Tag: missions

When Injustice Gets Personal Part 3

I don’t believe in closed doors.  I believe in smashing through them.  Let me explain:

Growing up in church I repeatedly heard phrases like these:

“I was going to become a [insert occupation] but God closed that door.”

“I am unsure what direction to go but God keeps opening up doors so I keep walking through them.”

“We wanted to get involved with [insert opportunity] but God closed that door.

I was taught that when an opportunity seemed to close it was a sign from God that I needed to move in a different direction.  If this is true, what we are saying is, “If it’s hard then it must not be God’s will.”  This doesn’t jive with the practices of the early church at all.  At the risk of offending people, I think the open/closed door concept is bad theology and a terrible way to make decisions.  If we had taken this approach in our pursuit of adoption we would have given up after a few hours.

Because we knew jack-nothing about adoption, one of the first things we did was call a large and reputable American adoption agency.  An agent explicitly told me that the girl we wanted to adopt was too old and it would be impossible to adopt her.  Disappointed, I called the branch of the US government that processes international adoptions and was told that the adoption was impossible because by law the adoption needed to be complete before the girl’s 16th birthday which was only 2 ½ months away.  There just wasn’t enough time.

The door had closed.  I was distraught.  I went for a run to process the news.  Was God telling us that adoption wasn’t His will for us?  I don’t think that’s how God works.  We already knew God’s feelings on injustice and orphans in particular.  We weren’t out of bounds in pursuing adoption.  I believe that sometimes God allows us to run into a closed door so that we can experience His power when He smashes through it.  And so we decided to do some smashing.

As my feet pounded out the last leg of my run, I decided that we would not take no for an answer.  If it meant flying to Ukraine and bribing government officials we would do it.  Be warned, this is the sort of crazy behavior that happens when injustice moves from abstract ideas to real relationships.

And so, I kept pushing and calling and eventually found the loophole we needed.  Because of the audacious determination of a pastor and his wife in Colorado, there was an addendum to American adoption law that would permit us to adopt an older orphan.  I guess that couple doesn’t believe in closed doors either.

So here’s my challenge: pay no attention to closed doors.  If you’re pursuing something that you already know God cares about and if your community is behind your pursuit don’t give up!  Smash through that door!  If you’ve recently smashed through a closed door I would love to hear about it.

Tomorrow I’ll finish this series by sharing how everything fell apart.

 

Photo by percivalsmithers

When Injustice Gets Personal Part 2

Crazy is uncomfortable.  We in suburban America like safe and normal.  There are social penalties to doing things that rock the boat.  You get talked about and people say things like, “Bless your heart,” which when translated from Christianese means, “You’re an idiot!”

I’ve discovered that when you tell someone that you’re going to adopt an orphan teenager they usually try to talk you out of it.  Go ahead, try it for yourself and see how people respond.   People will tell you that you’re putting your family in danger.  They’ll tell you horror stories of adoptions that were so bad that the parents tried to send the kids back.  They’ll tell you that you don’t have enough money.  They’ll tell you that older orphans are irreversibly damaged.

I understand that one of the key functions of good community is to help us process decisions and uncover blind spots in our thinking.  Our community and family helped us immensely in these ways during our adoption process.  In fact, every family member and close friend immediately or eventually supported our adoption which helped confirm our decision.  And yet, outside of our inner circle, I could sense immense skepticism and discomfort.

Christians in the West—specifically, suburban mega-church American Christians like me–have replaced normal with abnormal.  In the early church, crazy was normal.  The first generations of Jesus followers were known for extraordinary acts of compassion and love.

Throughout the ancient Roman world, human life was not valued.  Unwanted babies were left to die in “baby dumps” outside the city gates.  The early Christians opposed this practice and were known to rescue these babies and raise them as their own.

When plague struck Caesarea in the early 4th century everyone who could fled the city.  However, the Christian community stayed behind and put themselves at risk to care for the sick and dying.  The sacrificial love of the early Christians is well documented.  We could tell stories for days.

Throughout history, when Christianity has been at its best, it has been characterized by radical compassion and sacrificial love.  It has never been by any other influence that Christianity has spread and become stronger.  However, when Christians get comfortable we lose our influence (Andy Stanley has spoken powerfully about this phenomenon).

My point is this:  attempting to adopt a child who is at risk of sex trafficking should be considered normal behavior for Christians.  But instead, normal has become comfort and luxury.  We love to talk about sacrificial love but we rarely act in sacrificial love.  And please understand I’m talking about myself as much as anyone else.  It took 17 years of following Jesus before I ever acted on radical compassion and sacrificial love.  I’m not exactly the poster boy for my argument.

The thing is, stepping out in faith and actually doing something crazy in the name of Jesus has been exhilarating.  My faith has exploded and God has met me and my family in so many ways.  Maybe it’s because that kind of love can only come from the heart of God.

So if your faith is stuck, find a place to serve.  Give something away.  Get more involved in a ministry at your church or a local mission.  Support a child through Worldview or Compassion International or start looking into adoption.   By loving sacrificially your faith will grow and so will the influence of the church of Jesus Christ

 

photo credit:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/ihhinsaniyardimvakfi/

When Injustice Gets Personal

A few years ago injustice was transformed from an abstract word to a gut wrenching reality complete with faces, names and heartbreaking stories.  I’ve seen a lot of pain but nothing prepared me for how children neglected by parents and an entire society would change the trajectory of my life.

Two summers ago I found myself in a camp full of teenage orphans in rural Ukraine.  These orphans had been dumped in this camp by their orphan schools for the summer.  They were provided with beds, some of the worst food I’ve ever tasted and a handful of university students as their camp counselors.  There was no program, no activities, and no school.  You can imagine the outcome.

In this camp I found children desperate for attention and love because of years of neglect and rejection.   I found beautiful young women, the vast majority of which, either because of desperation or trafficking would someday find themselves enslaved in prostitution.  I found rambunctious teenage boys who would most likely end up as addicts or incarcerated.

And yet, in the midst of such hopelessness, despite my best intentions I fell desperately in love with the kids I met.  In the midst of overpowering darkness, love took root in my heart.  Somehow, in the span of a week I bonded with the kids.  And as I opened up my heart to them, I began to glimpse the incredible compassion that God feels for me.

Upon returning to the USA I fell into a deep depression.  I cried constantly.  I lost my motivation for my job.  I had nightmares about orphan children and I could not get them out of my head.

I struggled for a year.  And then I went back to Ukraine and did it all over again—the same hopelessness, the same heartbreaking emotions and the same disorienting reentry.

And so, as followers of Jesus, my wife and I decided to do something.  How, after experiencing something like that could I pretend it didn’t happen?    How could I pretend those kids didn’t exist?  How could I go back to normal?  That is the power of experiencing injustice.

While wrestling through these ideas, I heard Reggie Joiner say something like this, “Do for one what you wish you could do for many.”  Obviously, we couldn’t fix the orphan problem.  Nor could we change the fact that 70% of orphan girls are pulled into the sex trade.  But, we could offer hope to one.  What if we adopted one orphan?

And so we began praying and asking people for advice.  I repeatedly asked myself this question, “Is this God’s Will?”  But, in light of Bible verses like James 1:27, I already knew what God’s will is.  He’s already stated it clearly throughout the Bible.  “Care for orphans.”  God is for adoption.  He adopts people every day.

We didn’t need a sign or some sort of mystical confirmation.  It’s already there in God’s Word.  And so we acted.  We poured our hearts and souls into adoption.  We gave an astronomical amount of time, resources and determination into offering hope to one orphan girl.

Over the next few days, I’d like to tell the story of what happened—how God showed up, what we learned and how our hearts were broken.

 

photo credit:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/ihhinsaniyardimvakfi/