Posted on 08/17/2012 7:05:46 PM PDT by Altariel
In a recent broadcast of The 700 Club, a woman sent in a question about a man who wouldn’t marry her because she has children who were adopted internationally. If they were her “own” biological children, he would have no problem, she said. But because they were adopted, he saw too much risk. Host Pat Robertson’s female co-host bristled and said he was acting like a “dog.” Robertson disagreed.
He said the man “didn’t want to take on a United Nations,” and that, after all, you never know about adopted children; they might have brain damage and “grow up weird.”
I am taking a deep breath here and reciting Beatitudes to myself. I had promised never to mention Robertson here again. Every few months he says some crazy scandalous thing. He blames 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina on gays and lesbians, cozies up to the Chinese coercive and murderous one-child policy, counsels a man that he can divorce his Alzheimer’s-riddled wife because she’s “not there” anymore.
Let me just say this bluntly. This is not just a statement we ought to disagree with. This is of the devil.
The last go round, Robertson “clarified” his statements on a man leaving his sick wife. Didn’t mean to say it was right, he said, just that the man’s got to have some companionship and a divorce is better than adultery. Please. Robertson’s defenders said to me in letters and calls and emails that Robertson is just not what he used to be mentally and that you ought to hold him to a lower standard. That would be true if people were tapping his phone, or going to his house and recording conversations. However, the man is on television, representing to millions of people what Christianity is about.
The issue here isn’t just that Robertson is, with cruel and callous language, dismissing the Christian mandate to care for the widows and orphans in their distress. The issue is that his disregard is part of a larger worldview. The prosperity and power gospel Robertson has preached fits perfectly well with the kind of counsel he’s giving in recent years. Give China a pass on their murderous policies; we’ve got business interests there. Divorce your weak wife; she can’t do anything for you anymore. Those adopted kids might have brain damage; they’re “weird.” What matters is health and wealth and power. But that’s not the gospel of Jesus Christ. For too long, we’ve let our leaders replace the cross with an Asherah pole. Enough is enough.
Jesus was, after all, one of those adopted kids. Joseph of Nazareth was faced with a pregnant woman he could easily have abandoned. He knew this child wasn’t his, and all he had to go on was her word and a dream. He could have dismissed either. But he strapped on his cross, provided for his wife, and protected her child. Indeed, he became a father to her child. God called this righteous. The child Jesus seemed to be a colossal risk. His own family and neighbors and villagers thought he’d turned out “weird” (Mark 3:20-21). Maybe he was demon-possessed, they speculated, or maybe even “brain damaged.”
The Bible tells us that Jesus is present with the weak and the vulnerable, the “least of these,” his brothers and sisters. When one looks with disgust at the prisoner, the orphan, the abandoned woman, the mentally ill, the problem isn’t just with a mass of tissue connected by neural endings. The issue there is the image of God, bearing all the dignity that comes with that. And, beyond that, the issue there is the presence of Jesus himself.
Christians are the ones who have stood against the prophets of Baal and the empire of Rome and every other satanic system to say that a person’s worth doesn’t consist in his usefulness. Christians are the ones who picked up abandoned babies, who wiped drool from the dying elderly, who joyfully received developmentally disabled children, and who recognized that our own sin has made us nothing noble or powerful. We’re all just dead and damaged and, well, “weird.” But Jesus loved us anyway.
I say to my non-Christian friends and neighbors, if you want to see the gospel of Christ, the gospel that has energized this church for two thousand years, turn off the television. The grinning cartoon characters who claim to speak for Christ don’t speak for him. Find the followers who do what Jesus did. Find the people who risk their lives to carry a beaten stranger to safety. Find the houses opened to unwed mothers and their babies in crisis. Find the men who are man enough to be a father to troubled children of multiple ethnicity and backgrounds.
And find a Sunday School class filled with children with Down Syndrome and cerebral palsy and fetal alcohol syndrome. Find a place where no one considers them “weird” or “defective,” but where they joyfully sing, “Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world.”
That might not have the polish of television talk-show theme music, but that’s the sound of bloody cross gospel.
as an adult adoptee i see it this way: yes, maybe you are taking a chance that an adopted child isn’t genetically perfect...but then again whose to say that the adopting parents aren’t screwed up?
Agreed that Robertson shouldn’t be on television anymore. I don’t know if his comments are “of the devil” but they are of a man who has lost his mental faculties. Billy Graham says some oddball things now too. I wouldn’t be too harsh on either one because both have done wonderful things for the cause of Christ but somebody in a position of authority needs to tell them the time for public speaking/preaching is over.
Incidentally, my mother had frequent urinary tract infections and, when she suffered these, the most bizarre things would come out of her mouth but, when she was healthy, her mind was quick and lucid. It could be that one or both of these gentleman could have lapses when their kidneys can’t handle the toxicity in their systems and this somehow affects their mental processes. Still, someone of wisdom needs to keep them away from microphones.
I think that's pretty clear.
and that you ought to hold him to a lower standard.
No, but someone ought to gently retire him to a comfortable assisted-living facility, and keep him away from any broadcast equipment.
That said, the author makes a silly comparison of Jesus with adopted children. Jesus was obviously the son of His mother, and St. Joseph had been told by God that the child was God's Son. This is not to put down the adoption of needy children from whatever country, but it's best if people don't imagine things about Jesus when the Gospels are perfectly clear.
To quote one of my favorite characters: “Stupid is as stupid does.” Mr Robertson’s comments about accepting adopted children are ridiculous. The woman in the article could have had biological children that might have unknown illnesses/diseases. If the adult genuinely loves the other adult, then he/she accepts whatever that child is, no matter how that child came to be in their life (biological, adoption, remarriage, foster). To exclude a child due to “fear” of their unknown/possible illnesses just because they are adopted instead of biological reveals the person’s superficial embrace of the concept of love, incomplete submission to the will of God, and their own sin of pride. Shame, shame on Mr Robertson. Time for him to retire and learn more about being a Christian. He errs in his opinions/answers to his viewers and he gives them poor examples of Christian life by his shallow, stupid remarks.
Pat Robertson is getting to old to be on TV. I wouldn't let what he says bother you.
I guess pointing out reality is politically incorrect. International adoption are of children who come from screwed up families, often ravaged by war, crime, and diseases. There has to be some impact on their physical and mental development. But, do not raise that at all, because it is politically incorrect.
As an adoptive parent of an internationally adopted child, I find his comments DISGUSTING.
He just really needs to retire NOW. His brain is obviously addled.
I disagree with you on SO MANY levels! Your comment is ignorant.
Many internationally adopted children become available for adoption because there is a huge stigma against single mothers, or, in the case of China, the government only allows them to have one child per family.
My internationally adopted kid is BRILLIANT, HANDSOME and a wonderful child, thank you very much!
It is not genetics that are big concerns....it is the devastating psychological damage done to young children when they never “bond” with a person in the first two years of life. Study the “attachment” theory.
And if they do bond-—then being removed from the bonded person also creates tremendous psychological issues/trauma—and young children can’t really “recover” from early trauma when it is severe. You can not treat children like a thing with no emotions, but Communist (Godless) countries are famous for it. They want a Brave New World after all.
This abnormal crucial period in the development of emotional health -—is well known-—the inhumane treatment occurs in all Communist countries-—and studies of the Romanian orphans do suggest that if this damage occurs in their early formative years-—they will never recover.
I do know of a couple that had to give up an older Russian boy (about 8)—because they were afraid to sleep at night in their own home and never could trust him, even after 6 months. This was in the 90’s.
This is not to say that Robertson puts his foot in his mouth. He often does—but there is always a little seed of truth in his statements. It is not all B.S.
How positively Aryan of you. Seriously I wonder sometimes about some people on here...
I can just imagine you saying after the garbage you are writing, that this is why you support abortion.
Would not have them any other way. They are beautiful, and they are better-behaved than the 'normal' children we see running and screaming around the grocery stores.
God blessed us with these beautiful kids. My wife and I are honored to have them as our own.
-Gunner
A word of advice: turn off that accursed TV and just open up the dang Bible. Let the Holy Spirit of God reveal to you who He really is, and stop letting some Armani-suited idiot tell you what to do. I mean, really!
God bless you and your family.
The real issue isn’t whether there are distinctive challenges in rearing adopted children or internationally adopted children. Maybe there are.
The point is that the man in the situation described simply was not willing to love in a Christlike way. He was afraid marriage to the woman with adopted children would ask more of him than he was willing to give. Many people have this attitude in marriage, about all kinds of issues - illness, job loss, children (including their own natural children), simple fidelity - “This is asking too much of me.”
From the standpoint of Christian witness, the problem is that Pat Robertson finds this attitude perfectly acceptable, just as he found it acceptable that a man should divorce a wife who was no longer of use to him. This is not Christianity. Christianity calls each person to love sacrificially, to give more than is humanly possible. Yes, we all fall short, over and over again, but a Christian minister should never say, “God doesn’t even expect you to try.”
I think the woman in the example is much better off not having married a man who didn’t love her. If he hadn’t fixed on the adopted children as an excuse, he’d probably have found something else and really left her in the lurch.
“The point is that the man in the situation described simply was not willing to love in a Christlike way. He was afraid marriage to the woman with adopted children would ask more of him than he was willing to give. Many people have this attitude in marriage, about all kinds of issues - illness, job loss, children (including their own natural children), simple fidelity - “This is asking too much of me.””
This. Thank you.
You’re welcome. I think the hypothetical man is neither a “dog,” as Robertson’s co-host said, nor a person acting reasonably, but rather someone who is putting fear in the place of faith and love. We all do this sometimes, and we should recognize it and turn back to God each time.
I have this to say to Pat..
SHUT UP!! SHUT UP!! it comes from the Latin phrase “shut’ meaning “close” and “Up” meaning your mouth you idiot!!!
SHUT UP!!
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