THE MESSIANIC PILGRIMAGE

At major sports events we love to cheer for our country or another Arab country. That is a core part of our identity. Like being male or female. But what makes our identity? Is it the family we are born into? Is it our upbringing? Or is it something inbuilt to us?

In the west an adopted child will take the name of their adoptive family, inheritance comes from their adopted parents not their biological parents. The west sees the child in terms of replacing their biological family with their adopted one: Their adopted parents are much more than guardians.

This can lead to strange and difficult emotions throughout their life. The questions of ‘Who am I?’ ‘Where is my real family?’ ‘Do I belong?’ raise themselves even as an adult.

But these and similar questions can come to us whether we are adopted or not. We can become stressed trying to fit in with our community or family when internally we somehow feel we don’t fit in. Or if we are married it could be stress with our wife’s or husband’s family.

Now as followers of Christ indeed walking in his steps we might feel this isolates us from our family or friends as if an adopted family. But the Arabic approach to adoption is different to the western one: The adopted family is seen alongside the biological family rather than replacing it.

In the Arab world adopted children have their own biological family names and do not change their names to match their adoptive families. Adopted children inherit from their birth parents rather than from their adoptive parents. Members of the adopted family are not considered blood relatives to the child when they attain the age of adulthood and therefore are not mahram to him or her. Members of the adoptive family are acceptable as potential marital partners.

Given that our relationship to God as followers of Christ is one of adoption and that Christ taught us to pray to God as our Father, what does this mean to us as followers of Christ? How does this affect our perception of our identity?

At one level it changes nothing. Our biological background doesn’t change. We are still who we are, we are still part of the same family, tribe and community. But there is something deeper, our spiritual inheritance has changed.  We realise in some mysterious way God is our spiritual father. That doesn’t make sense, yet it is true. And that identity gives us immense value in his eyes. He loves us like a father loves a son or daughter. And that is who we are – a son or daughter of the one true God.