The last word on such words, from the Word.
Lots of hard and hurtful words this week, from lots of different sources. Some of the most difficult to understand were words aimed at Supreme Court nominee, Amy Barrett, who was accused of being a racist… because she has two black children.
On Saturday, Ibram X. Kendi, a Boston University professor and author of the best-selling book How to Be an Antiracist, took to Twitter to attack Judge Barrett. Kendi asserted, “Some White colonizers ‘adopted’ Black children. They ‘civilized’ these ‘savage’ children in the ‘superior’ ways of White people, while using them as props in their lifelong pictures of denial, while cutting the biological parents of these children out of the picture of humanity.”
Other voices joined Kendi’s, diversely speculating that the Judge had “stolen” her Haitian-born children, that her object in adopting was racial imperialism, and that a biracial family photo was a calculated political strategy. Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a New York University historian and CNN political commentator, went so far as to compare Judge Barrett to Nazi baby-snatchers (a comparison whose intended insult was undercut by its illogic: the Nazis kidnapped some Polish children because their Aryan looks made them potential fits for the white supremacist state of the Third Reich… ahem.)
In this floodtide of words, the primary words being singled out for re-definition and use as weapons numbered two:
- Race.
- Adoption.
Sometimes I find myself at a loss for words to rebut words that echo in my ears like “sound and fury, signifying nothing” (a phrase that comes, appropriately enough, from Shakespeare’s Macbeth – who modelled the deathly dangers of words misused to mislead…).
At such times, there’s only one source I can reliably trust to set me straight and correct my vocabulary: Jesus – the Word made flesh, the Logos (word) of God.
- Jesus on RACE:
In Christ, all people are equal, and equally loved
Jesus’s love specifically erased hierarchies among people. He taught that “the first will be last,” (Matthew 20:16) and “all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted” (Luke 18:14) and “whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.” (Matthew 25:40)
Jesus’s love negated distinctions made within his culture. Jesus actively sought people who had been designated “unclean” – people who were outsiders – people who were “less than” (like women). And Jesus did not just heal and serve such folks; all figured prominently in Jesus’s intimate circle of friends.
Jesus’s stance – that people were of sacred worth, no matter what distorted, demeaning identity the world assigned – rested on the details of Creation itself: “When God created humankind, he made them in the likeness of God. 2 Male and female he created them, and he blessed them and named them “Humankind” when they were created.” (Genesis 5:1 – 2)
And Jesus lived as a constant reminder that this imago dei was inherent to every person… habitually seeking out those whom his culture had designated as not fully human: lepers, beggars, prostitutes, the “mongrel-race” of Samaria, etc., and teaching parables in which the single, seemingly value-less lost thing – the one sheep in the ninety-nine, the coin – was worth leaving the all rest to find and save. Everyone made in God’s image. Everyone so cherished as to be worthy of rescue. Everyone.
Paul summarizes Jesus’s lived-out love in these words: “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” (Galatians 3:28) Paul, again, in Colossians 3:11: (in Christ) “…there is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free; but Christ is all and in all!”
Paul’s words make clear that Christ lived and taught the opposite of “identity politics,” which categorizes and separates people from one another based on their individual attributes. “Race”, for Jesus, is simply a descriptor – like “tall,” or “young,” or “left-handed” – words which describe but do not divide. In Christ, people are united based on the attributes of Christ alone. In Christ, nobody is “less than” or “more than” because “Christ is all and in all.”
Applying this to Judge Barrett’s family: Seen through the eyes of Christ, the word “race” is irrelevant. The Barretts’ have no black children or white children, no special needs or fully-able children; the Barretts have children – made in the image of God, of sacred worth. Period.
2. Jesus on Adoption:
The Heart of the Gospel
Jesus’s love is explicitly that of adoption. Jesus tells his followers, “When you welcome one such child in my name, you welcome me.” (Matthew 18:5) He goes on to assure us that he “will not leave us orphaned” (John 14:18).
Paul expands on Jesus’s words, explaining that God predestines us for “adoption as his children through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of his will” (Ephesians 1:5). Paul’s words go on to encompass the whole of the Christian understanding of identity, explaining that God in Jesus Christ redeems people from sin and death “so that we might receive adoption as children. 6 And because (we) are children, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” 7 So (we) are no longer a slave but a child, and if a child then also an heir, through God.” (Galatians 4:5 – 7)
Adoption actually supersedes biological connection in the gospel, not to undermine family ties and faithfulness but rather to establish God as the Father of all. Jesus demonstrates this priority, rebuffing his family when they try to restrain his teaching on the basis that he is insane, asking “Who are my mother and my brothers?” 34 And looking at those who sat around him, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! 35 Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.” (Mark 3:33 – 35)
Paul expands on this teaching, too – conflating adoption into God’s family with being “offspring” of Abraham: “And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise.” (Galatians 3:29)
According to scripture, there are no “natural born children” in God’s household, except Jesus. All of us, without exception, are adoptees. Further, this identity is a gift to us – like everything else in life – a lavish token of God’s boundless love and grace: “So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God…” (Ephesians 2:19)
Important to note: Christian families based on adoption is not a new invention. The very first Christians were notorious in the ancient Roman empire for rescuing infants who had been left out, or “exposed,” to die – the first century version of a late-term abortion. Understanding their own identity as adopted children of God, Christians’ instinct to adopt children is unexceptional, reflexive, and supremely logical.
Applying this to Judge Barrett’s family: Seen through Christ’s eyes, the Barrett’s family is a mirror image (imperfect! but radiant!) of the family of God.
At a time when words of hatred, accusation, ridicule, and condemnation are filling the spaces around us and deepening the divides that separate us, we can trust the still, small voice of the One who made us in his image. His word on our identity and value is, after all, the last word:
“Can a mother forget the baby at her breast
(Isaiah 49:15 – 16)
and have no compassion on the child she has borne?
Though she may forget,
I will not forget you!
16 See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands…”
When I wrap my head around that image of God’s eternal faithfulness and unconditional love, my own words echo the joy in John’s ecstatic exclamation:
“See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God – and that is what we are!”
(1 John 3:1)
