Adoption and the Gospel

Ryan Bomberger writes, "Adoption is at the heart of our soul's redemption".

Adoption is an issue so central to the Christian faith that it is shocking how little mention is made of it in regular Christian life.

Various letters to TODAY have discussed the issue recently. Joseph Wong writes in "To help orphans, change our views on adoption" (27 December 2013):

Adopting a child is as much giving life as giving birth and should be celebrated.

Perhaps if society views adoption and adopted children more positively, many more of the millions of orphans in the world might have a family and a new life.

Shafiq Abdullah reiterates this point in "Adoption: Point is to care for orphans, neglected kids" (30 December 2013):

Although many people I know see adoption as a “solution” for couples who cannot have children, I think they miss the more important point of it: Caring for orphans and neglected children.

Adoption is a way for a child to find a stable home where he is loved and protected by adoptive parents.

A progressive society should put the needs of children first. If our society views adoption and adopted children more positively, we could indeed find homes for many orphans and neglected children.

Likewise, Darius Lee writes in "Streamline adoption process, form support groups for families" (31 December 2013):

I agree with Mr Joseph Wong (“To help orphans, change our views on adoption”, Dec 27) and Mr Shafiq Abdullah (“Adoption: Point is to care for orphans, neglected kids”, Dec 30) that we should change our perspective of adoption in order to help orphans and neglected children find homes where they can be loved and protected.

The needs of children should come first. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, to which Singapore is a party, stipulates that the best interests of the child shall be the paramount consideration under a system of adoption.

According to statistics provided in March by Minister for Social and Family Development Chan Chun Sing in Parliament, the average number of child adoptions in Singapore over the last five years has been about 400. It takes about five months to process each adoption case.

As a society, we should not only work to streamline our system of adoption, but also encourage adoption by raising awareness of its life-giving potential. The community can form support groups for adoptive families to empower parents in sensitive matters such as disclosure. Likewise, the Government should consider measures to provide information about adoption, while respecting confidentiality.

Thus, we can unleash the life-giving value of adoption, in the best interests of our children. As the minister said, every one child matched with a proper family is one more happy Singaporean.

New family and new life

The Gospel message is about our adoption into God's family through the life-giving sacrifice of Jesus Christ. 

The Book of Genesis begins with the story of how Adam, whom Luke refers to as "the son of God" (Luke 3:37), was cut off from God because of his sin in the Garden of Eden. Death entered the world through Adam's sin. Paul explains that "through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners" (Romans 5:19). 

 

All at once, Man had lost his family and life because of sin.

Yet through faith in Jesus Christ, we have all received God's grace and are adopted into God's family. Paul teaches us that we "are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus" (Galatians 3:26). God has made us His children and heirs:

For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship. And by him we cry, "Abba, Father." The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God's children. Now if we are children, then we are heirs--heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory. (Romans 8:15-17)

We have been given a new family and a new life.

Caring for orphans

Another reason why adoption is so central to the Christian faith is the importance of caring for orphans.

 

The Bible describes God as a "father to the fatherless" (Psalm 68:5). He "defends the cause of the fatherless" (Deuteronomy 10:18).

 

All throughout the Old Testament are injunctions to protect the rights of the fatherless. For example, the prophet Isaiah exhorted the people of Judah to "defend the cause of the fatherless", and rebuked the rulers for failing to protect their rights (Isaiah 1:17, 23).

 

Likewise, James writes in the New Testament:

Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world. (James 1:27)

The Bible is clear about the importance of caring for orphans. God cares for them, and we as His children should do likewise.

 

Should we not do likewise?

Adoption is central to the Gospel message. Through Jesus Christ, we receive God's grace and mercy and become His children when we were once cut off by sin and death. We have been given a new family and a new life. 

 

Moreover, we reflect the love of God Himself when we care for orphans and neglected children and protect their rights. 

 

Having received God's love and having been adopted into His family, should we not also open our homes to the orphans and neglected children in our midst?

Aren't you glad Jesus did not embrace a "prochoice" worldview?

The Radiance Foundation has lately published an article titled "What Would (a Prochoice) Jesus Do?" (17 December 2013):

Sometimes we achieve clarity when we put an ideology into a different context. Our news media superficially celebrates those who fight for “equality” while denying it to millions through the violence of abortion. They go all Lady Gaga over someone who will stand for a whopping 11 hours to demand the death of innocent human life. Christ hung on a cross for a lot longer, and I’m pretty sure it was more physically tasking than standing in place in comfy pink sneakers. The difference? His sacrifice was so others wouldn’t perish.

But what if Jesus were to have embraced a “prochoice” worldview? What would that look like?

We could kiss salvation goodbye. Adoption is at the heart of our soul’s redemption, yet a maligned consideration on the “prochoice” periphery.  (Planned Parenthood aborts over 149 children for every 1 adoption referral). Half of us would immediately be written off as unwanted, therefore disposable, and certainly not worth eternally saving.

A “prochoice” Jesus would be the ultimate hypocrite having his own life spared from a single teenage mother scenario only to condemn to death others in similar circumstances. He, like the Jesse Jacksons of the world (who was conceived in rape), would enjoy the grand possibility of life while others the grim inevitability of undeserved death.

A Savior who espouses the tenets of the “prochoice” faith would not have to reveal the power of miracles, but instead rely upon a pessimistic outlook that misery is the natural outcome of physical affliction. The blind seeing, the lame walking and lepers healed would only take valuable time and resources away from those who weren’t a “burden” on society.  He would relish in His efforts to eliminate the “unfit” from the overpopulated world upon which He apparently miscalculated.

A Christ that embraced abortion dogma would be far less compassionate. That love would be conditional, dependent upon someone’s assigned worth. Those deemed “unwanted” or “undesirable” would automatically be assumed to be unlovable. He would preach to the multitudes that they should treat others how they would like to be treated, unless the others were worthless and their removal improved your bottom line.

Those who sinned and deeply desired redemption would be told that they should, instead, consider how they feel. Did it feel good to lust after someone else’s wife? Did your natural tendency to suppress self-restraint gratify you? Did you feel limited in a monogamous marital relationship that, in turn, forced you to discover your true femininity in sexual exploration? The woman caught and accused of adultery, would not have been spared from stoning because there were no men (including the adulterous ones) without sin, but because there was no sin to speak of. Christ the ProChoicer would’ve given her partially accurate birth control advice, STD-prone prophylactics and an affirming lecture on how her sexual promiscuity was normal and healthy.

This month we celebrate Christmas and the birth of a Savior who would eventually give His own life. But a “prochoice” Jesus would’ve prevented such selflessness. Narcissism is at the heart of abortion doctrine. His death and resurrection never would have happened; self-sacrifice is anathema to sacred abortion beliefs. Jesus would not have been seized from the Mount of Olives, because He would’ve chosen someone else to take his place. He had 12 disciples. Certainly one of them could be sacrificed.

Instead we have a Messiah who cares about every life from the moment of conception until natural death and beyond. He chose to be nailed to a cross, despite His innocence, and die so that we can be redeemed, no matter what we’ve done. We have a Savior who saves the most wretched, the most defenseless and the most broken. He emblazoned Purpose on our hearts from the moment we were conceived. In Christ we have compassion, grace, mercy, love, forgiveness, hope and possibility personified.

This Christmas look beyond the flashing colors, the overly-marketed ploys to buy plastic with plastic, and the well-choreographed holiday church services into the simplicity of why His birth is so meaningful and life-changing.

And rejoice! For unto us a Savior is born! And the outcome of that (humanly) unplanned pregnancy was not misery, but our very eternal liberty.

Aren't you glad Jesus did not embrace a "prochoice" worldview?

This Christmas, let us thank God for His wonderful gift of life!

The Hero of the Little India Riots

The Little India riots shocked Singapore and damaged the image of Singapore as a peaceful, stable society. Approximately 400 foreign workers of South Asian origin rioted in Little India, after a bus knocked down a worker who had earlier been asked to step out of the bus because of his unruly behaviour.

In one of the videos, various rioters attacked the bus with makeshift weapons, bins and whatever they could find. One man stood out, bravely warding off the attackers. Other reports also revealed that he had protected the bus assistant by bringing her to safety in the bus.

This man is a hero and we as a society should give him a reward.

As Christians, we can also learn something from this man's example.

Do you join in the crowd and simply follow what everyone else is doing, like the riot in Ephesus described in the Book of Acts, where "[the] assembly was in confusion"; "[some] were shouting one thing, some another" and "[most] of the people did not even know why they were there" (Acts 19:32)? 

Do you stand idly by? 

Or do you stand out from the crowd by doing what is right even if everyone else is doing otherwise?

Christians are meant to be the salt and light of the world:

You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled by men. "You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven. (Matthew 5:13-16)

Does your light shine before men?

The Liberal Heresy - Love Apart from Morality

Full post at "http://pjsaunders.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/divorcing-love-from-morality-new.html"

"Situation ethics basically states that other moral principles can be cast aside in certain situations if love is best served; as theologian Paul Tillich once put it: ‘Love is the ultimate law’.

The moral principles Fletcher was specifically referring to were the moral codes of Christianity and the type of love he is specifically referring to is ‘agape’ love.

Fletcher believed that in forming an ethical system based on love, he was best expressing the notion of ‘love thy neighbour’, which Jesus Christ taught in the Gospels.

He believed that there are no absolute laws other than the law of ‘agape’ love, meaning that all the other laws are only guidelines on how to achieve this love, and could be broken if an alternative course of action would result in more love."

By my reading Situation Ethics is a distortion of biblical ethical teaching. It is, in short, heresy. But it is a heresy that appears to be very much alive and well amongst British evangelicals in the 21st century. No more clearly is it evidence than in the shifting views and lack of clarity amongst evangelicals about sexual morality and the shedding of innocent blood.

Interestingly, Fletcher later identified himself as an atheist and was active in the Euthanasia Society of America and the American Eugenics Society and was one of the signatories to the Humanist Manifesto. When he started out, his position was barely distinguishable from orthodoxy. But he finished up in a very different place altogether."

Cheap Grace - The Conservative Heresy

Full post at "http://pjsaunders.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/cheap-grace-false-gospel-and-deadly.html"

Bonhoeffer defines cheap grace as follows:

'Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves. Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession.... Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate’

But what does this cheap grace look like? Bonhoeffer points especially to two things that mark out cheap grace from real grace.

• Cheap  grace is without repentance
• Cheap grace is a grace we bestow on ourselves, in other words, it is a grace we give each other when we see fit, rather than according to the pattern of God

The Power of a Personal Testimony: Lessons from the abortion debate

One of the most controversial topics of our time – abortion – is being debated again in Singapore.

After Dr Amy Khor discussed the topic in Parliament, several letters have been written to the Straits Times forum on the topic. Many of these letters raised highly sophisticated and well-reasoned arguments, using statistics and law to support their reasoning. 

However, one letter stood out from among the rest. 

Dr John Hui shared a simple, straightforward and personal story in "Give women more time, support and choices" (28 November 2013):

WHEN a woman presents with an unplanned pregnancy, her decision on whether or not to abort the baby often hinges on the support she has around her. The greater the support that she is assured of to bring the child to term and beyond, the more likely she will keep her baby.

As a family physician, I remember a woman who once asked for a referral to terminate her pregnancy. She already had a few other children and found it difficult to make ends meet. It was fortunate that her husband came along with her. We spent some time discussing the implications of abortion and the alternatives available.

They returned a few days later. The woman smiled as her husband told me he had decided to fully support her decision to keep the baby.

Some time later, they came back to see me with their young child. I can never forget what the man said to me that day: "Doctor, see this little boy? He is the one you helped us save. We can't imagine what life would be like without him. Thank you so much for your advice!"

Interestingly, in more than 20 years of practice, not one of my patients who made the choice to keep her baby after counselling ever came back to tell me she regretted her decision.

Women need to be provided with ample information about the medical and emotional aspects of abortion, as well as the alternatives available, for their decision to be an informed one.

A "cooling-off" period of 48 hours between the counselling session and the procedure is grossly insufficient. A woman or a couple should be given at least one to two weeks to weigh their options so that the choice they ultimately make is as well considered as possible.

One of the most painfully poignant moments in my life took place when I came across a woman with an infertility problem who tearfully said: "Doc, I had an abortion when I was younger. And I think I might have aborted the only baby my womb would ever bear."

I wish no woman would ever have to go through such pain. Women are special, and they deserve a lot better.

This powerful letter brought to mind the importance of personal testimonies in our faith.

The Power of a Personal Testimony

We have all heard of the Great Commission. Jesus commanded His disciples to "go and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you." (Matthew 28:19-20)

But what did these poor, uneducated fishermen say when they preached the Gospel to others? 

They told others about what they had seen and heard about Jesus Christ. They literally bore witness to the Gospel. At Pentecost, Peter preached that "God has raised this Jesus to life, and we are all witnesses of the fact" (Acts 2:32). 

When ordered not to preach in Jesus' name, Peter and the apostles firmly refused, saying:

"We must obey God rather than men! The God of our fathers raised Jesus from the dead - whom you had killed by hanging Him on a tree. God exalted Him to His own right hand as Prince and Saviour that He might give repentance and forgiveness of sins to Israel. We are witnesses of these things, and so is the Holy Spirit, whom God has given to those who obey Him." (Acts 5:29-32)

Likewise, Paul's testimony was personal:

For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance:

that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures,
that He was buried,
that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures,
and that He appeared to Peter,
and then to the Twelve.
After that, He appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers at the same time,
most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep.
Then He appeared to James,
then to all the apostles,
and last of all He appeared to me also,
as to one abnormally born.

For I am the least of the apostles and do not even deserve to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder than all of them - yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me. Whether, then, it was I or they, this is what we preach, and this is what you believed. (1 Corinthians 15:3-11)

Even the Gospel of Luke is Luke's personal effort to write an orderly account of things he had investigated. Luke wrote in Luke 1:3-4, "since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, it seemed good also to me to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught."

Nevertheless, care must be taken not to over-emphasise personal testimonies at the expense of theology and Scripture. In fact, Peter's sermon at Pentecost quoted from the prophet Joel and King David, explaining the fulfilment of God's prophecies in Christ. Likewise, Paul's Epistles are full of didactic teaching, expounding on Scripture. 

The point is that both are important. And the danger is when we exclusively emphasise one at the expense of the other.

Lessons from the abortion debate

Consider once again the impact of Dr John Hui's heartfelt sharing based on his personal experience with his patients, and then concluding on abortion, "I wish no woman would ever have to go through such pain. Women are special, and they deserve a lot better."

It cuts right to the heart.

So when you say, "Jesus loves us and died for our sins", what witness do you bear? What is your testimony? What has Jesus done in your life?

David Wilkerson - A Call to Anguish