THE ADOPTION TRIAL

Sunrise outside the courthouse.
I met the lawyer, our "standby counselor," for the first time.
(He was the 2nd Lawyer.
I had fired the first one.
I wouldn't normally use a lawyer but the social worker made me hire one.)
The Lawyer shuffled his papers.
His eyes were tired from driving 3 hours from the big city through the foggy forest because he 'just couldn't pass up this case.'

This lawyer and I had been battling for months about strategy.
We had deadlocked, but now we had to make snap decisions.
He explained his hasty plan to keep the irate clerk from telling the judge that we were refusing to get a birth certificate for the child, (for important reasons we've explained elsewhere that very few people besides the Amish and Federal judges understand.)

The social worker strode through the tall glass doors and pointed her finger at my face, popping off a mock gun-shot, from which I heard her message, "I gave you this child and you flaunt the law like this! I could lose my license!"

Of course I knew there is no law mandating us to disobey our scriptural convictions by signing up for birth certificates, insurance, vaccinations, or SSN's.
But she wasn't impressed.
And she, the agent of the secular welfare state, had total control of our precious son, the treasure of our life.

She had expressed concerns about placing an African-American child in the white Amish neighborhood.

We had spent almost a year of sleepless nights researching the state adoption statute.
We'd spent thousands of dollars on law counsel and other fees, in a mad attempt to wrestle the pagan code into something that comported with the scripture so that we could sign the adoption papers.
Despite this effort, and in part because of it, the judge could throw out our case and deny the adoption.

We rode the elevator to the top floor of the courthouse.
The lawyer disappeared into the judge's chambers.
The lawyer came back, frowning, "The Judge is VERY busy, and he wants to make you swear the oath."
I told the lawyer to go back and tell the judge, 'No oath, no affirmation."
We paced, comforting our child, until the lawyer came back out, "The judge isn't going for it. And he's going to make you swear the oath in open court."

The lawyer had assured me many times that we would be in chambers, folksy-style, where we could get friendly with the judge and where there 'would be no oath.'

The cavernous dark courtroom swallowed us like a lion's den.
Blinding spot-lights focused on the black-robed magistrate.
The court-reporter typed.
Clerks orbited their silver-haired King.
Policemen, guns at hand, stood at the Judge's attention.
I saw the cop's pentagram-badges glinting.
These armed men could take our child at the judge's will.

I passed my beloved son into the arms of the state's social worker.
We walked down the aisle approaching the Judge.
The high-priced lawyers and their clients in the audience eyed us in our Mennonite clothes, gawking at my abnormally long beard.

We approached the bench and stopped about 10 feet from the judge.
I clasped my wife's hand, my side pressed hard into her side, huddled, feeling long-forgotten childhood fears.
My fingernails dug into the old leather Bible I clutched in my right hand.

The Judge bore down his piercing eyes on us, and shouted, "RAISE YOUR RIGHT HANDS."

We stood like stones.
I could feel my fingers flinching upward in worship of the Roman court- a knee-jerk reflex, trained from courtroom propaganda in movies.
I froze my arm down.
I knew the command to 'raise your right hand' means: "Come under my authority; I am your god.
You can't exist under two authorities, so leave your weak, pacifist, separatist god at the door of my courtroom.
Obey the god with the guns."

The Judge's booming voice echoed off the dark oak walls, "SOLEMNLY SWEAR TO TELL THE TRUTH, THE WHOLE TRUTH, AND NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH!"

We stood, returning the Judge's stare, refusing his order to make a contract with him - a covenant forbidden by scripture.

The Judge shouted, commanding, "YOU'RE GOING TO HAVE TO."

Silence.

The Judge whispered, "COMPROMISE."
(We knew what he meant: "Roll over ... play the word-games.
'Affirm', or 'promise', to tell the 'whole truth'" - a foolish promise the judge and every lawyer knows is impossible to keep.)

Seizing the opening, I spoke the words that days earlier the Holy Spirit had revealed to me that I would speak, "WE ARE HERE UNDER COMMAND OF OUR LORD AND OF SCRIPTURE TO TELL YOU THE TRUTH, AND WE FULLY INTEND TO TELL YOU THE TRUTH."

The Judge stared back, hard.

I grabbed two papers from my Bible. "We have a statement."

The judge motioned, demanding the papers.
I approached the bench and handed up the two pages I'd dashed out the day before, entitled: "OUR SCRIPTURAL CONVICTIONS REGARDING OATHS."

That document says, "Our King, the Messiah, has all power in heaven and earth, and He says, 'NO OATHS - NO SWEARING, NO COVENANTS WITH WORLDLY RULERS.'"
(Not the kind of statement you want to push in the face of to the man who has the legal right to take the state's child from you at gunpoint.)

The judge read the papers, then looked at us, "THE COURT WILL ACCEPT THIS."

The air flew into our lungs.

Thus began a dizzying ride as they dragged before the court our ability to parent an African child in the plain (white) community, our lifestyle of voluntary poverty, and countless intense private details of our lives that state agents had gathered over 5 years.
Again and again we were stabbed with the painful reality of how state employees and licensees, no matter how nice and Christian, will betray your trust to save their licenses, professional reputations, their jobs, or even just their protocols.

Nevertheless, no weapon formed against us could prosper.
The judge decreed, "I grant the Request. You ARE the lawful parents of this child, as if he had been born to you."

My wife and I burst out crying, overcome, our gasping filling the courtroom.
Two decades of waiting for a child.
A year of excruciating legal hell.
Finally over.
The lawyer winked at us, trying to get us to stay quiet, his eyes welling up with tears.

We rushed toward our son.
The judge stopped us, "Wait."
His hands held up our statement on oaths, "May I keep this?"
We said, "Yes, of course."
The judge turned to the lawyers and smiled, "It's a very good brief on oaths and scripture."

We walked out into the sunlight, hugging our beloved boy.
The lawyer told the group of people around us about his career of thousands of cases.
The lawyer told of the case he'd argued against the amassed power of a Native American nation to the verge of the 'supreme' court, to strip away an addicted tribal woman's parental rights.
The lawyer smiled, "That USED to be my most interesting case.
Now it's #2.
Yours is #1."

NEXT: The Old Millionare Farmer Takes Us To The "Jungle"

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