Second in a series. See Part 1 and Part 3.

November-December 2006 – It’s better for a child to be adopted by a Christian single mother than to be stuck in foster care.” 

That one statement plunged a group of easy-going Christian friends into a rather brief, albeit intense, argument as we testily exchanged a short barrage of rationales for either side of the issue.

We did agree on one point: We all said we believed that the U.S. foster care system, taken as a whole, is a disaster. Children are often shuffled from one home to the next, sometimes living lives of loveless instability and sometimes being hurled into abusive environments far worse than those out of which they have been extricated. 

Regardless of the opinions of a bunch of non-experts, however, that assertion simply provided the context for a more fundamental debate: Do human beings – Christians included – have the right to alter God’s purposes in matters of marriage and family?

Compassion trumps all?
Like most questions about the messiness of life, a simple answer seemed hard to come by as we fleshed out the issue. My opinion was that, since God’s plan is for children to be raised by their biological mother and father – united by holy matrimony – it was wrong for a single mother to adopt a child. The very act of doing so showed a willful disregard of God’s plans for mankind.

However, in the opinion of my friends, a Christian single woman adopting a child seemed eminently preferable to that same child being placed in foster care. It was, they reasoned, more compassionate.

“Well, then, why not a homosexual single parent?” I asked. “Wouldn’t that be better than a child being stuck in foster care?” 

Their immediate response was that my counterpoint was “extreme.”

Of course it was extreme. But isn’t that where all variations from God’s plan end up – far, far away from where we thought they would? We begin with what seems like a reasonable assumption but wind up in a thicket of prickly propositions and painful decisions.

Look at some of the sledge-hammer blows that have fallen upon marriage and family over the last three decades, like easy divorce, premarital sex or cohabitation. Our society acquiesced to each of these by way of similar, tug-at-the-heart rationales: “Isn’t it better for a man and a woman to divorce than to live in intolerable strife? Isn’t it better for the children?”; “As long as two people love each other and don’t hurt anyone else, why shouldn’t they consummate their love?”; “Isn’t it better for two people to see if they’re compatible before marriage, rather than to discover afterwards that they aren’t, and go through the pain of divorce?”

Now even same-sex marriage is being given serious consideration, and the same plea for compassion is offered: “Isn’t it better to allow two loving, committed, homosexuals to ‘marry’ than to live lives of promiscuity, and maybe die of AIDS?”

In each example, “compassion” has trumped God’s clearly expressed will, and we now find ourselves in serious trouble. These cultural changes have produced shattered families, skyrocketing rates of sexually transmitted diseases, shrinking marriage rates, and if same-sex marriage is legalized, the end of traditional marriage itself. 

Can anything be called “better” when it is severed from God’s template? “To obey is better than sacrifice,” the prophet Samuel told Saul. The famous rebuke is a warning to us all. When God’s will is clear, if we deviate from His way it is counted as disobedience, even when we act with the best of intentions.

The issue of authority
Sometimes, however, I think what many of these cultural changes represent is simply the triumph of individual desire over all other considerations. 

This past spring, for example, actress Halle Berry said she wanted to have a baby but did not intend to get married. “I no longer have the need to be someone’s wife,” she said in an MSNBC story. “And I no longer have the need to feel validated through marriage.”

While the MSNBC article attributed Berry’s attitude to a recent and painful divorce, media superstars and Hollywood’s upper crust have been thumbing their noses at traditional notions of marriage and family for a while. Those two institutions have been downgraded from something ordained by God into a personal preference ruled only by the criteria of convenience or whimsy. Multiple divorces, continuous cohabitation, lesbian couples having babies through artificial insemination, single starlets impregnated by “secret dads” – all these personal choices are smugly varnished with a thin moral veneer that always seems to start with, “Isn’t it better to....”

How quickly we humans crumple up and throw away God’s ordained institutions when we think of a reasonable explanation for doing so. Why don’t we be more forthright, and admit that we simply want what we want?

The core issue, then, is one of authority. Has God determined how man should live, or do we determine this for ourselves? If God’s purposes include the ideal of a child raised by his or her biological mother and father, what right do we have to say, “It’s better for a child to be outside that model than in it?”

That is what my friends were saying, isn’t it? That if foster care is a complete disaster, the church should respond by applauding Christian single women who adopt children? 

But if that Christian woman adopts a child, isn’t she saying, in effect, like Halle Berry, “I don’t need a husband to help me raise this child”? 

If Ms. Berry is wrong – and she is – then so is the Christian single woman. God’s ideal teaches us that a woman most certainly does need a husband – and vice versa – when it comes to raising children.

Pointing the way
Of course, in the real world, many single parents are raising children, and sometimes the duty of parenthood even falls upon grandparents.

So I don’t mean this to sound like a criticism toward the many people who are raising children outside the Biblical model. These very brave people are stepping up to the plate in order to do the right thing, and doing so in tremendously difficult situations.

In fact, Scripture makes clear that God is “a father of the fatherless and a judge for the widows” (Psalm 68:5). With great mercy, He aids unfortunate souls when circumstances have ravaged their lives and deprived them of that which the Lord intended.

Naturally, this does not get Christians off the hook. When it comes to God demonstrating His compassion to those in need, Christians are often called to be the vessels of His mercy.

James 1:27 says, “This is pure and undefiled religion in the sight of our God and Father, to visit orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.”

To be fair to my friends, then, they seemed to be earnestly wrestling with the messiness of life in a fallen world, and they sincerely chose what they believed was a way for Christians to make a difference. After all, children in foster care are already outside the Biblical model. Shouldn’t we be concerned about placing them in the best possible alternative?

But the church should not be in the habit of taking the best alternative that it can get from society, like a consumer choosing from among used cars. Christians should be the first to proclaim to the culture around them that there is a perfect model available.

Rather than applauding a Christian single woman who says she wants to adopt a child, the church should proclaim and uphold God’s plan. Church leaders should have the courage to say, “There is a divinely ordered pattern established in Scripture. It would be right for the woman to first find a husband. Then they will be free to adopt as many children as they want.”

Of course, if the woman cannot or won’t marry, she is not barred from otherwise impacting young lives. She could volunteer as a mentor; she could help part-time at an orphanage or a shelter for battered women; or she could get involved in her community in any other number of ways.

This would both fulfill the Christian calling of compassion and uphold the sanctity of God’s template for the human family.

This is, I think, what Jesus meant when he called Christians to be a “city set on a hill” (Matthew 5:14). The church is supposed to be a bright and shining example of what life should be, pointing those who dwell in the dark shadows of the valley to a hope beyond a broken and painful existence. And the plan for that city is found in God’s Word.

Who is responsible for proclaiming the truth if not the church? If it hides God’s purposes or apologizes for it – even if done out of compassion – we have sent the world away from the city gates, back into the darkness below. We’ve told them, “If you don’t care for God’s model, think up something else, as long as it is motivated by compassion or the needs of the individual.” 

Maybe all this makes me a Pharisaical hair-splitter, claiming to be faithful to God’s Word while escaping the deeper, more spiritual requirements of Christianity.

But I don’t think so. I think what concerns me is that it’s the small foxes that spoil the vineyard. Although foxes can be cute and fuzzy, what they really do is dig and chew and devour. The concepts of marriage and family are being laid waste, one little fox at a time.

Christians, especially, should sound the alarm when the foxes are loose and cavorting where the fruit grows. And Christians should never, ever be the ones who turned them loose in the fields.