Another Cringeworthy Moment from Pat Robertson

Trey Dimsdale over at Law and the Created Order recently wrote about another of Pat Robertson's comments that do harm to the image of evangelical Christianity. Robertson callously disparaged the practice of adopting children from countries overseas. Dimsdale does a good job of showing how Robertson situates himself in a lonely place far, far away from the Christian gospel.

Here is a taste of Dimsdale's piece--

A viewer who is the mother of three girls, all of whom have been adopted from overseas, wrote in to The 700 Club and told of her experience with dating men who don’t want to date her once they find out that her children are not her biological children and that they have been adopted from orphanages overseas.  Robertson’s co-host immediately responded that those men are “dogs”, but Robertson interjected.  He said that these men were not wrong.  They shouldn’t be expected to take on the “United Nations” for their family.  He recounted the story of a friend who had adopted a child from Columbia who grew up “weird” and stated the very obvious truth that we really have no idea what has happened to those children before they arrive here.  Many have been the victims of physical, sexual, and emotional abuse and most have been undernourished.  All of these things can have a devastating impact on the future development of these children and according to Robertson, no man is obligated to assume another person’s problems.

What on earth is this man thinking?  From where, other than from the pit of hell itself, did these thoughts come?  Robertson must have forgotten that the church itself is a motley “United Nations.”  Most of us are gentiles who have been brought in to the family of God (Ephesians2:14-22) .  All of us were once orphans who have been adopted as sons and as heirs into the household of God the Father (Galatians 4:4-7).

Read the rest of Dimsdale's piece here.

I suppose it would be easy to write off Pat Robertson as a has-been, a crazy old man who can't seem to exhibit a reasonable measure of discretion when it comes to his own personal opinions. The problem is, he is a public figure and many people associate evangelical Christians with him. It is important for evangelical Christians to expose the flawed thinking presented by figures like Robertson, who so often bring disrepute on followers of Christ. Dimsdale is to be commended for accurately representing Christian compassion for orphans.