My wife and I are white evangelicals. Here’s why we chose to give birth to black triplets.31juli2016

As I have made the stroll from my wife’s hospital room to the NICU these  past few days it has been hard to fathom the way that our family has  been put together.

This past Sunday, my gorgeous wife – a white evangelical, like me —  gave birth to our beautiful African-American triplet daughters whom we  adopted as embryos. These sweet girls will hopefully soon be coming home  to meet their 3-year-old African-American brother and 2-year-old  biracial sister, both of whom we adopted as infants. The normalcy of  this paragraph is something I have come to take for granted. Yet what  seems to us to be the logical outcome of being pro-life is still  something that to others often needs much explaining. [Here’s how it works when a couple adopts through our Christian embryo bank] I  grew up as a child of evangelical missionaries in Honduras, very aware  of racial diversity because I was the blue-eyed, cotton-topped white kid  who stuck out like a sore thumb, but all the while felt deeply  connected to the people there, even though we looked very different. My  wife, on the other hand, grew up in the delta of Mississippi and it  wasn’t until she took a few trips to Haiti that the veil of racial  prejudice was lifted from her eyes. One of the central themes of  Christianity is, after all, that God, through His Son, is calling people  from every tongue, tribe and nation. Grasping diversity will make the  world stronger as we marvel at God’s creative genius on display through  His people’s varying pigments, personalities and proficiencies. Our  differences are cause for celebration, not scorn.   [Christian seders, chocolate seders, marijuana seders: Why non-Jews like Passover so much]   When  we were still dating, a common bond that drew us together was the fact  that Rachel and I both wanted to adopt. While we were fertile, we were  both deeply convicted that one of the ways to be pro-life is to involve  ourselves in adoption. Several years into our marriage, even as we were  pursuing the idea of returning to Honduras as missionaries with the  Presbyterian Church in America, we visited an adoption agency in  Mississippi, where we were living at the time. We were also trying at  the time to conceive naturally. Knowing that it is often more  challenging to find adoptive homes in the United States for  non-Caucasian children we informed the agency that we were willing to  accept any child except a fully Caucasian child. We did this with the  deeply held conviction that if the Lord wanted us to have a fully  Caucasian child my wife would conceive naturally.

We see protection of children not as charity, nor as part of a political  agenda, but as something near to the heart of God. Because every human  life bears his image, all life –no matter how young or old, no matter  the stages of development — has inherent dignity and value. The  Scriptures testify that God has always pleaded for the protection of his  most helpless and needy image-bearers. Another prevalent theme of the  Bible is that God adopts believers into his own family. When we adopt,  we are echoing his own compassionate work, giving the world a glimpse of  the truth and beauty of the gospel.