True Religion
James 1:27 says "Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world."
Anthony Bradley discusses the staggering number of orphaned children in America asking the question "Why does America have orphans if it has Christian churches?"
He goes on to say
America has nearly 115,000 orphaned kids in foster care waiting to be adopted. Some wonder how this is possible in a country with Christian families. Surely, there are 115,000 missional families in America, right? Missional families, for example, embrace the redemptive mission of God and practice "true religion" in their local communities (James 1:27). Missional Christians in America could eliminate the foster care system tomorrow if we would stop "shootin' up" with the American Dream (heroine) in order to get high on a lame life lived for the sake of comfort and ease.
What do you think? Is this a fair assessment?
5 comments:
I've been challenged with this quite a bit lately and I simply have to say, I'm too selfish to want to give up what it would take to adapt.
oh ... really nice blog format, colors, etc..
thanks rick for the compliment on the blog layout and colors. it was my original idea...from the looks of your blog you copied my idea.
The Scripture say that we are to visit orphans. There is a big jump between visiting and adopting! Though I will say that I think adopting is a very Christian principle. My brother and sister in law have adopted two children and are in the process of adopting one or two more. They have challenged us to consider adoption and we have been seeking the LORD as to what we should do.
I doubt the veracity of any claim that there are a huge number of kids in foster homes that could be adopted. I think that the case is that there are a huge number of kids who have a legally confused guardianship. For example, a child may have no functioning father and a mother who is a drug addict. Neither the mother nor the child wants a legal declaration that the child is no longer the child of that mother. Yet that mother will not take care of the child. I believe that investigation in the majority of cases would show that parental responsibility has been confused and divided between different persons, agencies, the courts, social services, and the like.
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