Consider this/ Einfach zum Nachdenken

As I was sitting at the barber’s last week to have my hair cut the lady looking after commented in anger on the newsreports about Madonna adopting David Banda from Malawi: “Why are they making such a fuss about her? Is the child not going to be better off, even if all she does is provide a nanny for him?” She could not understand why many people are critical of Madonna’s decision to adopt a child. It might help to understand what the various issues are which get people incensed. For one there is the simple fact that our pop star’s financial clout has caused many rules and regulations to be waved. Just like the fast track at Heathrow airport which allows business travellers to have their luggage and passports more quickly checked, here again a government official acts more promptly when the price is right. Others find Madonna a very changeable and fitful person, and her excitement about baby David is likened to that she experienced when she bought her last pair of Gucci shoes. But will it last, they ask? Not everybody agrees that being brought up in a wealthy rock-star’s household is necessarily better than living in an orphanage of Malawi, unless we take the patronizing view that living in the West and having money is always better than living in Africa. My own experience of working in Uganda would certainly cause me to doubt that view, since a number of people seem happier there in spite of physical poverty than many of our Western celebrities.

But there is a further question, not often mentioned but surely worth pondering when we discuss this case. Is a child a commodity, an item we can decide to acquire and- at least that would be the logical implication- discard when we have lost interest in it? Is the fashion of adopting African babies an expression of concern for this continent and its inhabitants, or have we just discovered a new item, even more exclusive than the latest i-pod? Are fatherhood and motherhood roles which we walk in and out of at will, or are they bestowed on us together with the gift of a child? In the film “The Door in the Floor” based on John Irving’s novel “A Widow for a Year” Marian decides to leave her husband and daughter because she is convinced that she is a bad mother. She justifies her step by saying “Better no mother than a bad mother”, as if that choice were hers to make. In a very subtle way pregnancy, babies, children and parenthood have become things which we plan for and decide ourselves: pills, surgical procedures and legal constructs all allow us to plan our lives, our families and our children. The designer baby conceived through genetic engineering is the next logical step. But in the process we have lost sight of the mystery which surrounds every new life, whether engendered or conceived by ourselves or by others. We can easily think that what happens to a baby is purely for us to decide, depending on our plans, wishes and economic capabilities, rather than to understand that this child is a gift, bestowed to us by God.

Ultimately the question whether Madonna’s adoption (and others like it) is a good idea or not, depends on the humility with which the young life is approached, the awe with which parental responsibility is looked at. The first “Madonna with Child” is considered by Christians a miracle, since that baby was conceived by the Holy Spirit. But every mother and child is a living wonder which should remind us that we are but creatures, and another the Creator. If we keep in mind that place of ours, we will treat all new life as what it is: a miracle and a gift!

# posted by tino @ Sunday, October 22, 2006