The Adoption Paradox
Stories
Lectionary Tales For The Pulpit
Series IV Cycle C
Our oldest daughter is adopted.
I rarely confide this information. Not because I am embarrassed, or because she might be embarrassed. It's just useless information. I rarely even think of her as adopted. She's my daughter. Period. End of story.
I was reading a Christian writer the other day, and she began a chapter by telling a story about her son, "who," she added, "is adopted." I expected the story to be about some facet of the child's adoption, or some medical crisis that had arisen because he had different genetic material than his adoptive parents. But there was none of this. The information was totally gratuitous.
An article in Discover (January, 2001) has a fascinating account of adoption -- in animals. Humans are not the only species that occasionally adopts its offspring. Birds do it, and fish do it, as well as other animals. Sometimes, the adoption even crosses species. And those of you who know anything about the origins of Rome know that Romulus and Remus were fed, protected, and nurtured by a very intuitive wolf!
The piece in Discover goes on to discuss adoption as a counter-intuitive practice. It makes no sense at all from a Darwinian, evolutionary perspective. Why on earth would a human, or fish, or fowl, waste time taking care of someone else's genes?
That's why I'm so astonished when I think about biblical statements that refer to me as a "child of God." Here I am, a person in whom -- one would think -- resides very little divine genetic material, and yet God loves me, nurtures me, protects me, and feeds me as though I were one of his very own.
Ontologically oxymoronic.
Yet -- and here is the paradox of spiritual adoption -- by God's grace, I am of God, of God's nature, of God's wisdom and power. I am not God, any more than my daughter is me. But I am of God -- as counter-intuitive as that may seem!
I rarely confide this information. Not because I am embarrassed, or because she might be embarrassed. It's just useless information. I rarely even think of her as adopted. She's my daughter. Period. End of story.
I was reading a Christian writer the other day, and she began a chapter by telling a story about her son, "who," she added, "is adopted." I expected the story to be about some facet of the child's adoption, or some medical crisis that had arisen because he had different genetic material than his adoptive parents. But there was none of this. The information was totally gratuitous.
An article in Discover (January, 2001) has a fascinating account of adoption -- in animals. Humans are not the only species that occasionally adopts its offspring. Birds do it, and fish do it, as well as other animals. Sometimes, the adoption even crosses species. And those of you who know anything about the origins of Rome know that Romulus and Remus were fed, protected, and nurtured by a very intuitive wolf!
The piece in Discover goes on to discuss adoption as a counter-intuitive practice. It makes no sense at all from a Darwinian, evolutionary perspective. Why on earth would a human, or fish, or fowl, waste time taking care of someone else's genes?
That's why I'm so astonished when I think about biblical statements that refer to me as a "child of God." Here I am, a person in whom -- one would think -- resides very little divine genetic material, and yet God loves me, nurtures me, protects me, and feeds me as though I were one of his very own.
Ontologically oxymoronic.
Yet -- and here is the paradox of spiritual adoption -- by God's grace, I am of God, of God's nature, of God's wisdom and power. I am not God, any more than my daughter is me. But I am of God -- as counter-intuitive as that may seem!
