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Are You Called to Adopt?

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While there is nothing wrong with having biological children, many, if not most, people view adoption as nothing more than a backup plan should “typical methods” of having children fail. Of course if you do not want children at all or you aren't ready for children yet, don't adopt (that's just common sense), but obviously millions of families everywhere want children and many of them are fully capable of adopting, so why are so few of these potential families adopting? In essence, most people think of raising kids as what’s in it for them as parents (happiness, passing on genes, etc.) not about helping a child. Babies are viewed as status symbols. Most people would rather turn their back on a homeless child in favor of making a new child. When confronted, most people respond with predictable and shallow excuses such as “it’s too expensive” (even though DSS is free, and when adopting from somewhere else you don’t know the price until you’ve personally looked into doing it yourself), “adoptive children can have mental difficulties” (even though biological children can have mental difficulties, too),  and the age-old “Christian” excuse: “not everyone is called to adopt,” which doesn’t make sense, because everyone is called to help children inside the womb, so why should we turn our backs on them once they’re outside the womb? Also, I must mention: Christians who use the “not called” excuse are basically saying that almost everyone is being specifically called to not adopt, which doesn’t make sense. While of course not everyone is called to adopt, anti-adoption Christians use the “not called” excuse to explain away why almost no families ever choose to even look into adoption. So basically, the “not called” excuse is a fallacy. While the words they’re saying are technically correct, they’re using those words to justify a shocking lack of compassion. They know you can’t argue with the words, but what they’re using those words to justify is sick and twisted. Many, many pregnant mothers who choose to abort do so because they do not want their child to end up in the adoption system. No respectable pro-lifer should turn away from those deaths without a very, very good reason.

What it means to consider adoption: 
www.deviantart.com/art/Conside…

This is part of my series of comics featuring cute animals to address common excuses that people use to justify their lack of compassion toward homeless children.

1) Have you considered adoption at all / is adoption too expensive: the-cynical-unicorn.deviantart…
2) Adopting vs. breeding / the consequences of sex: the-cynical-unicorn.deviantart…
3) Who is called to adopt? the-cynical-unicorn.deviantart…
4) Adoption: Someone else's problem? the-cynical-unicorn.deviantart…
5) God adopted: the-cynical-unicorn.deviantart…
6) The public's response to adoption advocates: the-cynical-unicorn.deviantart…
7) Adoption is pro-family and NOT anti-sex: unicornarama.deviantart.com/ar…
8) Are adoption advocates being judgmental? unicornarama.deviantart.com/ar…
9) Red tape: unicornarama.deviantart.com/ar…
10) Does having children give you immortality? unicornarama.deviantart.com/ar…
11) Children are gifts from the Lord: Gifts From God


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"Not everyone is called to adopt."


When the idea of adopting and considering adoption is brought up, and especially if you so much as start to encourage people to adopt, a lot of Christians inevitably will tell you "not everyone is called to adopt," or "there is not a Biblical mandate that people must adopt," and variations upon that theme. Mind you, I have never once said that adoption and adoption only is a Biblical mandate for everyone. I have presented Isaiah's command to care for orphans as a Biblical mandate (because, well, it's a mandate, and it's in the Bible, soooo...), but there are many ways to follow Isaiah's mandate other than just adopting. Obviously non-Christians don't give the same excuse, and I'm curious to know if there is a non-Christian equivalent to the "not called" excuse.

Christians use this excuse because they know that it's technically true, so you can't argue with it without sounding like a heretic. It's true that God doesn't call every single person on the planet to adopt. Not everyone can afford it, some couples can only deal with one or two children and God may want them to pass on their genes for whatever reason, a couple might not be able to deal with children at all, and so on. Obviously not everyone is called to adopt.

However, when you look at the big picture, how many families actually do adopt? Not many. And most families who adopt want a baby and would rather wait years and years for a baby to be born into the system rather than adopt an older child. So when you look at the numbers, it becomes clear that the vast majority of families actively choose to NOT adopt. And many of these families are Christians. The number of churches in the United States outnumbers the number of U.S. children eligible for adoption. That's just the number of churches. An average U.S. church contains a minimum of 100 members. And people have the nerve to claim that God called them ALL to NOT adopt? That makes no sense. What kind of god do they follow? It's certainly not the God of the Bible. It's very rare that God would call anyone to specifically NOT adopt. There is a cancer inside the Church, and the Church is willfully blind to it.

I don’t believe EVERYONE is capable of adopting nor that EVERYONE should adopt, but everyone IS called to at least consider it. EVERYONE is commanded to plead the cause of widows and orphans (Isaiah 1:17). This is a command, not a suggestion, and there is no evidence whatsoever that this command is given to a select few. While obviously not everyone has the money to adopt (or other reasons may prevent it), WE ARE ALL CALLED TO CONSIDER IT or to help in other ways. 

Here are plenty of ways that everyone can help homeless children, even if you’re busy, have very little money, etc.

 God wants all Christians to, at the very least, support and help orphans, be it through working/volunteering at a shelter or group home, working with foster children, or maybe adopting. Not everyone can do all those things, but we should at least try, especially if we live a stable lifestyle. It doesn't make sense that God would call the majority of Christians to breed like animals but to ignore children who already exist. That's not the God I know. To be honest, it sounds like these Christians are using "God's calling" as a cop-out excuse to promote sexual irresponsibility in marriage. Or perhaps the "calling" they're feeling isn't God at all, but rather a demonic force. After all, what good God would want children to suffer when viable homes are available? Again, not everyone can or should adopt, but there are countless families, including Christian families, who are perfectly capable of adopting, but don't. That doesn't sound like a calling from God.


Then there are the Christians who want to have biological babies to "share the Gospel with the next generation." Do you see the error in their reasoning? Sharing the Gospel is about helping people come to Christ and be saved. But here's the catch: there are millions of homeless children who need the Gospel, but these "Christians" would rather make a new child and share the Gospel with him/her rather than share the Gospel with a homeless child. See their logic? "You're not my blood, so it’s not my problem if you go to Hell." They'd rather make one rather than help one who already exists go to Heaven. I don't know about you, but that doesn't strike me as a very Christ-like attitude.

To drive the point home, aren't the majority of Christians pro-life? Don't we believe that all children should be given a chance? Don't most Christians believe they are called by God to help children in the womb? Why don't they believe they are called by God to help those same children OUTSIDE the womb? If we believe that God wants unborn children to live, we should be first in line to step up and take care of them after they're born. Anything less is pure hypocrisy.

If you feel that God is specifically calling you to not adopt, I ask you to think and pray long and hard about it. I ask that you ask Him to show you if what you're feeling is His desire or yours.

"Adoption is spoken of favorably throughout Scripture:

The book of Exodus tells the story of a Hebrew woman named Jochebed who bore a son during a time when Pharaoh had ordered all Hebrew male infants to be put to death (Exodus 1:15-22). Jochebed took a basket, waterproofed it, and sent the baby down the river in the basket. One of Pharaoh’s daughters spotted the basket and retrieved the child. She eventually adopted him into the royal family and gave him the name Moses. He went on to become a faithful and blessed servant of God (Exodus 2:1-10).

In the book of Esther, a beautiful girl named Esther, who was adopted by her cousin after her parents' death, became a queen, and God used her to bring deliverance to the Jewish people. In the New Testament, Jesus Christ was conceived through the Holy Spirit instead of through the seed of a man (Matthew 1:18). He was “adopted” and raised by His mother's husband, Joseph, who took Jesus as his own child.

Once we give our hearts to Christ, believing and trusting in Him alone for salvation, God says we become part of His family—not through the natural process of human conception, but through adoption. “For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship [adoption]. And by him we cry, ‘Abba, Father’” (Romans 8:15). Similarly, bringing a person into a family by means of adoption is done by choice and out of love. “His unchanging plan has always been to adopt us into His own family by bringing us to Himself through Jesus Christ. And this gave Him great pleasure” (Ephesians 1:5). As God adopts those who receive Christ as Savior into His spiritual family, so should we all prayerfully consider adopting children into our own physical families.

Clearly adoption—both in the physical sense and in the spiritual sense—is shown in a favorable light in Scripture. Both those who adopt and those who are adopted are receiving a tremendous blessing, a privilege exemplified by our adoption into God’s family." Taken from www.google.com/amp/www.gotques…

Verses regarding everyone's relationship to orphans: 
Isaiah 1:17
James 1:27
Psalm 68:5 
Psalm 146:9 
Job 29:12 
Exodus 22:22
Psalm 10:14 
Pslam 82:3
Proverbs 23:10
Job 31:16-18 (it's a sin to keep your bread from the fatherless)
Job 22:9 (another very clear one)
Deut. 14:28-29 
Psalm 10:18
Job 24:9
Jeremiah 7:6

Verses regarding adoption as an allegory of God's acceptance of mankind into the family of Christ (should we not follow God's example?):
Galatians 3:29
2 Corinthians 6:17-18
Ephesians 1:5
Galatians 4:5-7
Romans 9:8
John 1:12
Romans 8:14-19
1 John 3:1
Psalm 27:10
Galatians 3:26
1 John 3:2
Romans 8:23
Ephesians 3:6
Ephesians 2:19
Philippians 2:15
Matthew 12:50
Revelation 21:7
John 14:18
Hebrews 12:7
Romans 9:26
Isaiah 63:8
Isaiah 43:6
Proverbs 14:26
Numbers 6:27
Matthew 5:45
Matthew 5:9
1 Chronicles 22:10
Hebrews 12:6
Exodus 4:22




....And if the conservation has lasted this long, this is where the person you're talking to generally starts insulting you personally, with immature jabs like "you'll understand when you're older," "go get premarital counseling," or "you need to wrestle through these issues on this side of things." Of course, it doesn't matter how old you are or if you're married or have kids or not. A logical argument is a logical argument no matter who it comes from. Ever heard the Bible verses "out of the mouth of babes," or "let no one despise you for your youth"?





I personally believe couples who want children should have 1-2 of their own, maybe 3, (if they want their own children), but after that point, they have already replaced themselves in the population and passed on their genes, so if they want to add more children to their families, then they need to look into adopting. There’s really no excuse. If they qualify and want more children past their population replacement number, and there are children who need families, there’s no excuse. Considering how many couples each year have a 4th or more baby, and the fact that there are more babies born through IVF in the US each year than there are children eligible for adoption in the US, it’s clear that the only reason these children don’t have homes is because people don’t want to help them. There are more than enough qualifying families, and more than enough couples who are desperate to add children to their families. People just don’t want those children. If you have two children already and want more, or if you want children in general, consider adopting.
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I'm confused by your inclusion of Job 24:9. "The fatherless infant is snatched from the breast;/the nursing child of the poor is seized for a debt." To me, this feels far more like a condemnation of the modern adoption industry, where greed drives the separation of children from their families (albeit through coercion rather than force), often preying on the poor and single mothers, celebrating the loss of these families in the name of profit and portraying it as the creation of new families.


I notice you very consistently talk about orphans, and in cases where a child has no living or non-abusive family, absolutely adoption is a great thing. But true orphans represent a very small minority of the children who are adopted; most are adopted through the foster care system, which has major issues with racism and classism, and despite their repeated claims that family separation is always a last resort, it frequently occurs for questionable reasons, often mislabelling effects of poverty as neglect. Consider Canada, where Indigenous peoples comprise ~6% of the population, while ~50% of children in foster care are Indigenous. That isn't a coincidence, and it isn't an accident. International adoption can be very ethically fraught; somewhere over 80% of children in orphanages are not orphans, and those nations with higher poverty rates, less social support, and therefore more "orphans" usually have much lower standards and questionable practices; notably, there have been many incidents of parents being told their children are being sent to school, unaware that they're giving up any right to them. Domestic private adoption is especially bad, relying on coercive tactics, widespread false narratives, and on ensuring mothers in crisis are kept unaware of the services available to help them, ignoring the thoroughly established evidence that this causes profound psychological injury to both mother and child.


I recognise that adoption is the only realistic option to help children already in these situations, but it should be seen for what it is; a necessary but imperfect response to a larger problem. If we want what's best for children, we need to increase focus on family preservation. We can walk and chew gum at the same time. To use an analogy, bandages are an effective response when a person is bleeding, but if you have to keep bandaging them over and over, it means you need to figure out and address what keeps hurting them.


I am not opposed to adoption; I am opposed to the contributing social factors being allowed to continue unaddressed, to the abuses and greed which harm the most vulnerable while their loss is celebrated. I am opposed to a world where adoption is necessary as an institution (at least on the current scale), and though that goal can never be fully achieved, any progress towards it would spare untold pain and save many families and lives.