth-mother made a decision to
continue with pregnancy, deliver the baby, and then give Moses up for an
anonymous, albeit bazaar, adoption process. One of Pharoah’s daughters
became the adoptive mother; a poly-theistic Egyptian woman raising a mono-
theistic Hebrew boy; an ironic pairing.
God himself is the adoptive Father of all people who choose to accept his offer,
which is to posit that God is not simply the creator of all races, but has actively
chosen, in spite of man’s fall, to continue a relationship with all races without
prejudice; the Arab, Israeli, Tajik, Nigerian, Peruvian and American (panta ethne
– all nations). The Bible states over and over that God is love; not that God is
love to the Chileans, but not the Columbians or God is love to the dark skinned,
but not the light skinned.

A Healthy Plan B

The original design of God was for humans, his creation, to be in direct
relationship with him with no need of a mediator or savior. Likewise, the “Plan A”
of parenting a child is for the birth mother and father to work in partnership to
develop, train and lead their biological offspring.

Sin is the trump card that has been played to shift Plan A, thus requiring a Plan
B. Each person is born into the world with a bent to do that which is contrary to
the nature of God, and soon act out their predisposition requiring an individual
salvation from the penalty payment that must be made in each case of personal
irresponsibility; enter plan B. Our spiritual “adoption process” is not a year and a
half worth of dossier’s and paperwork, but rather an eternal decision of God to
send his own Son to pay penalty, through his sinless life and public murder, for
our contrarian sin while dualistically offering life through himself; the adoption of
us as children of God, a wonderful Plan B.

Continuity With New Testament Teaching

When following the various documentaries of Jesus in the gospels, his teachings
give insight and consistency with the theology of adoption. Elements of adoption
seem to have a synergistic motivation with “seeking and saving that which was
lost”, or to James’ charge of care of orphans and widows. Here is a sampling of
texts from the Bible as relates to caring for parent-less children…

In you the orphan finds mercy.

Hosea 14:3

Never take advantage of any widow or orphan. If you do and they cry out to me,
you can be sure that I will hear their cry.
Exodus 22:22-23

For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God. For you did
not receive the spirit of bondage again to fear, but you received the Spirit of
adoption by whom we cry out, "Abba, Father."
Romans 8:14-16
But when the fullness of the time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of a
woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, that we
might receive the adoption as sons.
Galatians 4:4-6

You are the helper of the fatherless. LORD, You have heard the desire of the
humble; You will prepare their heart; You will cause Your ear to hear, To do
justice to the fatherless and the oppressed, That the man of the earth may
oppress no more.
Psalms 10:14,17-18

Pure and genuine religion in the sight of God the Father means caring for
orphans and widows in their distress and refusing to let the world corrupt you.
James 1:27

Father to the fatherless, defender of widows — this is God, whose dwelling is

holy. God places the lonely in families.
Psalms 68:5-6

When you are harvesting your crops and forget to bring in a bundle of grain from
your field, don’t go back to get it. Leave it for the foreigners, orphans, and
widows. Then the LORD your God will bless you in all you do.
Deuteronomy 24:19

Learn to do good. Seek justice. Help the oppressed. Defend the cause of
orphans. Fight for the rights of widows.
Isaiah 1:17

Final Thoughts

God consumes Scriptural real estate to highlight the opportunity we have to

provide care for children whose only available options are abandonment,
fostering or institutionalization (this is not meant to equate those options). For
some reason God has activated the adoptive desire inside of our hearts as a
family, first for Nigeria, and now for a child. May His name be made great among
the nations.