Physical and Spiritual Adoption - Some Similarities

As my wife and I continue our journey along the winding and often unpredictable road of international adoption, it occurred to me that adoption is a thoroughly biblical principle. One of the blessings I've experienced from the necessary grindings of the adoption process is that it has forced me to think about my own spiritual adoption in ways that are humbling. The lessons I am learning will hopefully make me a better parent once our adopted child is with us.

During our own education process about the unique issues presented by internationally adopted children, we have been hit by the constant drumbeat that international kids who are adopted often have emotional and behavioral issues that have to be worked through. In particular, these kids often have considerable 'attachment' issues resulting from leaving not only familiar surroundings, but an entire culture. These kids often don't trust the love and attention given to them because of their history of receiving inconsistent and non-lasting attention from overworked caregivers and orphan workers. This, coupled with the upside-down nature of their relocation to a 'new world' and a new culture, can result in the child feeling completely lost, confused, and entirely out of place. It is hardly a mystery why children such as these, when bombarded by these momentous changes at ridiculously early ages, have difficulty attaching to their adoptive parents and trusting their new surroundings enough to embrace the opportunities and love that now awaits them.

I have found that spiritual adoption has some of the same characteristics. The Bible clearly teaches that those who have accepted Christ as the Savior they need have been adopted into the family of God and are considered 'sons' (Eph. 1.5, Rom. 8.23, 9.4). As Robert Peterson has coined it, we have been adopted from wayward sinners to cherished children of our Father God. The Johannine writings give strong voice to this idea in several places. John 1.12-13 link individual faith to a new family status. God becomes our new father through adoption, and our new 'sonship' comes because we have been adopted as children into a new family - God's family (1J 3.1). Jesus didn't make a slip of the tongue when he announced to Mary in John 20.17 that he will ascend not only to 'my Father', but 'your Father' as well. The Pauline cry of Abba Father (Gal. 4.6, Rom. 8.15) is the result of us becoming God's children (Rom. 8.16) and the heirs to a great inheritance as a result of our adoption (Rom. 8.17, Gal. 4). Adoption is a thoroughly biblical idea.

But in the Christian life, we also discover that there are attachment and dislocation issues as well. Just as the young child has difficulty letting go of his attachment to his former surroundings, even when these surroundings might strike us as terrible, we also struggle to separate our attachment from our old patterns of sin and embrace our wondrous new surroundings in the family of God. In Romans 7, Paul describes in agonizingly realistic terms this great ongoing struggle between the new and old natures that are battling within him. Christians who reflectively read Romans 7 often think they're reading their own biography. When you think about it, Christians ought to understand better than anyone the attachment issues that adopted children often experience, because we experience them too in our spiritual adoption. Often times, people think that because the environment of the child has improved so dramatically as a result of an adoption, the child would have no problem adjusting to such a clearly better situation. They don't understand why the child would be confused in his new status and grappling with internal battles about where his loyalties lie, how he should act, whether he should trust, and what his identity is. But Christians know this battle all too well. We've been saved out of the muck of our former sinful and hopeless existence, and we do rejoice. But oh how we struggle to let go of our former attachments, and fully embrace our new identity as adopted children in the family of God! We know our situation is incomparably better than before. Yet, we struggle mightily to leave our old ways behind. This is a spiritual version of the same kind of attachment issues adopted children have when trying to adjust to an entirely new reality.

The same can be said about dislocation. While the child struggles with feeling at home in a completely new world, we as Christians have similar struggles that Scripture regularly talks about. As adopted children of God, we have a new citizenship in the Kingdom of God (Phil. 3.20, John 18.36). We are in the world but no longer of the world (John 15.19, 17.6, 14). As a result, we are to no longer be conformed to the ways of the world (Rom. 12.2, James 4.4, 1J 2.15, etc), but to set our hearts on things above (Col. 3.1-2), and specifically Christ and the certain hope of his return (1P 1.13, 3.15). All of this sounds great. But since the very beginning of the Christian movement, the church at-large has struggled with the specifics of how to work out the spiritual dislocation resulting from its new citizenship. How cozy or not cozy should we be with the world we still live in? To probe this question is to understand in spiritual terms the struggles associated with physical and emotional dislocation that often plague adopted children. Again, as Christians who are ourselves adopted children, we above all people should understand the earthly struggles of adopted children, because our adoptive struggles are of the same order.

Adoption is a wonderful thing that often produces immeasurable benefits and blessings to everyone involved under the sovereign tutelage of God. But like everything else in a fallen world, adoption creates unique challenges that Scripture itself recognizes and opines about extensively. Robert Peterson has written a pretty good book on being Adopted by God that I would recommend for those wishing to explore further what it means to be adopted into the family of God, and what its personal and global implications are.