From the outset, our intention was to use adoption as a means of growing a family. But what did that mean? A set of meaningful relationships, or a set of traditions, or just having children to prove that we were normal parents?

There is some similar confusion about our adoption as children of God. The metaphor is clearly a relationship metaphor, and yet in our individualistic culture we tend to view this as simply another form of salvific experience. Because of our new relationship with the Heavenly Father, we can now approach Him in ways that we could not do so before. The Pauline metaphor, on the other hand, is closer to a communal metaphor. We have become sons and daughters of our Heavenly Father, which implies that we have to learn how to live in a family with other children of God.

What we learned in our adoption was that we needed to train our sons differently from the environment they had grown up in. The orphanage was a “survival of the fittest” environment, dominated by the older children who bullied and bossed the younger ones around. As a result, there was little expressed affection, and relationships were based on power. While we wanted our sons to obey us, we wanted them to do so because (1) they loved us and (2) they saw this as a way of relating to one another and to us. In other words, we hoped that they would “surrender” to our love for them.

In a similar way, even though we have been justified by our acceptance of the death of Christ on our behalf, there is much more to the Christian life. We are to learn to serve our brothers and sisters as members of one family. We are to use our “gifts” in a way that expresses value in all those who are followers of Jesus Christ. And we are not to selfishly insist on our own way when we feel our “rights” have been trampled upon. In short, it is a new way of life that is brought about by the Holy Spirit who now dwells in us. A large part of this new way of life is intimate communication with God through prayer.

Our relationship with our sons developed as we were able to communicate more deeply with one another. One area we found challenging was being open about our feelings with each other. This is a skill not readily practiced in our American culture, which is now heavily dependent on electronic media for communication. Our goal should be to foster intimacy in the members of our family between all those who compose it. Could this be one of the main causes of a sense of loneliness in the younger generations?

What have your learned as ways to foster a sense of being family? How do you see these as mirroring our mutual relationships as adopted children of God? Please feel free to comment in the comment box below.