Abandoned-Orphaned

The Sum of the Parts

...In part, a portal that whisks you to exotic worlds and immerses you into the real cultures behind the curtains – the byways of life and the gritty existence of people struggling to survive against pitiful odds. Along the journey, children are found left in the wake, abandoned and orphaned by powers and principalities that seek to destroy them, to destroy communities and nations.

...In part, an exposition of the Biblical mandates of caution, judgment, justice, care and blessing regarding the "least of these." An intimate look at God’s truth and what it means for us today in the midst of millions upon millions of children that simply desire to be loved.

...In part, an acknowledgement and exploration of the mega-issues of our time and how they are all interrelated, interconnected – and addressed – through the rescue and care of parentless and discarded children. In short, a unified view of the greatest outreach opportunity of our time, an approach to shatter vicious cycles that ensnare humanity and to mobilize masses to attack the core issue of spiritual separation.

...In part, a plea to realize and engage the amazing front-line force that God has placed and mobilized for the most significant global task before us. A rebuke and encouragement to put aside personal motivations and to instead join the bride in all her radiance - to support her, cherish her and strengthen her – by "letting the little children come" to her.

...In part, a synergistic, synchronized framework of action to help bodies of believers - both near and far - to reach out in an organized holistic approach that will change the very course of history...by changing the children’s lives that will immediately and ultimately impact it.

...In part, a consideration that the One who became incarnate in poverty, thrust out immediately as a refugee, and adopted in love and obedience, would use such as these for the completion of the wondrous commission we have been given.

...In part, a treatise that puts forth the absurd idea that we, in affluence, need those, in physical and spiritual depravity, for our own sanctification...that the orphan, widow and stranger are indeed precious gifts to us.

The sum of the parts?

A literary adventure that I’m presently embarking on: a book that reflects upon my exposure to over two-hundred care contexts for the fatherless in over sixty developing-world nations; a book that draws upon lessons learned in leading a ministry that has helped to provide five hundred homes to orphaned and abandoned children; a book of transparent admission of the many mistakes along the way; a book to inform, engage and mobilize for the most powerful world evangelization and church growth strategy of our generation.

Stay tuned!

Rude Awakenings

I’m not ashamed to tell you that we now have three kids sleeping in our room.

Two year-old Hannah has staked out her position between Lisa and me on our king-sized bed. Caleb, five years old, camps down on a toddler mattress next to the footboard. Newborn Naomi is strategically set next to Lisa in a bedside bassinette.

Three children under the age of six in our room?

Yes, it certainly makes for moments of late-night chaos, especially for a really light sleeper like me.

Naomi is up every three hours or so for her feeding. As Lisa takes care of the new baby, Hannah, realizing that mommy is occupied with someone other than her, wakes up in protest. Hannah is also known to talk in her sleep, often arguing with Caleb or loudly proclaiming, "Mine! Mine!" to an imaginary acquirer of her toys.

Caleb takes his middle-of-the-night trips to the bathroom while totally oblivious of those trying to sleep around him. Thump, thump, thump across the wood floors, followed by the illuminating of every light possible and a toilet visit and flush with door wide open.

Meanwhile, Faith, our less-than-quiet six-year old in the next room, makes similar nighttime journeys down the hall past our open door.

Is it any wonder that I’m quite tired these days?

I was once told in the Philippines that the reason Americans don’t have larger families is because we don’t have enough rooms for each child. There is a belief in some parts of the developing world that we rich affluent Americans, with our desire to put each child in a room of their own, limit our families accordingly. Two extra bedrooms translates into two children.

Meanwhile, in the slums of Bombay, Manila, Lima, Nairobi and the world over, families of eight are crammed into one-room 8 ft. by 8ft. shacks.

My nocturnal distractions occur in a scene of great comfort – a room set at 72 degrees Fahrenheit with a constantly circulating fan providing a gentle breeze, a plush pillow-top bed so thick that you could lose yourself in it, plenty of space for the five nighttime inhabitants, and a peaceful sense of stability and security. Everybody goes to sleep with full bellies and, should anybody be sick, there are multitudes of medicines on hand.

To the contrary, those shanty-town dwellers live on urine-soaked dirt floors with no running water. Any stirring of disease-ridden children in the middle of a hot and humid night means that the whole family is awakened. Mosquitoes buzz around the heads of the feverish kids, while the danger of a home invasion by thieves is ever present. The black sooty walls choke the lungs while splintered wood makes a comfortable sleep-time position even harder to attain. Sweat-drenched sheets enunciate the combined body odors of a family that hasn’t been able to bathe in weeks.

Like most, I love weekends. After a restless night of multiple rude awakenings, I arise later than usual to sunlight flooding in through stained-glass windows. Soon there will be the scent of coffee and bacon filling the air. A nice hot shower, and a pick from many freshly-cleaned clothes, helps to get the day in order. All my smaller bed-chamber mates have long scurried off in search of cartoons and fairytales.

Meanwhile, it’s just another day of hard labor for the father in the developing world who tried to fight for a few precious hours of sleep inside his sardine-packed abode. His young daughter vomited on him last night, just another episode among many like it, night after night. There is no aromatic food greeting him, nor any fresh shower and clean clothes. The only light streaming into his dark hovel is through the same slats that neighbors can peer through, the same openings that bring the bugs and vermin.

How on earth does he have a day where he has the rest, energy and health to provide for his struggling family?

Maybe my sleepless nights aren’t so bad after all.

Would You Press the Button? (part seven)

The scenarios we’ve covered are just the proverbial tip of the iceberg. Much more lies beneath and things are often much more complicated than what they seem to be on the surface.

Take biofuels for example. They’ve long been touted as a replacement for fossil fuels, one answer to our greatest concerns about foreign oil dependency, greenhouse gases and general pollution. But the demand for more ethanol production has caused an even greater deforestation in Brazil and other parts of the world. Rainforests are being burned and bulldozed to make room for crops to produce this alternative energy source. As the price of these crops goes up, forests come down.

Time magazine just reported (Thursday, March 27, 2008) that:

Several new studies show the biofuel boom is doing exactly the opposite of what its proponents intended: it's dramatically accelerating global warming, imperiling the planet in the name of saving it.

Meanwhile, by diverting grain and oilseed crops from dinner plates to fuel tanks, biofuels are jacking up world food prices and endangering the hungry. The grain it takes to fill an SUV tank with ethanol could feed a person for a year. Harvests are being plucked to fuel our cars instead of ourselves.

But one doesn’t have to be an expert in all these matters and their correlations to figure out what buttons not to push. Simple awareness and evaluation often provides clear-cut decisions (no pun intended.)

Whether it’s actively avoiding products from countries with child labor issues, making more socially-conscious purchasing decisions in general, putting aside leisure and comfort to spend more time and resources in actively engaging the problems of our world, committing more time to evaluating opinions and positions before jumping to false conclusions, realizing the potential global consequences of our dangerous competitive tendencies, or voting on the issues instead of the personalities, we can indeed push that button less often.

Don’t fool yourself. You are indeed pressing that button. It’s not a simple yes or no answer.

Each and every day, you and I make self-centered decisions that potentially take the life of another. We certainly do choose our own pleasure or convenience to the detriment of others.

The only question that remains is...

What are you going to do about it?

To be continued...

Would You Press the Button? (part six)

Many people in this country physically have to push buttons in voting booths. The enfranchisement of the masses causes millions upon millions of these literal and figurative switches to be flipped in every municipality, from coast to coast.

Each button has both temporal and eternal consequences associated with it. The elected officials will help develop and define policy that directly or indirectly affects how many people will die with the further pressing of additional buttons.

Too bad that many of these elections are just popularity contests.

In strides the dashing young man, one of style and pizzazz, one of eloquent words and promises of change. People are drawn to him. His meteoric rise on the political scene is just the "underdog overcoming adversity" story that Americans crave and respect. He offers them hope for a better future, one free of war and recession.

He is confident with a commanding presence that owns the space he occupies. He represents a deviation from the "old guard" and connects well with certain constituencies of people, people who were formally disenfranchised and unfairly relegated to the periphery of society. People are attracted to him for that reason also, to see the clear wrongs of the past righted in the most visible and profound way possible.

He especially resonates with young college students and professionals. "He is our candidate," they proclaim. "No more old relics of leadership for us. We need a man who knows our generation and cares for the things we care for."

They get caught up in the cult of personality and the quest for the candidate that harmonizes with their age and energy. Even Christian youth groups throw accolades at him. Evangelical students float and fly his colors. Myspace and Facebook banners and buttons display their allegiance to him in glowing pixels.

Either out of ignorance or euphoria, the details get overlooked or lost. The potential buttons are indiscernible in the haze of celebrity and persona. It therefore doesn’t matter that this same candidate supports stabbing partially-born infants in the back of the neck with scissors, followed by the scrambling and vacuuming out of their brains prior to crushing their little skulls.

...And that he even supports seeing such heinous things funded with our tax dollars, your tax dollars.

Just because one speaks well, looks good, and connects with certain demographics, does that make them a good leader? Of good character? Just because one is youthful and hip, does that qualify to earn them the support of our Christian youth?

Push that button and millions of more babies will continue to die. Push that button and you have no excuse...their blood is on the tips of your fingers, the palms of your hands.

To be continued...

Would You Press the Button? (part five)

Competition. It’s the American way, right?

Position pitted against position. People pitted against people. Nation pitted against nation.

Liberals versus conservatives. Right versus left. Protestants versus Catholics. Bloods versus Crips. Yankees versus Red Sox. Coke versus Pepsi. America versus China. It goes on and on and on. We’re bombarded by it from every angle.

It rears its head in all circles – individual, group, community, ethnic, and national. It’s endemic in every type of venture and activity – corporate, social, and athletic. It infects every part of being – physical, mental, emotional, psychological, and spiritual.

Almost everything is turned into a battle for supremacy, a winner/loser scenario. Every traffic light becomes a herald of the race. Every minor disagreement becomes a last stand.

Some contests are healthy. A little rivalry or struggle helps to temper and test us, sometimes entertain us. Without experience with challenge, we are inept in the greater battles.

But we often forget that each victory gained has a necessary opposite outcome: persons who summarily experience failure and the ramifications of defeat.

It’s evident even in the seemingly mundane. When one advertising agency wins a major account from another, people are fired. People lose their homes. Marriages fail.

Yes, everything has its consequences. The pursuit of personal or corporate triumph means that the button is pushed continually.

And as we unfairly use snap decisions and opinions to polarize things, put people and positions into "us versus them" settings, we use such grounds to rationalize such competition. After all, it’s just "the Chinese" or "the liberals" we are competing against, right? By generalizing and sub-humanizing, we feel better about pushing the button.

"Gotta stop those darn Indians and Southeast Asians from taking our jobs and profits!"

As we protect American jobs from going overseas, an unemployed Thai worker makes the excruciating decision to sell his eldest daughter into the sex trade. To not do so would mean that his other three daughters would perish from starvation.

As we place high tariffs on agricultural products from India, a farmer outside of New Delhi cannot meet his obligations to his finance company. Broken and out of options, he and his whole family drink poison.

As we stigmatize those who don’t "buy American," we lessen the ability for the laborer in China to feed his family on $2 per day. He abandons his child at the local orphanage.

We’re one of the richest nations on the planet. We compete to get the newer car and bigger home while people living in cardboard boxes die. We have surplus in excessive abundance. We don’t need to win every economic global battle.

Folks, it’s not supposed to be this way. Don’t buy into the lie. Jesus taught against such thinking.

We have to embrace a more global philanthropic perspective, a more neighborly perspective.

After all, the whole world is simply that...a collection of neighbors.

"The entire law is summed up in a single command: Love your neighbor as yourself." (Galatians 5:14)

To be continued...

Would You Press the Button? (part four)

In order to solicit comments and opinions regarding the cognitive and emotional struggle that many ordinary people seem to wrestle over when faced with the question, I started a Facebook group a few days ago entitled, "Would you press a button for $1 MILLION if it meant a stranger would die?"

The description of this group was a direct copy/paste of my leading entry in this series, with one notable exception: Since the Facebook group question was specifically placed to elicit a response from a variety of people from a diversity of backgrounds, I added the following line:

"TELL THE TRUTH (For example, somebody may rationalize a "yes" by then stating that they would use the money to save more than one life, etc.)"

This resulted in barrage of messages being sent to my Facebook personal inbox. One could only categorize some of them as being "hate mail," judgments laden with harsh comments of disapproval and disappointment. Some of the more temperate comments included:

"How could you Paul, of all people, condone a choice to kill just to help others???"

"Shame on you for rationalizing the murder of innocents!"

Huh? Did I miss something?

Where did I ever say that was my position? I simply wrote that "somebody may rationalize..."

This all serves as a perfect lead in to my pre-planned third observation, another way that we, as human beings, push the button every day. For all of you on Facebook who quickly jumped to a false conclusion, thanks for helping me to illustrate my point.

The fact is that we human beings, on average, are very quick in forming an opinion or position. Typically, and with very little counsel or input, we form conclusions - often incorrect - and classify things into what we view as the relevant box.

Rapid judgments and actions, devoid of the required information and contemplation, leave us pushing the button daily.

People suffer and die accordingly.

To be continued...

Would You Press the Button? (part three)

We press that button in other ways also.

As we dwell within our entertainment-oriented, pleasure-seeking, self-indulgent domain, we ignore the plight of the world’s masses. As we give time and attention to the things that bring us materialistic or experiential satisfaction, we become apathetic to the mega-issues of our day.

We spend evenings absorbed by NBC, HBO and PPV, while people die in Darfur and the Congo. We fill our schedules with all manner of pleasurable activities and leisure occasions, while children are being raped for profit in Cambodia. We watch hundreds of hours of sporting events each year, while an emaciated worker is held in continual debt bondage to a brick kiln in India.

Where is our sense of outrage?

It has been numbed and replaced by the selfish pursuits of all that our culture has to offer.

Entertainment and material that "moth and rust will destroy" have been prioritized over giving time, attention and resources to our neighbors around the world.

Each time we tune into the next pointless TV show, instead of volunteering at a non-profit ministry, we are pushing the button.

Each time we splurge on trivialities and frivolities, instead of giving those funds to save a life in the developing world, we are pushing the button. We are choosing our pleasure over somebody else’s existence or well-being.

The 2006 American Time Use Survey, conducted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor, revealed that:

On an "average day" in 2006, persons in the US, age 15 and over, slept about 8.6 hours, spent 5.1 hours doing leisure and sports activities, worked for 3.8 hours, and spent 1.8 hours doing household activities. The remaining 4.7 hours were spent doing a variety of other activities, including eating and drinking, attending school, and shopping. Watching TV was the leisure activity that occupied the most time, accounting for about half of leisure time, on average, for both men and women.

Obviously, an "average day" factors in weekends and the reality that some activities are only done by a subset of the population. It is therefore designed to represent "adult society as a whole." Given that clarification, doesn’t it appear that our society can give more time and attention to the problems of the world, if only by replacing a few hours of TV per week?

We obviously devote a lot of our schedule to shopping. We live in a country that spends over $3 Billion on fine fragrances at department stores each year (not including Internet purchases and regular perfumes); a country that disperses over $250 million annually on just mascara alone; a country that will pay $15 billion this year for pet food, four times the amount spent on baby food. We dish out further billions on pet toys and accessories.

Time we invest in watching reruns and purchasing fancy fragrances could be used to save lives. Money we spend on pampering pets could be used to rescue the street child that nurses off of a stray dog in Bombay.

We’ve got it all wrong.

We keep pressing the button.

To be continued...

Would You Press the Button? (part two)

I see the button as an allegory, a metaphor of sorts.

The fact of the matter is that we press that button every day.

As we go about our daily lives of comfort and excess, without consideration of how our choices and actions might impact others, we adversely affect ‘strangers’ the world over.

When we buy a new bathroom rug because the last one is apparently out of style, we keep an eight year-old boy, Rajan, chained to a loom in Nepal.

When we pick up a latte from our favorite barista, we fuel a conglomerate that forces Juan, a poor Costa Rican coffee grower, to sell at prices far below what would allow him to afford that same cup of coffee for himself.

When we buy the latest fancy T-Shirt with gold embossing at XYZ Casuals, we rob Ajay from ever leaving the cotton plantation that holds him and his sisters in perpetual bondage in South India.

When we go on an exotic spa vacation to Southeast Asia, we entrap Isra, a fifteen year-old Thai girl from the impoverished hill tribes, in a world of daily violation and exploitation.

When we visit that adult Website that our teachers warned us about, we enable pornographers to imprison a scared teenage girl, Imana, in a Burundian hotel room for three days, robbing her of her innocence and privacy.

When we choose to adopt a child from a country with a less-than-reputable child-placement program, we cause Esmeralda to reluctantly give up her new baby girl in Latin America.

When we select that rare hardwood for our kitchen cabinets because it nicely matches the existing wallpaper and is much grander than the neighbor’s remodel, we help to eradicate the ecosystem that sustains Daniel and his family in Brazil.

When we choose to get an organ transplant in Eastern Europe because the wait is too long in the United States, we cause the abduction of Serge, a street child in Moldova, and the subsequent harvesting of his kidneys.

Whether it’s the big and profound (organ transplants, Internet pornography, and international adoptions), or the seemingly trite and trivial (cups of coffee, T-shirts, kitchen cabinets, vacations, and bathroom rugs), we constantly enslave, maim and kill our neighbors around the planet.

What’s unsettling is that the facts are out there and are readily available. They can be researched with relative ease. But we simply don’t have the time and inclination to do so.

We’re just much too busy...and comfortable.

We keep pressing the button.

To be continued...

Would You Press the Button? (part one)

Would you press a button for $1 MILLION if it meant a stranger would die?

This is the premise of the soon-to-be-released movie, The Box, inspired by Richard Matheson’s 1970 short story, "Button, Button." Matheson’s tale subsequently became the subject of a 1986 episode of the Twilight Zone.

I have not read the short story nor seen the Twilight Zone rendition. And I’ve certainly not put eyes on any advance viewing of the movie. I want to specifically dwell upon this question for a moment, before being influenced or tarnished by any theatrical representations of it, the promotions and reviews thereof, or knowledge of the story’s conclusion.

The scene is set as follows (by Warner Bros.):

Norma and Arthur Lewis, a suburban couple with a young child, receive a simple wooden box as a gift, which bears fatal and irrevocable consequences. A mysterious stranger delivers the message that the box promises to bestow upon its owner $1 million with the press of a button. But, pressing this button will simultaneously cause the death of another human being somewhere in the world...someone they don't know. With just 24 hours to have the box in their possession, Norma and Arthur find themselves in the crosshairs of a startling moral dilemma and must face the true nature of their humanity.

What would you do?

Consider the same question at higher amounts also - $2 Million, $5 million, $10 million.

Does that scenario change your answer?

To be continued...

The Orphan Archetype

During the long airplane journey between Hong Kong and San Francisco, I watched three movies on the in-flight personal video system.

In the first, Martian Child, a troubled young orphan, Dennis, deals with abandonment issues by pretending to be from another planet. David, a Sci-Fi writer who decides to become a foster parent, picks up Dennis from the local children’s home. They soon form a special bond, overcome the pains of the past, and become a family.

The second, August Rush, tells the story of a musically-gifted 11 year-old boy, Evan, who runs away from his orphanage on a quest to find his parents, who don’t even know he’s alive. Music brings them together as events orchestrate to bring harmony and completion.

The third, Juno, concerns a high school teenager who, upon learning she is pregnant, decides to give her baby up for adoption to a couple she finds in the Pennysaver. Despite difficulties regarding the target adoptees, an inopportune child becomes the blessing of a mother who had long yearned for him.

Within hours of being home, I was tasked with watching my children as Lisa attended a baby shower for our imminent new arrival. I joined my kiddos downstairs while they were glued to Lilo & Stitch, an animated movie on the Disney Channel. A young Hawaiian orphan girl, Lilo, adopts an unusual pet, Stitch, who turns out to be a lost and parentless alien. Trials and misadventures eventually shape them into a unique family.

At the movie’s completion, my children asked me to dial up a pre-recorded viewing of Meet the Robinsons, a story of a young orphan, Lewis, a 12 year-old genius who fails to get adopted because of his constant desire to recall a glimpse of his birth mother on the day of his abandonment. Lewis, along with his orphanage roommate, Goober, battle each other in the time continuum in a futuristic tale of realizing one’s worth, potential and, yes, family.

The final TV dose came in the form of a Batman episode where Bruce Wayne (aka the Caped Crusader) revisits "Crime Alley," the spot where his parents were shot to death by a thug when he was a young boy. The new orphan is comforted by a middle-aged lady, Leslie, who becomes a mother-figure to Bruce, and confidant regarding his secret identity.

So...

What’s up?

None of this was planned.

Completely random.

Within a 24-hour period, I was exposed to six separate productions concerning orphans and adoption.

What’s more, I even had the chance to watch December Boys on the trans-Pacific flight also, a movie about four Australian orphaned boys who get the opportunity to leave their orphanage for a holiday trip to the beach during Christmastime. There, they experience many ‘firsts’ and are introduced to the possibility of adoption for one of the boys.

How did United Airlines’ March 2008 movie lineup come to include no less than four films concerning orphans and adoption? How did I then immediately stumble into three more broadcast stories about orphans upon my return home?

The fact is, we human beings have a deep fascination with the orphan archetype in film and literature.

I can think of over a dozen more examples, that have been translated into film, where the orphan becomes whole, or achieves the role of the champion, the superhero; where we elevate and celebrate the least among us.

The Superheroes: Spiderman, Batman, Superman – all orphans.

Major literary figures: Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, Huckleberry Fin, Tom Sawyer, Jane Eyre, Heidi, Harry Potter, Quasimodo, Frodo Baggins, Rapunzel, Mowgli, Tarzan, King Arthur – all orphans.

The classic Disney characters: Bambi, Snow White, Cinderella – all orphans.

And my favorite orphan of the big screen - Luke Skywalker. Gotta love him. The dude rocks!

Is it our own sense of disconnection represented by these fictional characters...an innate need of the masses to be united with the Father of us all?

Is it our love of rooting for the underdog...a desire to see the lowliest overcoming great obstacles to find success and happiness?

Or both?

We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. (Romans 8:22-23)

Then he said to them, "Whoever welcomes this little child in my name welcomes me; and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me. For he who is least among you all - he is the greatest." (Luke 9:48)