A Journey Toward Ethical Orphan Care Part IV: The Kingdom of God and Caring for the Orphan
“People who believe in the resurrection, in God making a whole new world in which everything will be set right at last, are unstoppably motivated to work for that new world in the present.”
N.T. Wright, Surprised by Hope
As Christian believers, we believe that we live in a sense of “already and the not yet.” Christ lived, died and rose to life to save us and redeem us, bringing us into a relationship with Him. This has ALREADY happened; it is complete, finished and not lacking anything. We also live in this painful, but always hopeful place of the “not yet.” We live in broken bodies, in a broken world full of broken relationships. But we live with our eyes on “thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, on EARTH, as it is in Heaven.” We have the privilege of working towards this inevitable end of seeing the Kingdom come on earth as it is in Heaven. As the church body, this is our goal. This is the desire of our hearts.
To the widow and the orphan, this means whole and healthy families that are free of poverty, living in stability, security and opportunity. It means children with full bellies living in the safety of a home with their mother in the land of their fathers.
I believe that THIS is the ultimate goal of the church in caring for the widow and the orphan. We work towards freedom from poverty, stability for single mothers, shelter for families, the alleviation of ALL desperate reasons that a mother would choose to relinquish her children. We work to preserve the structure and health of birth families. We work towards this for other countries and cultures as well as our own. We have the enormous privilege of doing the Kingdom work that it takes to see these things here and NOW in the Kingdom of Heaven!
N.T. Wright speaks beautifully to our daily lives and our work as immensely purposeful in this Kingdom. “The point of the resurrection…is that the present bodily life is not valueless just because it will die…What you do with your body in the present matters because God has a great future in store for it…What you do in the present—by painting, preaching, singing, sewing, praying, teaching, building hospitals, digging wells, campaigning for justice, writing poems, caring for the needy, loving your neighbor as yourself—will last into God's future. These activities are not simply ways of making the present life a little less beastly, a little more bearable, until the day when we leave it behind altogether (as the hymn so mistakenly puts it…). They are part of what we may call building for God's kingdom.”
We work towards “On earth, as it is in Heaven.”
Modern Day adoption absolutely has its very own beautiful place in this work towards the “new creation” Kingdom of God. To be completely alone and uncared for is a horror of this old world that no child should endure. When we are able to provide family for a child who has NO other family and no other options for care within their own culture and country— this adoption is a beautiful reflection of our adoption as sons and the inheritance of family. But to consider adoption as the first and best solution for the children of poverty stricken windows (and most adoptable children are orphans of poverty) allows poverty and greed of a society to separate families, dissolve cultures and keep the widow in a state of desperation, all while we could be working to prevent all of these. Rushing into adoption as the primary and best solution for vulnerable children directly counters the ultimate restoration work of the Kingdom of Heaven.
Modern day adoption practices did not exist in the Roman world of the Apostle Paul. There was no legal system or practice in which a child was removed from one family structure and placed into another family structure, taking the new family name, identity or culture. Paul used the term “huiothesia” - meaning “adopted to sonship” - several times in Romans and Ephesians. The term connotes a process by which an emperor or wealthy man would choose a grown young man to receive his inheritance.
J.I. Packer wrote fervently about this beautiful doctrine of inheritance that Paul spoke of,
“Adoption is the highest privilege of the gospel. … To be right with God the Judge is a great thing, but to be loved and cared for by God the Father is greater.” Packer goes further to say that this inheritance should affect the depths of our identity in Christ and that we should preach these words to ourselves everyday: “I am a child of God. God is my Father, heaven is my home; every day is one day nearer. My Savior is my brother, every Christian is my brother too.” This inheritance will affect every ounce of our lives as Christians. But to be clear, modern day adoption is an application of this passage, not a mandate of our faith.
This is where the difficult hard work comes into play. Becoming so deeply involved in the societal issues of any country is not quick, simple or easy work. Determining which children are truly “double orphans” with no living parents or extended family that can be found and supported in stability—this work takes time, wisdom, and long term investment in people and relationships. Now, more than ever we have the technology, the resources and the ingenuity to see this hard work take shape in order to truly walk with widows and orphans and to see them become a part of the Kingdom of God. We are given the privilege to witness these things when we choose to engage in this difficult work of family preservation, reunification and stability.
N.T. Wright also writes of this new creation, “But I know that God’s new world of justice and joy, of hope for the whole earth, was launched when Jesus came out of the tomb on Easter morning, and I know that he calls his followers to live in him and by the power of his Spirit and so to be new-creation people here and now, bringing signs and symbols of the kingdom to birth on earth as in heaven. The resurrection of Jesus and the gift of the Spirit mean that we are called to bring real and effective signs of God’s renewed creation to birth even in the midst of the present age.”
“Real and effective” signs of God’s new creation are things that I want to see and participate in as part of the Kingdom. I want to be a part of bringing these “signs and symbols” to earth. I want to be a part of this grand work.
So let us always ask, “What are we working towards?” “What would any situation look like in this New Creation?” Let us work towards THAT end! We get to see glimmers of this Hope and the reality of what will come in the “not yet” of our final Restoration. In this New Creation world there will be no more sickness, no more death, no more tears, no more poverty, “no evil will befall us.” And, we have the enormous privilege of working towards this day when the Kingdom comes fully and completely when Christ returns.
This is why my family is committed to the work of Mwana Villages. Here, you will see abandoned children reunited with caring family members. You will see vulnerable young mothers who have only known trauma, empowered with an education and stability to care for their own family. You will see children who are given the gift of thriving in their birth country and culture. You will see bright smiling eyes of babies and caregivers who know the “Hope to which we are called.”
So, may we always look at this world and be able to say, “Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven.”
—Anna Harvey