Family

What Makes Someone Family?

Recently, I was told that someone I love could not really be my family because she was not born into my family. I was even warned that there could be legal consequences for referring to her as a member of my family.

I find that difficult to understand.

When this young woman came into our lives, she had no mother or father legally responsible for her. Her biological parents had relinquished their parental rights. She eventually came into our home, and CPS placed her in our care.

When she came to us, she needed somewhere to belong.

That experience caused me to think seriously about a very basic question:

What is a family?

One common dictionary definition of family is a group of people related to one another. It can also mean a person's children or a group of people connected by ancestry.

Under that narrow definition, perhaps someone could argue that a young woman who was not born to my wife and me is not technically our family.

But the definition of family has never been limited entirely to blood.

The word has also been used to describe a household—a group of people living together under one roof and sharing a common life.

That distinction matters.

Families are certainly biological, but they can also be created through adoption, marriage, guardianship, and other relationships in which people accept responsibility for one another.

That is the entire purpose of legal adoption.

Adoption does not create love by signing a piece of paper. Instead, the law formally recognizes a relationship and establishes legal rights and responsibilities between parent and child.

In our case, we took in a young woman who needed a home.

Once she was living with us, we sought guidance concerning her care, and she was eventually placed into our household.

While she lived in our home, she was expected to follow the same household rules as everyone else.

We helped provide her food.

We helped provide clothing.

We helped arrange medical care.

We worried about her.

We encouraged her.

We corrected her when necessary.

We celebrated her accomplishments.

We loved her.

In other words, we did the things parents do.

Had I possessed the financial means at the time to pursue a formal adoption through the courts, I would gladly have done so.

But there is also a spiritual part of this question that is even more important to me.

All my life I have heard Christians refer to themselves as belonging to the family of believers under the headship of Christ.

As a believer in Jesus Christ, I belong to a family that is not created through blood passed from a biological mother and father.

Scripture itself uses the language of family to describe this relationship.

Matthew 12:46–50 tells us that while Jesus was speaking to a crowd, someone told Him that His mother and brothers were outside wanting to speak with Him.

Jesus responded by pointing to His disciples and saying, in essence, that those who do the will of His Father in heaven are His brother, sister, and mother.

Jesus was not denying the existence or importance of His biological family.

He was teaching something greater:

The family of God reaches beyond blood.

That means that when I call another Christian my brother or sister, I am not merely using an empty religious expression.

There is real spiritual kinship there.

We belong together in Christ.

The young woman I am speaking about is also a Christian.

So even before considering our years together under one roof, the love we share, or the responsibilities we assumed for her, she is already my sister in Christ and a member of the same spiritual family.

But our relationship became even more personal than that.

She became my daughter.

Someone once implied that I was being dishonest by calling her that because I was not her biological father and had not completed a legal adoption.

I disagree.

There is an important difference between claiming a legal status that one does not possess and describing the genuine relationship that exists between two people.

I would never falsely claim that a court had entered an adoption decree if it had not.

But neither will I pretend that years of love, responsibility, sacrifice, and belonging mean nothing simply because we do not share DNA.

Scripture repeatedly reminds us that doing what is right is not always the same thing as satisfying someone's narrow interpretation of a rule.

Mark 3:1–6 tells the story of Jesus healing a man with a withered hand on the Sabbath.

Those watching Him were concerned with whether healing violated their understanding of Sabbath law.

Jesus was concerned with doing good and saving life.

That passage does not tell us to ignore laws.

It does remind us that rules should never cause us to lose sight of mercy.

When this young woman needed somewhere to belong, I believed the right thing to do was to welcome her.

I believed it was right to accept responsibility for someone who had no mother or father caring for her.

I believed it was right to feed her.

I believed it was right to provide for her.

I believed it was right to love her.

And eventually, calling her my daughter simply described the relationship that had already developed between us.

The same is true of another young woman who later became part of our family.

Her story is hers to tell, and I will not publish the painful details of what happened before she entered our lives.

What matters here is that we made the same commitment to her.

We loved her.

We supported her.

We welcomed her.

And she became our daughter too.

So I want to state something publicly and without embarrassment:

I have daughters who were born to us, and I have daughters who came to us another way.

I love them all.

If someday my estate is divided among my children, it is my desire that the daughters who came into our family through love rather than birth be remembered as family as well, subject, of course, to whatever legal arrangements must be made to accomplish that.

I do not consider them second-class daughters.

I do not put an asterisk beside their names.

I do not introduce them by explaining everything that happened before they came into our lives.

They are simply my daughters.

Family is certainly about blood.

But it can also be about adoption.

It can be about marriage.

It can be about a household.

It can be about responsibility.

It can be about years of shared life.

And, for Christians, it can be about something even greater: being brought together into the family of God through Jesus Christ.

I did not give these young women life.

But God gave me the opportunity to be part of theirs.

They did not receive my blood.

They received my heart.

And that is why I will continue to call them my daughters.

I love them very much, and I will not be ashamed of that commitment.