Heartiste
July 10, 2015
Reader ATC forwards a link to a Christianity Today article about the dark side (heh) of the Christian adoption scene. Apparently, there are lots of white Evangelical Christians who think it is their God-given calling to rescue the world’s orphans from lives of destitution, and race-cuck their own families in the process.
You have to read between the lines in theses stories for the full impact of what’s being discussed, but thankfully the context is so obvious that your inference skills don’t need to be particularly sharp.
At a church-sponsored adoption event, passionate servant-leaders unpack the clear and resounding call from the Holy Scriptures to care for orphans. Whether speaking one-on-one or in front of the larger group, they eloquently raise awareness of the plight of millions of orphans worldwide. They tell stories about the 100,000 kids in U.S. foster care who need permanent families.
Get ready to bend over and take a soul-ramming, Christian Williams’ Syndrome sufferers.
Away from the crowd during a break, these same leaders talk with one another in muted tones about their real lives at home with kids whose backgrounds are filled with suffering, abuse, neglect, abandonment and deprivation.
AKA “normalcy” back in the adopted kids’ homelands.
They recount incidents of violence and hours-long raging.
Lil’ Shitavious slapping his white momma around.
They discuss the anguish of needing out-of-home care and the accompanying emotional agony and guilt. They lament the plight of healthier siblings [ed: white siblings] who aren’t getting the attention they need.
Rachel Dolezal to the courtesy phone…
They note the stress that is added to their lives by extended family members who can’t or won’t understand and don’t help.
Here’s a clue: Psychologically normal people don’t like sacrificing their time, energy, and love for unrelated children who don’t look or act anything like themselves.
They nobly attempt to soft-pedal the grief they feel when their church families offer a quick “atta boy” but nothing more practical.
“atta boy” = “lord have mercy on them, that household is a banana republic”.
They talk about the strain in their formerly strong marriages, and the list goes on. Sleep deprivation. Secondary trauma. Hopelessness. Failure. And the feeling of being alone—so very alone.
Not to worry. Christ will reward you in the afterlife for throwing away your present-life on a doomed quest to recreate Mystery Meat Theater 3000 in your living room.
But they try to remain thankful to the One who will never leave them or forsake them.
Even as they are being left and forsaken. Triumph of delusion over stone cold experience.
They are trying to count it all joy.
They are begging God for help, for healing for their children.
And God replied, “I’m spiritual intervention. You want something more practical than that you’ll have to talk to the guy who runs biomechanical intervention. Be careful, though. He likes to cut deals.”
They pray for strength to get up and do it all over again—day after day.
I can sorta understand desperate childless couples putting themselves through this self-imposed hell, but couples with their own children, adding misery to their happiness and to their biological children’s happiness? wtf? That’s child abuse.
They don’t like who they become at times, when the stress and fatigue take their toll—but they see no other way forward.
The cops who patrol inner city ghettos agree with this sentiment.
They want to be filled with the fruit of the Spirit,
Turn your backs for a minute and your daughters might get filled with the fruit of the jungle spirit.
but survival mode is the order of the day, every day, and it can go on for years.
Suicidal Tendencies: When Separation Isn’t Possible.
While their church friends talk about sports and college and music, they talk about individualized education programs, 504s, therapists and psychiatrists.
And sleeping with their guns under the pillow.
All the adoptive families they know have versions of the same story.
The families may change but the dindu remains the same.
They love their children. They choose to love them with everything they’ve got. It would just be so much easier if they didn’t feel like they were doing it alone.
Translation: “You will love my adopted third worldlet with the same fervor as I love him, or you are evil. EVIL!”
But no matter how much they talk about their need for the help of the community around them, the help doesn’t come.
Diversity + Proximity = Abandonment.
And it’s hard to explain to church friends that a week without swear words can be a miraculous cause for celebration.
One drop of wine in mud doesn’t change the mud. One drop of mud in wine ruins the wine.
Scene 3—One Year after the Adoption Event (this is a hope for the future)
Hope is the ur-cheat clause.
You know which religious group rarely bothers with all this outgroup, extrafamilial, pathological altruism toward their distant lessers?
Maybe evangelicals could learn a thing or two from their apocalypto dream tribe.