We live in a world that needs, wants, craves to quantify, categorize, identify everything and everyone. Our world excels at this task and we have created systems that control what our minds accept and expect from others. Parenting children I did not produce has given me a unique understanding of how we exercise this control. We use terms like step-child, step-parent, half-sister and many more. I was sitting in a Men’s Bible Study the other day and one of the men mentioned his step-child. Then a thought bloomed in my swirling brain. Jesus was adopted. He was Joseph’s step son produced by other beings and given the gift of being his father. Joseph became the father of Jesus not through biology but through obedience and love. Yet, I cringe each time I hear someone use those qualifiers, those words that limit, those images that stratify how we are supposed to see another. The words we use to describe things in our world are used without thought, without discernment, without love. Republican, Democrat, black, white, 1st world. 3rd world, and where is the 2nd world anyway? All these words forcing ideas about who or what or how or where someone is suppose to act or feel or appear.
Years ago we were having a discussion about a new employee at our firm, she was assertive, strong, engaging, and at times aggressive. Some of my cohorts were struggling with her and I asked them if she were a man would they feel the same way. It was a heated discussion but fruitful. The men and women in the office expected her to be something other than she was and thankfully she was strong enough not to be that.
I parent children from different continents and cultures. They look different, they talk different, they smell different, but they are all my children. My wife and I are diligent to not use words that describe our children as anything other than children. We fail, we succeed, but we never stop being aware how the words we use to describe our children and how they will form their own self image. If I always described the children as my adopted children or biological children or Asian or African or whatever without thought, without care, without obedience, I will limit who they will become. I may even destroy them.
In Acts 10:34 Peter states that God shows no partiality. God has the ability to see each of us as who we are capable of being. God does not limit us by labeling us by color, or birth, or location. God sees a person created to be a loving integral part of the world, a community, a family. It matters not how a child comes into a family. It matters most how that child is loved and accepted. We have no control over how we come into this world, no control about how the family we are born to works. I adopt children not to rescue them but to be obedient to God. To give another person a place where they can thrive, flourish and become who they were created to be. If I use words that describe them as anything other than that I am limiting them. Each child that I have been allowed to parent is part of our family, part of our community, part of our world in a unique and glorious way.
I do not have biological or adopted children, I have children. Children that I am called to teach, to train, to encourage, to love, to let go. This does not mean that I am in anyway a perfect parent and my failures will continue to come. But I must be willing to stop and critique my words, my actions, my thoughts or I will limit them in ways I should not. When Peter states God has no partiality I believe it. God does not care what we look like, what we wear. What God cares about is how we love, how we treat, how we encourage. We have been given the ability to either lift up or tear down, build or destroy. It is a daunting task, yet we have the capacity to succeed in abundance if we will let ourselves give up the control, the images, the expectations we have put on others. Our goal is to have no partiality, no condemnation, no judgment, no preconceptions. We need to check our words, our thoughts, our expectations and renew them to see others as what they can be, what they will be, what they are. Renew your minds and be open to learning, to changing, to transforming how you see others. It is not too late to start and it is not too late to love.