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Adoption: Ten Course Corrections for Everyone
I am an adoptive parent. I believe in the institution of adoption, and I thank God we have our daughter. That said, I’ve noticed some serious dysfunction with how evangelicals sometimes approach and/or think about adoption, mostly international. It’s time for some course corrections. 1. We should be able to assume that Christians have the highest standards of ethics and justice. If we believe Jesus is the truth, we should be zealous about truth telling. Believers have often been so focused on rescuing that we've bent the rules, justifying our behavior by pointing to the kids’ desperation. Consequently, we’ve hurt our testimony and provided incentives for corruption. We’ve exaggerated the…
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Is Peter Insulting Women? Part 2
Go here for part I. In the apostle Peter’s first epistle he writes some words that can trip up the twenty-first-century reader. Both his instruction to wives and to husbands can make us say, “Whoa! What?” After telling wives to have gentle, quiet spirits, Peter adds an example: “Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him lord, and you have become her children if you do what is right without being frightened by any fear (1 Pet. 3:1–6). He goes on to tell the husbands to live with their wives “according to knowledge” because—and here’s the kicker—she is the “weaker vessel” (v. 7). Are today’s wives to call their husbands “master”? Are women…
