{"id":5085,"date":"2022-03-31T22:29:05","date_gmt":"2022-03-31T22:29:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/farefwd.com\/?p=5085"},"modified":"2022-04-30T19:30:54","modified_gmt":"2022-04-30T19:30:54","slug":"between-me-and-you-and-your-descendants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/index.php\/2022\/03\/31\/between-me-and-you-and-your-descendants\/","title":{"rendered":"Between Me and You and Your Descendants"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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Between Me and You and Your Descendants<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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Looking at the history of God\u2019s covenants related in the Scriptures can cast light on the complexities of modern surrogacy.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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By Emily Carter
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In the weeks leading up to Russia\u2019s invasion on February 24th, 2022, the nation of Ukraine readied itself. Teams of bureaucrats and lawyers rushed to arrange for some of the most vulnerable members of its population to leave Ukraine for safer territory. But unlike most of the imperiled people fleeing from the instability wrought by the Russian ranks, these evacuees were infants born to Ukrainian surrogate mothers and bound for adopting families in Ireland. Despite their presentation in Irish news outlets as heartwarming homecomings, these journeys interrupt the relationships between children and the women who carried them. The surrogate mothers have been left behind to face the Russian onslaught, in need of post-partum medical care as their world threatens to disintegrate.<\/p>

The intensity of these cases\u2014surrogate mother and newborn suddenly separated by continent and conflict\u2014sharpens a question that surrogacy raises more broadly. What is the significance of the biological link between parent and child? Surrogacy involves an agreement in which a woman carries a child for another couple, who become the child\u2019s parents after birth. As people born into families of many kinds, forming families of many kinds, and finding our places in the Family of God, we think about family, kinship, and lineage in a variety of ways, both literal and metaphorical. Moving beyond concerns of permissibility and impermissibility, how might faith illumine our reflections on surrogacy?<\/p>

The covenants God enters tell us what God cares about, so we might look to them for understanding. In Hebrew scripture, God enters structured relationships full of obligation and promise with human beings. Before the Law and the Prophets, before the people of Israel and the birth of the Messiah, God made a covenant with a man named Abram. Abram\u2019s journey to fatherhood both affirms and complicates the significance of the biological link between parent and child\u2014implying its importance in considering surrogacy without dictating one correct approach.<\/p>

God called Abram to leave behind his family and his homeland, bringing along his wife Sarai, who was yet unable to conceive a child. They made their way out of a place called Ur of the Chaldeans and into the land of Canaan. There God appeared to Abram and promised that Abram\u2019s descendants would later inhabit the land. After escaping famine in Egypt, Abram heard from God that his descendants would be as numerous as the dust of the earth. Abram questioned God, pointing out that he remained childless, and God replied by asking Abram to count the stars and know his descendants would be equally numerous. God thereby reaffirmed this promise without explaining how the promise would be fulfilled. God ordered Abram to offer a cow, a goat, a ram, and two birds. Abram obeyed, and God established his covenant with Abram as a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch passed between the offerings. When Abram sank into a deep and dark sleep, God foretold the struggles that would bring the people of Israel to inhabit the land God was giving him. God later changed Abram\u2019s name to Abraham, calling him the ancestor of a multitude of nations, and referring to the covenant as an everlasting one between God and the descendants following Abraham. God changed Sarai\u2019s name to Sarah, and Abraham again questioned God: How could a man one hundred years old have a child with a woman ninety years old? God promised that it would be so, and that they would have a son named Isaac\u2014an outcome which God later granted to them.<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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\u00a0God\u2019s covenant with Abraham worked in terms of his biological link to a future nation.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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The biological link between parent and child lies at the heart of God\u2019s covenant with Abraham, leaving no doubt that God cares about this connection. God revealed through it a deep and special concern for the work of bearing children and raising families. God committed to securing the lineage of a man God loved. God told Abraham that he would lie with his ancestors, signaling an ongoing relationship between parent and progeny which outlasts earthly life. Assuming that Abraham would find association with his predecessors comforting, God related to Abraham as part of a longer lineage extending into the past and the future. God offered similar comfort to King David, telling him that he would rest with his ancestors and that God would establish the kingdom of one of his descendants.<\/p>

When God spoke to these heroes of the faith at critical moments in their lives, God placed them in relationship with those who had come before and those who would come after\u2014all linked by the embodied reality of biological procreation. The Gospels of Matthew and Luke extend this link to Jesus, tracing the lineage of Jesus back through David and Abraham. Lineage serves as a way of honoring Jesus and connecting him to important figures of the faith, a spiritual connection implied in a material one. The offspring of Abraham constituted the chosen people of God, that particular set of people to whom God was revealed specially and with whom God is in special relationship. God\u2019s covenant with Abraham worked in terms of his biological link to a future nation. God talked to and about people God loved in terms of their particular embodied relationships. The covenant between God and Abraham, and its central place in the Jewish and Christian stories, leaves no doubt that bloodlines are not too small a concern to earn the attention of the God of the universe.<\/p>

Because God cares about the biological link between parent and child, we should too. In deciding how to respond to difficulties with fertility, the concerns that God expresses through the Word leave us no room to discount the importance of this biological connection. However, simply knowing that God cares about a given aspect of a question does not outright condemn or mandate certain behaviors. God\u2019s covenant with Abraham is not sufficient evidence that Christians should condemn surrogacy, or that couples struggling with fertility issues are supposed to passively trust God to bring about a pregnancy.<\/p>

At the same time as it affirms the significance of the biological link between parent and child, the story of Abraham and Sarah complicates it. In response to the will of God, Abraham permanently left behind the parents who bore him. Unsure of how God intended to bring about the promise of offspring, the couple turned to the enslaved girl Hagar as a surrogate mother. Thus, in their experience of trying to become pregnant, Abraham and Sarah are bound up in the sinful abuse of an innocent person and in the values and expectations of their culture. The instance offers a very negative portrayal of surrogacy, but it also highlights how God can work around and through the morally-suspect behavior of God\u2019s people. Alongside God\u2019s concern for Abraham\u2019s biological offspring stood God\u2019s miraculous intervention in order to bring about Isaac\u2019s birth. God sidelined natural biological processes to bring about the family\u2019s growth. This story yields no clear code of conduct, no manual for living, but rather respect for both our embodied ties to each other and for the complexity of our relationships, irreducible to simple judgements about right and wrong.<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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The impulse to save babies but not their surrogate mothers from impending catastrophe is a result of the fallenness of our world.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Scripture calls for empathy for people building unconventional families beyond the biological ties between parent and child. Many of the Bible\u2019s heroes\u2014the people to whom God became present as individuals and through whom God became present to the wider world\u2014were couples struggling with infertility. Fertility challenges cause a great deal of pain to a great number of people, and those of us who have not encountered it cannot speak to it. God loves them as God\u2019s children and longs for their healing and wholeness.<\/p>

Pulling newborns out of Ukraine before war erupts offers a warning against social disconnection, and a call for respect and connection however people choose to engage with the matter of surrogacy. Many surrogate mothers offer themselves because of the joy they know they can bring to another family. Surrogacy allows people more of a biological connection with their children than they would have through adoption, and it can build families and bind people together.<\/p>

It is true that some parents-to-be opt for surrogate mothers in nations like Ukraine because doing so costs less than relying on surrogate mothers in wealthier nations. This gesture replaces the natural and healthy bonding between woman and child with a cold commercial exchange. We see in the ancient scriptures and in breaking news that some aspects and instances of surrogacy can be morally compromised. We would do better to direct our energy toward building stronger networks of connections within our families and communities, rather than toward looking for moral certainty in assessing surrogacy more broadly. We can encourage instances of surrogacy which are just and good, and we can seek to include surrogate mothers in the social networks of the families they help, all without condemning surrogacy as a whole.<\/p>

The impulse to save babies but not their surrogate mothers from impending catastrophe is a result of the fallenness of our world, a world in which our bodies and our societies do not always work the way we want them to. We are made to love one another. Through stronger relationships with God and with each other, we do the slow work of putting things right.<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Emily Carter<\/strong> is pursuing a Master of Divinity at Yale Divinity School. She enjoys caring for chickens and exploring the outdoors.<\/em><\/p>

\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Looking at the history of God\u2019s covenants related in the Scriptures can cast light on the complexities of modern surrogacy. By Emily 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