The Stupidity of Adopting Cats and the Glory of Being Adopted

About a year ago my wife and I adopted two cats. Which, in my opinion, is stupid for at least two reasons.

First, they are cats. I haven’t checked the Hebrew of Genesis 3 but I think that somewhere in there it is implied that a cat is what convinced the serpent to deceive the first couple. I can’t prove that though.

Secondly, is it really adoption? I’m not raising these cats as my own children. They are cats. Though they might both occasionally poop on the floor the similarities mostly stop there. I won’t be buying clothes for the cats, I won’t shed a tear if they escape the house at night—in fact I encourage it, and I won’t put my children’s offspring in a box at Wal-Mart that says free to a good home.

Yet no matter how stupid the wording is, my wife and I have a paper that says we have adopted Alley-Cat and Sally-Cat. They were only six weeks old when we took them into our home. They were sisters from a litter of five other cats. As we picked these cats we tried to predict their future. Would they be prideful and stuck up, like most other cats? Would they be mean and twitchy? Would they play with our kids well?

As we looked over these five cats we decided upon Alley (who seemed ornery but cute) and Sally (who seemed a tad depressed but needy). We figured these cats would be decent pets. We convinced the folks at the humane society to give us a buy-one-get-one-free deal, and we took these cats home.

Our adoption

I’ve been giving some thought to the Lord’s adoption of us. It’s nothing like our “adoption” of these cats.

For one, he does intend to make us full-fledged children. “We are heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ”. This is astounding. To truly reflect this we would need to build a new room for the cats, give them their own beds, clothes, and the same amount of love and affection that we give to our children. They’d become more than cats. (Which I’m not going to do, by the way).

Secondly, unlike my wife and I, God is able to see our entire history. He knows all the times we are going to poop on the floor, scratch a kid in the face, pridefully ignore him, and think that we are more awesome than everyone else in the house. He knows every sin that we have committed, are committing, and will commit. And He—unlike us—feels the full weight of our treason.

If we had a crystal ball when we were trying to decide between these five cats, I know exactly how I would have chosen them. I would have chosen the good cats. Not these evil hell-spawns that we have residing in our house at present. Truth be told, I probably would have gotten a dog and had enough fodder from our crystal ball to convince my wife of the same.

This is not the case with the Lord.

I can’t fathom that He looks at all of my darkness—past, present, future—and says, “I’ll redeem that one”. Seriously? He knows all of my rebellion. All of the times that I’ve forsaken Him. All of the times that I’ve botched living the Christian life. The coldness of my love. The depth of my occasional doubt. The foolishness of my thinking and living. All of it. And he says, “I want this one”.

Unbelievable.

Feast on this from Matt Chandler:

Pat Robertson vs. The Gospel

I wanted to title this article, “Remind Me Again Why People Still Listen to Pat Robertson”.  But as I thought about it I realized that this fits in rather nicely with the theology of a good number of American Christians. 

Yes, you heard him correctly.  Be careful when adopting children because they might have brain damage and “grow up weird”.  Guys ditching this lady aren’t dogs they are just smart men that don’t want to parent the United Nations.  You never know what has happened to the child.  You don’t have to take on somebody else’s problems.  We help orphans but we aren’t going to have them into our homes. 

In the next few days you will see Robertson issue some sort of apology and say that he misspoke.  What he was really trying to say is that you do not have to accept responsibility that God has not given to you.  You aren’t a dog if you realize that you cannot handle the suffering of someone else.  You’re just human.  It’s great and wonderful for people that feel called by God to take in these orphans but you shouldn’t feel guilty if you aren’t comfortable or called to do it yourself.  I apologize for the way my words sounded but all I was really trying to say is be cautious when considering adoption. 

And all of Pat’s happy followers will wipe the sweat off their brow and say, “whew that was a close one, we were afraid for a moment there that Pat was a little off his rocker". 

Still a problem, though.

Problem is, even if (when) he offers some sort of similar clarification it will still expose his underlying…dare I say it…heresy.  Robertson only gets a hearing in a world/church that has bought into some form of the prosperity gospel.  Foundational to such teaching as Robertson’s is that suffering cannot fit in with the good purpose of God.  It’s just “weird”.  Suffering is my failure to utilize the divinely designed means of blessing. 

In a 700 Club world you don’t take up a cross and devote your life to caring for children with Down Syndrome without seeing any visible reward in this life.  You might see a story about a lady that cared for children with Down’s and somehow God healed the child, or somehow God blessed them financially, or emotionally, or spiritually.  (And all of those may be well and true).  But what you won’t see featured is raw in your face suffering that will only find redemption on the other side of glory.  As I’ve noted before, there’s no room for that in 700 Club theology.

Robertson’s advice is fundamentally “you’re not a monster if you choose not to suffer”.  Okay, I’ll give you that.  You aren’t a monster.  But you aren’t a disciple following the footsteps of a suffering Jesus either.  I can’t say it any better than Russell Moore:

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.

So even though this guy makes our ears tickle can we please stop listening to him and instead follow the Man that didn’t have a place to lay his head some nights.