Barefoot Blog

My wife, Mary, and I adopted our daughter Rebecca from China in 1999. Like many adopted children, our daughter needed therapy to correct a Reactive Attachment Disorder.  Because she did not bond with her birth mother, she did not develop parts of her brain; there was a physiological disorder that caused her to resist being held. This resistance, if unchecked, would develop into severe anti-social behavior even into adulthood.

What most of us experience immediately after birth and during infancy is consistent loving touch, mostly with loving parents. The junction between nerve cells, called synapses, consist of a minute gap across which impulses pass by diffusion of a neurotransmitter. During the early infancy, intimate bonding experience with loving parents cause these synapses to “fire” and make connections to develop our brains and our personalities.

When this developmental disorder occurs, frequently but not exclusively in cases of adoption, a painful therapy is required. Without extended periods of “holding time” therapy, our daughter would never have rested in our arms or found her place in her new family. She fought and kicked and screamed when we held her. Though we fought back the tears through this painful therapy, Rebecca experienced an unimaginable pain just because we held her in our arms. These sessions would last up to an hour until, exhausted and weary, Rebecca would collapse and fall asleep in a peaceful rest in mom’s or dad’s arms.

This process has me thinking. Could it be that new-born Christians need “holding time”? Could it be that some, or many, young Christians are never “bonded” into the family of God? Could it be that new born Christians are “still born” with nobody to bond to, no intimate family in which to be nurtured?

God’s kind intention is for every Christian to be adopted into the family of God. Jesus has already “bought” us with a “price” (1 Cor. 6:20); the adoption fee has been paid. This costly initiative is Christ’s sacrifice. Newly adopted babies are bonded to loving parents, unaccompanied by their conscious choice.   Likewise, God has appointed men and women in the Body of Christ to welcome strangers, those who have found life in Christ, as family. It is in the conscious choice to “adopt” new believers into the family that real life is imparted and nurtured.

Before we adopted our little girl, we toured and served China’s orphanages with university student interns in 1998. One of the government orphanages was appalling. We were ushered into a room full of older children and young teenage Chinese children that had never been adopted. Rejected and institutionalized, these orphans left their wooden bench, the only furniture in the stale concrete room with one window, and surrounded us. Standing there with little more than old and frayed pajamas, they threw their arms around us. My heart broke as they held onto me saying, “Baba” (Daddy).

I believe God calls us to go to where life happens, to the neglected and rejected, to adopt disaffected people. If we do not, then “un-adopted” girls and boys will grow up with no vital connection to their Father in heaven. We are the Body of Christ. If young Christians are not bonded, they will become like so many un-adopted children, making due in an institutional environment, which may be nothing more than a Sunday church service.

What I am suggesting here is that we need a deeper, wider, and more complete vision for evangelism. Modern evangelism has reduced the Good News to an argument to be won, a list of bullet points. Most will agree that conversion is the “born again” experience, born of the Spirit, delivered from darkness into the kingdom of Jesus. But this is not the Gospel. The Gospel is a radical proclamation of Jesus as Lord over all; it’s not just about conversion. It’s about transformation.

How does transformation happen? Transformation goes beyond conversion. Bob Moffit defines biblical transformation as “the process of restoration to God’s intentions of all that was broken when humanity rebelled against God at the Fall. It is not the same as spiritual conversion, though it begins there. It is God’s work. He calls his people to participate with him in it. This ongoing process will not be fully completed until Christ returns.”
– Bob Moffit, October 2005 issue of Evangelical Missions Quarterly.

I pray for transformation, that the Body of Christ would not settle for institutional church. Failing to bond, un-adopted Christians will never thrive or participate with the Father in the ongoing process of transformation of creation, especially fallen humanity.