Bob: This is FamilyLife Today for Wednesday, September 30. Our host is the president of FamilyLife, Dennis Rainey and I am Bob Lepine. We are going to talk with Dr. Russell Moore today about how we can think rightly about adoption and caring for the needs of orphans.
Background sounds --- [babies crying and a lady talking] “Good morning! You have a sister!”
[man talking] “Yes! She’s beautiful! A new sister!”
And welcome to FamilyLife Today! Thanks for joining us! You know, all of us ought to be thinking about whatever decision we are facing with a theological framework in mind, right?
Dennis: We should!
Bob: But, I just have the sense that if you have your PHD in Theology and your wife says, ‘do you want chicken or beef tonight?’ You stop and think, “I wonder if there is a theological answer there that is the right answer.” You know what I mean? I mean you start to weigh everything through a theological grid.
Dennis: Do you think?
Bob: The reason I bring that up….
Dennis: I think most people are wondering how they are going to balance their check book.
Bob: That may be. I picked up a copy of the book, Adopted for Life by Russell Moore and I started to look through it. I thought this guy wasn’t just thinking through the issue of adoption the way an average mom and dad think about the possibility of adoption. He was weighing it out through a pretty significant biblical grid.
Dennis: That is exactly right! In fact Bob, it is not often when we feature a guest here on FamilyLife Today that we offer a ‘two-for-one.’
Bob: Right!
Dennis: In this case, Dr. Russell Moore offers us a ‘two’fer’; a book about adoption, but also a book about our identity as kids, who have been adopted by our heavenly Father, into His family. And Russell joins us on FamilyLife Today. Russell welcome to the broadcast!
Dr. Moore: Good to be with you Dennis and Bob!
Dennis: Russell is the dean of the School of Theology and Senior Vice President for Academic Administration of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. He also is a professor and has authored a number of books; and as we have just mentioned has written this one. It really shouldn’t surprise us, Bob, that he has written a book about the theology of adoption.
Bob: And it shouldn’t surprise our listeners that we wanted to have him here to talk about adoption.
Dennis: One of the things you don’t know about me Russell; I don’t think, is that when I speak about this subject, I get a little bit of a grin. Well, not quite on my face, but in my soul; I start grinning. I ask the audience, “How many of you have been adopted?” In any audience of a hundred people, there will be 3-5 people who will hold their hands up. Then I open Ephesians chapter 1.
Dr. Moore: That’s exactly right!
Dennis: Which talks about, ”How our heavenly Father predestined us to become sons and adopted us into His family.”
Dr. Moore: Exactly!
Dennis: And then I re-ask the question, after there is some nervous laughter in the audience, and then I say, “Now, how many of you have been adopted?”
Dr. Moore: That’s exactly right!
Dennis: I tell them that if they didn’t hold their hands up, I am moving to John 3:16.
Dr. Moore: That’s right! And the counselors will wait for you.
Dennis: That is exactly right! I am going to explain how you can get adopted. This subject of adoption in your life really comes through the personal side with you and your wife, Maria. You have two biological children and two adopted sons. When you and Maria dated, did you ever talk about adoption? Was that ever a part of your discussion?
Dr. Moore: Never! And you know, Dennis, part of what happened with us is we always assumed that the Lord would give us children when we were ready to have children. One of the really difficult things about my life is how often people would come up, very early on when Maria and I were first married, and say to us, “Be sure you don’t have children any time soon, because you want to enjoy one another.” That was just part of the ethos of the way people would talk to a young couple. We believe that having children would be a burden to what we wanted to do in our marriage; and eventually, when the day came when we were ready financially, and in every other way, to have children that they would just suddenly appear. That was not the case!
Dennis: They don’t suddenly appear!
Dr. Moore: They don’t suddenly appear!
Bob: How long had you been married when you started to realize that you were wrestling with infertility?
Dr. Moore: We had been married about 6 years when we came to the conclusion, we are not going to be able to have children, and Doctors had said to us, “We just don’t see how you’re going to be able to have children without having some really extensive reproductive technologies,” that we weren’t going to use because of our convictions and so forth. There was a point where we were becoming pregnant, but facing miscarriage, after miscarriage, after miscarriage.
Dennis: So, it wasn’t a matter of the inability to conceive?
Dr. Moore: No! It was the loss of these children in the womb. And honestly the Lord used that to do things in my life that I could never have contemplated and I am grateful to God for it. The worst sin I think I have ever committed in my life happened in my car.
After I brought my wife home from the hospital, after suffering her third miscarriage, she was upstairs in the bedroom crying her eyes out. I got in the car and turned on the ignition and the radio came on announcing that ‘Madonna’ was pregnant again. And I stopped and I said, “Lord, here I have this godly woman who would be such a wonderful mother raising these children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, and ‘Madonna’ is pregnant!” It was such a sense of entitlement and bitterness and I was almost immediately convicted about my rights based mentality toward being a father and having children. It was a very, very difficult and dark time in our lives.
Bob: It had to have been painful. How did it affect your marriage relationship?
Dr. Moore: One of the things that was probably the most difficult time in our marriage was when I was on the couch, after I had ministered to my wife through the miscarriage; and I was on the couch crying and at one point, my wife came down and asked, “What is wrong?” And I said, “Well, it is just hitting me that I am probably going to die without children or grandchildren and that is the worst thing that I can ever imagine.”
And it was such a horrible thing to say to her. That is what I felt, but it was a horrible thing to say to her because she immediately felt as though not only was her body her enemy, her body was my enemy. She felt as though she was depriving me of my entire life.
Bob: What she heard was, “I wish I had never married you.”
Dr. Moore: That is exactly what she heard. And that was not, of course, true; but that is how she heard it.
Dennis: In your book, and I so appreciate, not just glimpses of honesty, but really raw humanity. You allow the reader to kind of enter in to not only your grief, but also just how you were grappling to try to be a man of faith. It is back to how Bob introduced you a few moments ago, looking at life, through a theological grid. You were tested to the core!
I want to read you what you wrote as the subject of adoption came up in your marriage. You say, “I told my wife, I don’t mind adopting a few years down the road, but I want my first child to be mine.” Then you go on and write and say, “I can still hear my voice saying those words and it sounds so small and hellish now!” What do you mean by that?
Dr. Moore: I was a hypocrite! The whole idea of adoption was just an idea in my mind and I had this idea that adopting children was just an act of charity that you might do to children who are kind of your step children for the rest of your life. Rather than seeing now what the Lord has shown me with my sons. I had no idea what those passages in Ephesians meant, and in Galatians and Romans. I had just assumed I was the natural born child of God that I ought to be here. That was really what this experience showed me.
I have found that in my situation, and it is the case with men that I talk to all over the country, that often when you have a couple facing infertility, one member of the couple, usually the wife, comes to the conviction that God is calling to adopt, before the other does. And that certainly was the case with me.
I am horribly embarrassed to admit that. But, when my wife first raised the issue of adoption, it seemed almost and insult to me, the idea that I would have to adopt children; that that was some kind of a plan ‘B.’ And really the way I was thinking was like a ‘Darwinist.’ That what is really important is my biological material. Rather than picturing and imaging the Fatherhood of God and what I have received in the gospel.
Dennis: So, it was a ‘Macho’ issue for you, ultimately?
Dr. Moore: I think part of that, was that; and then just the idea,… I had the idea that a child who had been adopted, is always an adopted child; which is one of the things that we will probably talk about later when we are dealing with children who have been adopted.
There is no such thing as an adopted child. Adopted is a past tense verb. It is not an adjective. It is something that has happens to someone, but it is not something that defines that person for the rest of his life. But, that is the way I was viewing it; you will hear people who will say, “ He has this adopted daughter, she has this adopted son, or jokes about ‘I think I must be adopted, because I don’t like the same foods my parents like.” That was kind of the view I was looking at about adoption. It just seemed insulting to me.
Bob: You were working on your Doctorate in Theology at the time you were thinking this?
Dr. Moore: That is right!
Bob: Does that not strike you as somehow incongruous?
Dr. Moore: Well, it does! But, that is how the deceptiveness of the heart works. One always does that, justifies what one is doing. That is the way I was working and I also had a very narrow and small view of God!
One of the things that God really did to hit me and convict me one day, is on my son, Benjamin’s birthday, May 30th, I was waiting for him to come down the stairs, because I knew he was going to wake up really early and he was going to start asking for his presents and his cake at six-o’clock in the morning; just knowing him. I started thinking, “What was I doing the day that he was born, May the 30th of 2001?” And I went back and looked through some old journals and calendars and things like that.
I know what I was doing that day! I got up that morning and I walked to a local coffee shop, like I did every single morning, and I prayed on my way there, like I did every single morning, and I know how I was praying, because it was the way I prayed everyday during that time; which is a self-pitying bitterness towards God because I was going to turn 30 and I wasn’t going to be a father.
The Lord just hit me right then that the moment that I was just praying such a bitter self-wallowing-in-pity prayer, God had already answered my prayer in a way I could never have imagined or thought; all the way across the ocean when this little child was coming into the world, and I didn’t even know it.
Dennis: God knows the rest of the story!
Dr. Moore: He certainly does!
Dennis: Before we leave this subject of infertility, there are a number of our listeners who have struggled with this, are struggling with this, and maybe like you thought you were, permanently infertile. What would you say was the number one thing God taught you as you went through that period in your life?
Dr. Moore: The number one thing God taught me is that it is really easy to sin as an infertile person and no one will call you on it. Because what I was finding is people in our lives felt sorry for us and so we could become very bitter. We could become very covetous. We could become very envious. My wife did not! My wife was doing baby showers for women who had become pregnant at the same time she became pregnant. She would lose the baby and she would give a baby shower for women who were having a baby.
I found myself becoming very covetous and envious and bitter. I also found myself willing to do things ethically, or consider things ethically that I would have never considered before, out of sheer desperation. But, no one was going to call me on that. Everyone felt sorry for me, because we were suffering through infertility. Friends might have said that if I ordinarily if I had had a problem with lust or with anger, someone would have said, “Hey, what are you doing?” But in this situation, they wouldn’t.
Dennis: And I don’t want to spend a lot more time on this, but speak to the friends for a moment. What should we say? You can’t quote a verse, 1 Thessalonians 5…, “give thanks in everything, “or give trite Christian advise. You have got to empathize with people, but you are saying, come alongside them and realign their hearts and attitudes with the truth?
Dr. Moore: Well, it depends on what kind of relationship you have with that person, but be honest with that person. One of the most helpful things somebody ever said to me was when I was sitting around wallowing in self-pity, a guy friend of mine came in the door and he said, “Russell, I don’t know what God is doing and this is horrible.” This was a guy who had been on the floor crying with us and praying with us. He said, “I don’t know what God is doing, but I know this, God knows what it takes to conform you to the image if Christ and God knows what is best in your life.”
And that was exactly right and that is exactly what I needed. And just to have people who are encouraging and people who are not afraid to be around you. Sometimes you have people who are struggling with infertility and their friends become very afraid to come around them is going to be some kind of a reminder and will cause them to become downcast. That is not the case! Don’t treat your friends grappling with infertility in a way that is awkward or distancing. Love them and bring them into the family.
Bob: You said when you started your marriage folks had counseled you to take some time and not conceive too quickly. And you reflect on this in the book, you say, “We tend to have a ‘spirit of pharaoh’, we tend to think like pharaoh about children rather than thinking like God about children.” What do you mean by that?
Dr. Moore: Well, when the children of Israel start having babies, in Exodus 1, that is God’s blessing. God calls that a blessing, even though they are slaves! They are economically deprived and they are in a horrible situation! But, having children, God sees as a blessing. Pharaoh sees as an obstacle and is a burden to what he wants to do and so he rages against it; just as Herod does later on. A lot of people in our culture really believe that children are a burden. And especially, to me, kind of upper ‘Baby Boomers’ and older, will see children as being something that you are really being saddled with.
Bob: Here is what I have started doing, when people come to me and they say, “How many children do you have?” I have started responding by saying, “We only have five.”
Dr. Moore: Oh that is exactly right!
Bob: And I think everybody ought to …..
Dennis: That is a good answer! It really is!
Bob: Especially if you have four or five or six or seven, just say, “We only have seven!” And it is funny how folks will go, “Only seven or only five!!!” But it is a way of reframing the whole issue.
Dennis: It is! And I’d like to say, “No regrets!” I have no regrets of having six children!
Bob: Was it your wife who first said, “Do you want to think about adoption?”
Dr. Moore: Yes it was! And let me tell you, Bob why that was so important! She did not come in and ‘browbeat’ me about adopting children. She raised the issue, but she did it as a 1 Peter 3; a submissive, godly woman. She did not become some type of a mothering figure in the house leading me toward adoption. She said, “Would you pray about it and consider whether or not the Lord is calling us to adoption?”
Bob: And what did you think when she asked that question the first time?
Dr. Moore: I thought, “I am not interested in that at all! Let’s go to the doctor and do another round of tests and see what else we can do.” But, one day just driving down the road, the Lord just changed my heart and I started to have the desire to adopt children.
Bob: Now wait! One day just driving down the road, out of nowhere?
Dr. Moore: Out of nowhere! Just driving down the road, I thought, “You know, maybe this would be a good thing!”
Dennis: Maria must be a powerful woman!
Dr. Moore: She is a powerful woman! She is a powerful woman!
Dennis: There is some people driving down the road listening to this broadcast, right now, who have talked about adoption. They have thought about adoption, but they are in the middle of the road. They have never gotten off one side or the other. What would you say to them?
Dr. Moore: I would tell them pray and ask the Lord, “If You are leading me to adopt, make me want to adopt. Give me a desire to adopt children.” Ask for that from the Lord!
Dennis: It really is a calling, isn’t it?
Dr. Moore: It really is, but it doesn’t mean that is going to take every bit of ambiguity away from you and it doesn’t mean there are not going to be times when you are going to say, “What in the world are we doing?” Every parent does that no matter how your children come into the world. But it means, give me a desire to do this.
Bob: How long had you been going to the fertility doctor when the issue of adoption first surfaced?
Dr. Moore: Probably about a year!
Bob: Okay! Were there things that you had moved off the table in terms of reproductive options?
Dr. Moore: Yes! We have convictions against Envitro fertilization and those kinds of things, but what we found is that doctors are expert marketers on those things. And if we didn’t have very clearly defined ethical parameters already in place, and if we didn’t have so many people around us who knew those things, so that we would be seen as hypocrites if we did them; then we would have been very easily talked into doing all kinds of things.
Dennis: You know what I hear is the enormous pain of infertility that couples suffer privately that many of us get close to, but probably don’t get close enough; one that we need to, probably enter in with a couple, and bear their burdens with them. And pray for them and encourage them and then move them beyond the sense of loss that can come, and does come, for that matter, with infertility. Challenge them to consider adoption as an alternative. And then surround couples with godly advisors, perhaps others who have adopted to help them count the cost. This is not an easy thing to adopt another human being and to graft them in to your family even if God does call you.
Bob: Well, and when you talk to a guy who is working on his PhD in Theology, and his thinking about children and adoption….. Is this fair to say? … had been more influenced by the culture than by the scriptures?
Dr. Moore: Absolutely! Absolutely! One of the problems too with infertility is that what we typically do in our churches is we cordon off everybody who is infertile. And we put them in a support group somewhere in the basement of the church building.
Dennis: Kind of quarantine?
Dr. Moore: They are talking to one another, being led by someone who is coming in talking about the pain of infertility, rather than putting people who are infertile together with people who have children who are also praying with them and with people who have adopted children.
We followed at our church a James 5 pattern of anointing with oil and praying with the elders of the church. This infertility, this aspect of the curse is being prayed over, and then we had people…. If we had had people in our lives that we knew who had adopted children that would have been such an aspect of hope that we could have really benefitted from at the time.
Bob: I just wonder how many of our listeners…, they’re thinking about children, about adoption, and about infertility, just like you were more shaped by what the culture says than by what the scriptures say. And that is why I appreciate what you have done in the book, Adopted for Life, you are taking us back to a gospel understanding of adoption. Understanding the great picture that God has given us in our adoption as sons. And then saying we can mirror God by being adoptive parents. What a great picture that is!
I just want to encourage listeners whether you are thinking about adoption or not, this book by Dr. Russell Moore is an outstanding book. It is called Adopted for Life and we have copies of it in the FamilyLife Resource Center. You can go to our website for more information of how you can get a copy.
Again the website is FamilyLifeToday.com and let me also mention an event coming up on Sunday, November 8th, 2009. It is going to be taking place in Nashville, but it can also happen in churches all around the country.
November is National Adoption month and on Sunday, November 8th, we are going to be hosting together with our friends from Focus on the Family and from Show Hope, an event that will feature a message from Dennis Rainey, a message from Jim Daley - the president of Focus on the Family, and a great concert from Steven Curtis Chapman. The event is going to be open to churches all across the country.
There is more information about how you can connect with the event. You go to our web site FamilyLifeToday.com, click on the “Cry of the Orphan” link and that will get you more information about how you or your church can be a part of this national event, Sunday, November 8th, 2009, as a part of National Adoption Month.
And let me also remind you also that FamilyLife had produced a DVD resource called, If You Were Mine; a workshop for those who are exploring adoption. This is something every church could use to help those families who want to think about the process of adoption, what does that look like practically, can you afford it, and how would you bring a child in to your home. Get more information about, “If You Were Mine” DVD workshop when you go to our web site FamilyLifeToday.com; or call us, toll-free, 1-800-FLTODAY, 1-800-358-6329. That is 1-800- F as in ‘Family’- L as in ‘Life’ and then the word TODAY.
You know whether you are parents of adopted children or parents of biological children, it is a privilege to be a parent. It is also a great responsibility to be a parent. Not long ago, Dennis and I sat down with Dr. Tim Kimmel, a friend of ours who has written a book called Grace Based Parenting.
And Tim takes a look at how we can reflect the glory of God and the grace of God in our assignment as moms and dads. And this month if you are able to help support the ministry of FamilyLife Today with a donation of any amount, we would like to send you the two CD’s that feature the conversation we had with Tim Kimmel. It is our gift to you as you help support the ministry of FamilyLife Today.
Again, with the gift of any amount this month; and if you are making you donation online at FamilyLifeToday.com and you would like to receive the CD’s, type the word “PARENT”’ in to the key code box that you see on the donation form.
Or you can toll free 1-800-FLTODAY make a donation by phone and just ask for the CD’s on parenting. We are happy to send them out to you. I just want to say a ‘Thank You’ to those of you who can help support this ministry. We are listener supported and your donations help make this daily program possible. We appreciate your partnership with us.
Now tomorrow Dr. Russell Moore is going to be back with us and we are going to talk more about “Adoption. “ I hope you can be with us for that.
I want to thank our engineer today, Keith Lynch, and our entire broadcast production team. On behalf of our host Dennis Rainey, I am Bob Lepine. We will see you back next time for another edition of FamilyLife Today.
FamilyLife Today is a production of FamilyLife of Little Rock, Arkansas.
Help for Today. Hope for Tomorrow.
© 2009 FamilyLife
Buy resources from this week's broadcast at the FamilyLife Resource Center