Under arrest for excessive fertility?

Behold, children are a heritage from the LORD, the fruit of the womb a reward. Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the children of one's youth. Blessed is the man who fills his quiver with them! He shall not be put to shame when he speaks with his enemies in the gate. (Psalms 127:3-5 ESV)

Do we still believe that? By "we" I mean the church. Dr. Mohler brought up this issue on a recent radio program in response to some statements by secular writers, and he was pretty vocal in what he though about the issue. These writers and speakers are quite strident in their belief that having large families (large being defined by them arbitrarily and with an eye towards a shrinking populations) is inherently immoral and perhaps ought to be make illegal or at least taxed some heavily so as to become impossible for any but the elite (which is no doubt part of his plan).

When I heard and read from Dr. Mohler about this, I wanted to read it myself. I am comfortable with Dr. Mohler’s objectivity, but I still needed to read for myself and see if perhaps he wasn’t blowing things out of proportion. He wasn’t. The worldview that Paul Ehrlich and others like him subscribe to and are evangelists for is chilling in its callous disregard for the sanctity of human life. For Paul Ehrlich and his ilk, human beings are two things: 1) a source of pollution and 2) a means of production. The comments from Prince Phillip are pretty irrelevant because no one really cares what he thinks and he is generally considered to be a moron, so when a person with four kids says this:

The duke hints that curbing family sizes may be the best means of keeping the soaring cost of staple food products, such as bread and rice, in check.

“Food prices are going up,” he tells his interviewer, Sir Trevor McDonald. “Everyone thinks it’s to do with not enough food, but it’s really that demand is too great – too many people. Basically, it’s a little embarrassing for everybody. No one quite knows how to handle it. Nobody wants their family life to be interfered with by the government.”

you are free to write him off as a crackpot. But Paul Ehrlich, despite the myriad of horrible false predictions he has made in the past, has an audience and for some reason credibility. He has written dozens of books and articles, all spectacularly wrong but he still gets press coverage. I can only assume his coverage is linked to the media wanting to believe what he says, no matter how wrong he is. Women in the work force in increasing numbers, abortion on demand, sex-ed at all ages, railing against SUVs as the mark of the beast all fit into the agenda of the media. So when Ehrlich says things like this, they deserve attention:

What do you mean by that? What is the U.S.'s role in contributing to world population?

Ehrlich: We have over 300 million people, which makes us the third largest population. But when you factor in our consumption and the technologies we use, like SUVs, our impact on life-support systems is much higher than even China's, and certainly higher than India's, which are countries with 1.3 billion and 1.1 billion people each.

I believe it is immoral and should be illegal for people to have very large numbers of children because they are then co-opting for themselves and their children resources that should be spread elsewhere in the world. You only get a chance to get your fair share.

Immoral and illegal. Having a family bigger than what Ehrlich thinks is acceptable is immoral and if he had his way would be illegal. The implications of this worldview are stunning. Ehrlich is so concerned with illegal abortions but what about illegal pregnancies? Will we come to a day when population stormtroopers kick down doors of secret OB offices, and dragging women off to have forced abortions? Think that sort of thing isn't happening in China? Or less extreme, what about families who are deemed unworthy being taxed into starvation? This is the inevitable end result of this sort of elitist totalitarian worldview.

What is perhaps more disturbing is this next statement:

How many is "very large"?

Ehrlich:

The issue is: What is the political position to take? In a country like the United States, we should stop at two. But if you had an ideal situation, you might have a lot of people who have no children at all, and some people who have as many as three or four because they happen to be particularly good parents, and are going to raise their children very well.

So someone, ideally, should have more kids if they are determined by some outside entity to be "particularly good parents" they should be "allowed" to have more kids, but others should have no children. Care to wonder who those who don't have the right to have any kids are? IQ too low? Too fat? Too religious? There is a word for this philosophy, although Ehrlich doesn't come out and say it:

Eugenics is a social philosophy which advocates the improvement of human hereditary traits through various forms of intervention. Throughout history, eugenics has been regarded by its various advocates as a social responsibility, an altruistic stance of a society, meant to create healthier, stronger and/or more intelligent people, to save resources, and lessen human suffering.

That may sound harsh, but Ehrlich and his disciples praise the murderous policy of China that has led to countless abortions of girls because they are less desirable. That would be perfectly fine with Ehrlich.

More from Ehrlich...

“That's a problem we have in this country. Nearly half of all pregnancies in the United States are not the result of a woman intending to become a mother. That's a shocking statistic and it betrays the fact that we ourselves have very ambivalent feelings about sexuality and reproduction, and are not very good about allowing women to achieve all that they would like to in life by planning when they want to be a mother and when they don't.”

Well here is a more relevant statistics. Nearly 100% of women who become pregnant get that way through sexual intercourse. Even with widespread availability in this country of contraceptives and education, women and teens still get pregnant in staggering numbers out of wedlock. Some is carelessness, some is frankly intentional, a tiny fraction is coercive but the issue is that when we are teaching sex ed we ought to make very clear that if you decide to become sexually active, the odds are pretty good that you are going to end up pregnant.

What is more relevant is the very idea that a particular family size is immoral and that there are people like Paul Ehrlich and many others who would make it illegal to have more children than Paul Ehrlich or bureaucrats or other self-appointed “population experts” decree. What is immoral is looking at people as some sort of disease on the planet. We were placed on this earth by our Creator to rule over and have dominion over the planet. Ehrlich looks around and sees the poor, the religious, the ugly, the stupid as breeding more people like them and wants them to stop. If they won't stop based on his brilliant arguments, he is fully willing to use coercion and force to make his nightmare a reality.

Unfortunately this attitude has bled into the church. Many Christian couples look at large families as unthinkable. When did having lots of kids, being fruitful, stop being a sign of blessings from God and start becoming a hassle and a line item in your budget? Where are the sermons on the blessings of a full quiver? Where in pre-marital counseling are couples told of the blessings of large families?

We have a big family, and then brings big responsibilities but also big blessings. I will encourage my children to have large families as well. The biggest predictor of a persons worldview is their parents, so it is my hope that as Christians rediscover large families, the doomsayers like Paul Ehrlich will gradually become extinct.