Blood by Choice ...

You can’t pick your family … or can you?  Blood relations are supposed to be the strongest on earth.  But this is a myth quickly undone by simple logic.  Your parents chose each other.  No one compelled them (ideally), and no one dictates they stay together, or crumble apart.  It was and remains (ideally) a choice of two people to become one and remain that way.  Your parents are not related to each other by blood relation, unless that blood relation is quite distant.  Yet the bond a husband can have with his wife, and she with him, is a bond capable of being stronger than titanium dipped in Jesus more permanent than any other on earth; or as flimsy as the tissue paper of self-will that demonstration will show.  But the core of a family is at its core, a choice to love.  And where perhaps our hearts are still fickle in the choice of our partner for life, they seem less so in our choice of son, daughter, or parent.

Adoption is yet another choice to make blood, what inheritance failed to create.  Adoption does not diminish the love it states, it perhaps makes it greater.  It is a greater commitment.  Taking in a child, who is not blood, and make that child part of a family, is a statement about how deep the choice to love can truly be.  Even in the face of divorced couples, children remain children, adopted or not.  The love shown to them, the care taken of them, does not diminish because it began with a choice, it deepens because of it.  And over time, when the child’s curiosity about biological parents emerges, love for adopted parents remains a choice in nearly every life.  At the root of the bond between a parent and a child, is a choice to love, whether by inheritance or by fortune.  The choice begins the journey, the choice remains throughout the journey.

These choices do not only reveal themselves in marriage and in adoption of any form.  They can emerge in the relationships we form with our closest friends over time.  Because the choice to love is by definition a choice; other close relationships can form where brothers of no relation think of themselves as brothers in any case.  It may be a different kind of love, but it is a love nonetheless.  Situations where friends of the family become part of the family are common, blurring the definitions of family altogether; and frankly emulating more what heaven will ultimately be like.  Agape love is no less a love than any other kind of it.  And the love Jesus, The Father, and The Holy Spirit have for you is the pinnacle of what love can be defined as.  Not a romantic love, but a love so deep, the God of the Universe would die to save only you if that is what it took.  In every situation, love remains a choice.

This is a lesson the sons of Abraham were reluctant to learn in the time of Jesus, and perhaps we are today as well.  Jews in the time of Christ believed that bloodline led to salvation.  Christians in our day believe that tradition, church, and religion do the same.  Jews in the time of Christ were proud to call Abraham their father.  Christians in our day are proud to look back at the patriarchs of our faith and claim association with them over common beliefs.  But the average, or particular, or singular Jew in the Sanhedrin at the time of Jesus did not have the exact faith of Abraham.  It is why Abraham is remembered, and the average Jew is not.  It is the same with you and I.  Neither of us were pinning the list of church reforms on the door, knowing it was likely insuring our own death sentences today.  We like to look back at reformers like Luther, but we do not face Luther’s danger in the face of death in our world.  Strange though, the propensity to look backwards for assurance that salvation is ours, when all along, Jesus is right in front of us and how seldom we seem to look there.

But Jesus has different ideas about family, than perhaps the tradition Jew did in His day, or the typical Christian does in ours.  Matthew wrote of this in his gospel in chapter twelve picking up in verse 46 saying … “While he yet talked to the people, behold, his mother and his brethren stood without, desiring to speak with him. [verse 47] Then one said unto him, Behold, thy mother and thy brethren stand without, desiring to speak with thee.”  This is a simple situation.  Jesus is preaching, likely from inside Peter’s house in Capernaum.  Likely the crowds are thick there, inside and outside the house.  It makes it difficult for anyone to get inside the house.  You will recall the men who took the roof apart to get their friend close to Jesus for healing.  This is likely a standing room only crowd, and every single listener is intent to hear the word of God from the mouth of God Himself.

But despite this, the family of Jesus wanted to see Him.  Perhaps they had important news, perhaps they only wanted to socialize.  It did not matter.  They were unable to get anywhere near close enough to Jesus to accomplish what they had in mind.  The reason; too many other people were so desperate to hear what salvation was, and how it comes.  In spite of this, His family persisted.  They get a messenger to get the news to Jesus so He can remedy the situation.  Jesus responds in verse 48 saying … “But he answered and said unto him that told him, Who is my mother? and who are my brethren? [verse 49] And he stretched forth his hand toward his disciples, and said, Behold my mother and my brethren! [verse 50] For whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is my brother, and sister, and mother.”

Much to unpack here.  Jesus begins by questioning the messenger with a very strange question.  “Who” is His mother, and His siblings?  The answer should have been obvious.  But even in this question is an implication that “blood” does not grant one special privilege.  Beyond this, is a subtle message to our Catholic friends who so venerate Mary.  Jesus places His mother Mary in the same category as He does everyone else, nothing more special about her.  And Jesus is clear that He has siblings.  As Jesus had to be first born (according to Jewish tradition), having further brothers and sisters, makes Mary a normal wife, not a virgin for the length of her life.  But even the mothers who read this text cringe with the idea that their child might look at them with the same eyes He looks at the entire rest of the world.

Next, the ideas of Family are radically expanded in the view of Jesus.  Everyone who shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven … becomes the family of Jesus Christ.  Jesus does not just say, every Jew by birth.  Nor does He say, every Christian who claims to follow Jesus.  He states everyone who like Himself defers His own will, to do the will of the Father which is in heaven, becomes His idea of family.  Being Jewish by birth, or being Christian by faith, does not make you in harmony with the Father God.  It gives you a good start, but is nowhere near enough to finish the job.  For that you need a deference of your will, and an embrace of His will.  That only happens as you surrender the core of who you are to Jesus, so that He can bring you into harmony with God.  Doing what you think is right, is not enough.  Jews did that.  Christians still do.  And it is not enough.  The blood relatives of Jesus were doing what they thought was right, at the moment, and were going to be disappointed.  What Mary and the siblings of Jesus were thinking was the right thing to do, was not, at least not right then.  More important things were going on.  The salvation of others was going on.  On that scale, everyone can wait.

While Jesus has only One Father, He is quite liberal with titling anyone else who submits to the will of His Father in heaven as being “brother, sister, or mother”.  Here again His mother is not a title He makes sacrosanct above all others.  She is only another member of His family.  Here is where the ideas of family get radically expanded in the eye of Jesus.  In heaven, outside of the spousal relationship Jesus created at Eden, everyone else we encounter will be our family – by choice.  We will choose to love them as we love our siblings or parents or children, because we will choose to love them that much.  I can entrust my children with you in heaven, because I know you will love them as much as I do.  You can entrust your children with me, for the same reason.  I will not covet your wife, as you will not covet mine, not just because the Law forbids it, but because we love each other that much.

You will note Jesus does not include husband or wife in His list of family members.  His “bride” is the church, as He loves it that much.  The church is special to Him and unique, and singular, even though it is made up of many of us who believe.  At the core of all of this remains a choice to love.  At the core of love itself is a definition that includes choice, or it can be no real love at all.  We were not created as robots for this very reason.  God is love.  God chooses to love.  We were created in the image of God.  We are capable of love, or not.  We must choose to love God, or not.  Our love for God cannot be forced and He will never force us to love anything or anyone.  We make a choice to do that.  This is how God wants it.  He reveals His love to us, long before He ever asks for ours in return.  There is every reason for us to love God, and only one not to.  Selfishness is the enemy of loving God.  It turns out you can only love yourself or God, not both. 

Many Christians believe that loving one’s self is healthy, and must be done before they are capable of loving others.  This is a lie, evidenced by the very life of Christ Himself.  Jesus did nothing to love Himself, and everything to demonstrate love for us.  Jesus never took vacation.  Jesus never ate all the food first, He gave everyone else the food first, served everyone else, and only then would consider eating.  Talk about not being strong enough.  But Jesus got His strength from doing the will of His Father, which like Him, was to love everyone else before anything resembling self-love.  Not a single evidence in scripture of self-love, or using His power to help Himself, not once.  And somehow, we think it is different for us?  It’s not.  The choice we make to love, is a choice we make to love someone else.  When instead we choose to love ourselves, divorces ensue, families dissolve, everything that ever really mattered is sacrificed on an altar of pleasing self that has no end to it. 

Family bonds are as strong as the depth of our surrender of will to Jesus Christ.  Choices to love that stem from this kind of surrender to Jesus are like titanium dipped in diamonds.  The choice to love self instead, can form bonds only as strong as tissue paper waiting the next form of self-gratification.  As for me, I prefer the permanence Jesus can offer, and the fulfillment only Jesus can bring; than the mess of things I know I make, and history is quick to reveal …

Adopted & Extended Family ...

My kingdom for a sense of belonging: how often we would trade our success as the world measures it for a place and a people we could truly call home. The embrace of evil has left many scars upon our world and our relationships. Death, disease, accidents have claimed lives of family members, left spouses alone to raise who remains, or parted siblings from each other. The loss of love and refusal to submit to Christ has torn marriages apart and left wounded souls moving from pain to pain. But in the chaos there is still hope. In the darkness there is still light. Our condition is not our destiny, we are called to something more and something deeper.

Family is often defined through accident of birth. Since my mother and father conceived me, I am their child, and so on with my children. But family of blood bonds is not the only measure, and sometimes not even the strongest. We are all descendants, and we are all adopted. We descend from Adam and Eve and are all part of the human family by blood. But greater than this we are ALL adopted by Christ into His family unit with God through His grace and love and ransom paid for our redemption. Christ called us more than servants He called us friends. He was not ashamed to call those who believe in Him, “His brothers”. We are family with Christ by His gift enabling it, and our choice confirming it. The bonds of family by choice then are sometimes greater than those of blood.

Our Christianity is not the only example of families forged by choice. Marriage itself is a union of diverse blood lines and genealogies. The Bible speaks of a man leaving his mother and a woman leaving her home to become “one flesh”. It is the formation or extension of a new family through the choice made to bond with God in love forever. And over a lifetime, not even a parent can claim to love their own child greater than the love one devoted spouse reliant upon God can do. The love inside a union made perfect by God is the strongest love known to us. Only a spouse can know someone to this level of intimacy. And this love was one of choice, just as the one to be saved by Christ is.

So how do we honor our adoption into the family of Christ? Do we guard the gates, close and bar the doors, and see to it no one else like us is ever permitted to enter again into our new family unit? It sometimes looks this way to the world. It is what happens when we internalize the love we have been shown rather than manifest it outwards, back to the world where it is needed. Sometimes it is our inclination to take our forgiveness, and our love from God, and go isolate ourselves away from the world. We mistakenly think this will protect us from evil influences. But it does not. Rather it teaches us a lesson of selfishness even with what is freely given of God to us. We become standard-bearers rather than lovers of lost souls. It is backwards, and it is mistaken. We should reflect the love God has shown us. We should embrace our forgiveness, let go our shame, and face the world renewed to make it better not worse.

It is possible to love someone like a brother without ever being related by birth or by marriage. It is possible to love a mother who does not come from a bloodline you are connected to. It is possible to honor them, to cherish them, to forgive them as they have need, and to call them to remembrance of where all love can be found. It is possible to extend our ideas of adoption well past the concept of only taking in a child without parents into our lives. While the formal adoption process for taking in children may be the highest calling of Christians demonstrating love for the world, the second highest calling may be in the taking in of others through a less formal process. When we adopt a grandmother for instance who has little family, or is shown little attention, we do no less an honorable thing.

When eyes have been opened by the liberating power of Christ removing evil from our character and our behavior, we see need more acutely than we did before. Hearts are touched by infirmity that were once willfully ignorant of suffering all around us. Christians have a unique ability to see through the eyes of Christ and meet needs of those He leads us to encounter. We need not constrain our ideas of relationships to merely friends, but as Christ did, we can elevate people to the status of immediate family by simply willing to do so. We can “adopt” siblings, parents, and children into our core family units making room in our hearts for even more love to reign. Our cup will surely run over in so doing. You will discover what it means to love on a level you can only dream about today, when you are willing to share more of yourself with more people who have need of you.

This is not intended to dilute a marital relationship. We do not seek to add more spouses to our mix. For there can be only one of these if we are to honor our union with man and God. But we do not often confuse parental love with romantic, nor do we often crave the romantic embrace of a sister. Keeping away the impurities Satan would introduce and focusing only on the Love God would have us embrace, allows us to expand our concept of family to a much broader picture, and more accurate one. For in heaven, we will all call each other by our familial names. If you and I have never met, through Christ we are made brothers. When I encounter you in heaven, you will already be my brother. I will already feel for you, what I feel for my brothers by blood, and my brothers by choice. We will together have found a place of belonging.

One fear a parent may have in adopting another child into an existing family unit, is how the other siblings will react. When our attention seems diverted to the hurting who have great needs, sometimes others who still need us as well can feel abandoned or neglected. To avoid this, we must involve them in the sharing of love. We must make them part of the solution of meeting the needs of others themselves and not try to take the entire burden upon our own shoulders. As we share the work of love, we lighten our own loads, and create a vested interest in success across an entire family, rather than resting in the hands of only one person.

While it may be difficult to think about, the same process of sharing burdens needs to be applied when a family member becomes seriously ill, or is lost to death. These occurrences were not supposed to be something we must contend with, but with evil comes the pain of evil, and the loss it can inevitable cause even through no fault of your own. When confronting tragedy, it is not time to cover up, it is time to open up. Feelings should be shared, emotions let out, and responses respected. We should not try to force someone to react the same way we do. But we should try to employ them in the work of showing love and support to others who remain with needs. This work of reaching out, even when suffering inside continues can act as healing to all. Both the hurting one who shares can be healed, as well as the target of their efforts.

Who can know your pain, or your joy more than your family? Who accepts you for who you are more than your family? Our families know us, and love us in spite of our shortcomings. We need wear no mask when facing our families, as they would only see it anyway. There is no need to cover who we are when dealing with family, as they have shown us love in spite of that already. This is the advantage of family over friendships and acquaintances. There can be deeper love in a family. There can be more intimate love in a family.

Before a Christian casually calls a stranger a “brother”, they should consider the ramifications of what they are saying. Are you ready to loan your newly met “brother” $5,000 on nothing but a handshake? Are they free to come stay in your home, eat from your table, and have you look out for them until they die of old age? Some say they would not do this for their blood relatives, why would they consider doing this for merely a “Christian Brother?” I submit there is no difference between the two, and what Christ has already done for us is greater than anything I just listed. The early Christian church did exactly what I described above. They took it a step further and sold everything they owned of value and donated every cent to the church for distribution across the family, as the family had need. This church was symbolized with white for its purity. Seems our symbolic coloring has dimmed a few shades since then. I fear we look more like death, or perhaps worse, like mediocrity.

It takes trust to open oneself up to the world. Not trust in the world, but trust in Christ that our lives will go according to His plan. We may lose our wealth in expanding our ideas of family. The needs may simply overtake our ability to provide for them. If this is our lot, count yourself blessed. For it is Christ that holds ALL of our needs. We may lose our ideas of privacy by expanding our ideas of family. But if this is so, count yourself blessed. For what we lose in privacy we gain back many times in love shared with those in need. We were not put here on earth to be wealthy and alone. We were put here to love and to be known for how much we love. When we submit our wills to Christ, the great adventure of loving begins. I pray it takes hold of our hearts, and allows us to finally truly become one family.

Children ...

To experience how it is that God can love you, simply look to how you feel about your own children. Imagine with me for a minute that your two-year-old toddler comes to you, smiling, with arms outstretched desperate to feel the warmth of your embrace. Now imagine with me, that your smiling two-year-old is covered in feces and smells like something south of a chemical factory. Yuk! But this is still your child. He needs to be cleaned, and He may not even know how badly He needs to be cleaned, but you do. You want only to love your child. You want only what is best for your child. You know more than your child knows. You have seen more, fallen more, been dirty yourself more, in short you know if your child will trust you, His life will be better than if he does not. Welcome to the lessons of parenthood.

We parade around content in the accumulated knowledge of human wisdom, and to God, we look like adorable two-year-olds speaking in baby talk, making almost no sense at all. Cute, but wise? We think we know facts, and truth, and philosophy, but we know very little. What is common between us and God is our ability and need to love and be loved. God would have us learn this from the raising of our own children. He would have us see that as precious as they are to us, so are we to Him. He would have us see our foolishness with Him, in their foolishness with us. A parent’s ‘curse’ - may you have children just like you are … was designed to illustrate our relationship with God to us first hand. How often we go blind to the lessons.

Children need much. The younger they are, the more they need. But with that need, the younger they are, the more they are taken care of by the parents, and less by themselves. So it is with us and God. The more we realize our needs, and realize that only God can meet them, the more we trust Him to do so. And the more God takes care of us, the more we can rely on Him to do so, without fear, regret, or remorse. We do not torture our children for their ignorance. We try to educate them. We do not stop loving our children when they misbehave. We try to correct them in love, so as to help them avoid the pain we would have them avoid. Children are an object lesson in salvation itself.

The analogy does break down in one area; we are more like Peter Pan in that compared to God, we never seem to grow up. We are perpetually stuck in the 3 year old phase. We do not like this idea of ourselves. We rebel against the concept that our best knowledge and accumulated truths only amount to the comparative wisdom of a toddler, but there you are. Our problem is that our imaginations make us think we control aspects of our lives, when in fact we control nothing. We think we can earn our living, when in fact we are dependent on God for the job and the income in the first place. We think we can be a better person, when in fact, our ideas of better person continue to allow us to achieve personal gain at the expense of others. Control exists only in our imagination and in the hands of God. We remain in desperate need. We remain toddlers.

It is said to “spare the rod” is to spoil the child. I would add “if you can’t reach it, don’t spank it”. The younger the child is, the more they seem to understand misbehavior has physical consequences. Spanking seems to lose all effect at age 30 (at least all disciplinary effect). But what lesson in discipline would we rather our children learn? Perhaps better to show them that REAL harm does not always come right away from what we do, but the longer it is delayed, the larger the impact it has on our lives and the lives of those we love. I am not convinced that spanking is required to maintain authority with a child. But I am convinced that maintaining authority is important. It is more important the younger they are.

As our children mature we must mature along with them. We must learn to allow them more and more freedom, freedom to fail as well as succeed. If we shelter them from all failure, we do them a disservice. So it is with our God. It is hard to sit back and let a child experience firsthand, what we know to be inevitable consequences of their decisions. So it is with our God and us. It is particularly difficult to see them experience pain first hand, when we know it could be avoided. But it must be so in order for them to learn. We do our jobs as parents well, if we teach them the values behind the rules. We honor our children if we teach them to think for themselves as God would have us do. We give our children a gift if we teach them to question authority, as God does with us. For our Lord is not afraid of questions. He is able to answer them all. For He is perfect love. Questioning authority only poses a threat to those who do not really have it, or perhaps should not really have it.

We wish our children to be thinkers, and leaders, not followers and sheep. It is good to be a thinker, but only if we realize our relative position to Christ. It is good to be a leader, but only if we humble ourselves before Christ and realize our own unworthiness. We must teach our children the balance between self-examination or humility and using the talents God has richly given us. We are safe to employ His gifts, and His talents, especially when we acknowledge they come from Him. It is vanity to direct attention away from His gifts, and on to self. It is arrogance to assume that our accomplishments belong to us alone. It is pride to believe we rule ourselves and our worlds. And vanity, arrogance, pride, are all internal sins of distraction designed to keep us from submitting our wills to Christ.

In terms of leadership we look first to our fathers. This is natural and there is no harm in it. But leadership carries with it many additional burdens and responsibilities. As fathers we must demonstrate what it means to lead while striving always to please our partners. We must learn how to demonstrate justice tempered by mercy. We must learn to demonstrate forgiveness, not just within our family circle, but outside of it, when things do not go our way. We must consistently demonstrate courtesy to all regardless of age, gender, race, religion, or political views. And we must be the primary example of how to humble ourselves before God and submit our wills to Him. This lesson will have the longest and most lasting impact upon the lives of our children.

When seeking our place in the world, we look first to our mothers for a sense of belonging. This is natural and there is no harm in it. In homes where there is no father to play his own role, mothers must do their best to take on the additional mantle of leadership. But while they try to teach lessons they may not be well suited for, they should not neglect the areas they are strongest suited for. In order for us to be brave enough to go out and face the world, we begin by having confidence that our mom’s will always have a place for us under their wings. We are nurtured, comforted, and find healing in the protection of a mother’s arms. We can bathe in the deep care and concern a mother has for her young. Her daily practical lessons on the care and maintenance of a family unit should not go unnoticed or unappreciated.

Adults who enter a home without a blood based relationship with the children now a part of their family unit, should do so with great deference to the existing parent, and their “style” of parenthood. But marriages where both parties submit their wills before Christ, will grow, alter, or morph over time into what He designs. This means as time passes the relationship between the children and their step-parents will grow and deepen. In these cases respect and authority must be earned by a consistent demonstration of love and service. It is not enough to speak the words, it must be demonstrated by the behavior and actions of the new parent. Love seeks out its own. Love responds to love. When love is shown in a home, it will gain respect and authority.

As children become adults their need of parents is greatly reduced, but their need of friendship and counselors on which they can rely for advice will not ever diminish. Parents can best fill a role of consiglieri for their children as they know them better than anyone else is likely to until they find marriage for themselves. We must respect the entrance of our children into the responsibility of adulthood, without abandoning them to their own devices. Though grown our worries for them transition from their physical needs and status, to their spiritual needs and status. We wonder if they walk with the Lord, or are distracted away from Him. We pray to the only God who can save them , to do so with them as He has and is with us. This has always been our greatest prayer, to save us, but to save those we love as well. We can have faith in our God’s ability and desire to grant that prayer.

When our children become parents themselves they will look to their past and imitate what they have experienced firsthand. This will be the test of success for our efforts with them. Grandchildren are yet another blessing as is the ability to have an older generation directly impact the newest one. A new parent can benefit from the experience of a grandparent, and can sometimes simply benefit from any kind of outside help. Grandparents are known for “spoiling” their grandchildren. I wonder if this comes from the wisdom of age that places a higher value on love than we did in our youth. It seems the older we become, the more we realize what is truly important, and what is fleeting. Grandparents recognize the supreme treasure of youth and love in the form of their trusting as yet untainted grandchildren. Soon enough the world will tempt them, exhaust them, and attempt to destroy their spirit. But for a while, a Grandparent can hold them, teach them, tell them stories, and enrich the culture of an entire family in so doing.

For those parents with small children who have no living Grandparents, it is worth adopting another set or two. Find an older couple in your church who may have less contact than they would like with their own families, or a couple confined to a nursing home, and visit them. Let them interact with your children. Involve them in your life and let your lives be enriched in the process. Older members of our families, whether by blood or by choice, add a dimension to our development that cannot be substituted in any other way. They add a richness to our lives. They add depth to our understanding. The wisdom that comes with age is wisdom we all need.

Protecting children is a universal desire. To be effective at it, is to begin with knowing your children, knowing their routines, patterns, interests, and behaviors. Sudden or dramatic changes in patterns you are familiar with generally indicate issues that must be discovered and addressed. An “A” student whose grades suddenly tank may be wrestling with a number of issues. It could be a new girl/boy-friend. It could be something more sinister like chemical stimulants. It could be even worse as they struggle with being victimized by a predatory adult. Not all changes in patterns of behaviors originate for negative reasons, but some do. Thus all must be investigated if protecting them remains the goal. Children rarely bring issues like these to their parent’s attention unprompted. It takes active observation, and a degree of prodding to help them open up to the truth. A sympathetic ear, and non-threatening environment will aid greatly in the process. Because of the level of evil in our world, predators have learned to conceal themselves in our nation, in our churches, and even in our families. Our best defense against predators, or paranoia, is to remain submitted to God, and alert to changes we see in our kids.

Finally, children pose an interesting question to us all – when can a person truly “know” God? What I “know” of Him now is far more than what I “knew” at 20 years of age. But this does not negate my “knowledge” at 20. The same is true even when I was only five years old. It appears that “knowing” God is more of a process than a destination. We will never be done learning about God, learning about how to Love, or appreciating our salvation from evil. Given this, do not belittle or decry, the relationship little children exhibit towards God. If they choose to participate in church traditions, let them. If they wish to be baptized at any age, let them. As Christ said … “suffer the little children to come unto me.” He did not discriminate against them for their “age”. He welcomes them all at any age. And He went further to remind us that we all look like children from His perspective, and we all really need Him. Let us not lose this important lesson as long as we live.