Christian Adoption

I have learned that adoption is not smiled upon in Asian culture.

The culture believes bringing a stranger into your home or family is unhealthy and dangerous. I see the logic behind this belief and recognize that spending limited family resources on on a stranger is somewhat unnatural. If the stranger is physically, mentally or emotionally damaged, this only increases the cost and danger to the family bringing the stranger.

This attitude makes perfect sense. It still shocked me.

My positive perspective toward adoption comes from my culture. I suspect that encouragement of adoption in the West is a direct result of our Christian heritage. Naturalism and humanism cannot support adoption. Adoption pushes against survival of the fittest and the natural value of the family unit above other individuals. All ancient religions bore similar attitudes towards orphans and strangers.

Christianity is the only ancient religion that actively encourages care for orphans. It is the only religion that depicts God bringing outsiders into his family (willingly paying the great cost). It seems that Christianity embedded this idea into Western culture and it largely remains in spite of the growing pluralism within that culture.