Being fruitful

Last Friday Dr. Russ Moore filled in for Dr. Mohler (he is on a missions trip to Turkey) and the show, Encouraging the Blessing of Children, was just chock full of wisdom. The topic was on how the church can encourage Christian couples to embrace families, even large families with lots of children. Given my recent focus on abortion, I thought it was a very pertinent topic of conversation. How should the church approach children? Shouldn’t the church be counter-cultural and say that even as the world rejects the blessing of children, the church embraces and desires to receive that blessing as much as possible?

The evangelical church in all its forms is mighty quick to condemn homosexual marriage as sinful and reject the world’s interpretation of its normalcy, but when it comes to kids? Not so much. It could just be that it is always easier to preach against “them”. “They” are doing this or that and it is wrong, but it is harder to say things that impact those in the pews. I think that is true of lots of stuff that rarely makes it into sermons. Why not speak out about modest dress? What about headcovering? Because it makes people in the pews uncomfortable to talk about issues that reflect poorly on them instead of pointing the finger at the vague, amorphous “other”. Virtually every church is dominated by married couples and those are the people that need to hear that children are a blessing, a great wealth. When you say to people that children are usually the natural result of and one of the primary reasons for marriage, that might just prick the conscience of the couple that is “waiting for the right time” to have kids or who is limiting their family size to just a couple, a “nice little family”. It is sad that saying that children are a blessing and exhorting families to not shy away from but instead to prayerfully seek out those blessings is something of a controversy in the church. The world says wait until you accumulate financial blessings and then accept kids. The Word tells us that children are a blessing. There is nothing a married couple can do, nothing, that will truly prepare them for having children.

One of the most important things we can do is raise our children up to view having children as a great blessing. I worry that we are doing a poor job of this in our home. The last thing I want is for our kids to see us viewing a large family as being a burden and not wanting to have a large family of their own. So we are trying to do more as a family. Our new home will help, we are unable to all fit around the table in our current place because the dining area is so small, so we are looking forward to breaking out the big table that seats 12, putting in all of the leaves and all sitting down for meals again. We are also working out a pretty hard and fast weekly schedule so that we have more of a plan instead of letting the week happen to us. We are looking to schedule time for dad and daughter, mom and son, mom and daughter, dad and son time. That will mean that I will have to set aside doing some of the things that I do to unwind, but since I am driving all of 2 minutes to work starting next week I hardly have an excuse to need time to “unwind”. The incredible importance of family is something is that is Scriptural but is also passed on generationally. If your parents discouraged you from having kids, you are probably less inclined to have them. If you don’t encourage your children to have children and show them from the Word of God that children are a blessing, not a burden and that waiting for the “right time” to have kids in your marriage is kind of missing one of the key components of marriage, you can expect your children to emulate the world’s view that children are a necessary evil, an expense to have but not until as late in life as possible.

One of the things that the mormon church does very well is encouraging marriage in their young people. Show me a mormon missionary and I will show you a 20 year old guy who values marriage and is eager to get home, get married and start a family. Now the theological reasons behind that are seriously flawed and heretical, but what mormons have created is a marriage and family culture within their church. I am not recommending we emulate the mormon church, but we can and should do a better job in teaching our children to value marriage. Not just don’t have sex until you get married, but to value marriage, to seek it out, to have a culture of marriage that has as an integral component having and raising children. If we treat marriage and children as separate components, I think we are doing a disservice to our children. Just as I would strenuously reject my child marrying an unbeliever, I would be very hesitant to see my children marry someone who does not share their views of children. Once you are married, it is a pretty poor time to figure out what your spouse thinks or desires regarding children. That is not to say that there are not circumstances of infertility (an issue I want to discuss in the near future and the proper Christian response to it) or couples that for a variety of reasons get married later than usual. But for an average couple getting married in their twenties, the priority should not be vacations to Europe now and putting off children until later.

As Dr. Moore’s guests demonstrate vividly, this is where the older Christians should be discipling the younger. That is such a vital part of a healthy church and has clear Scriptural mandates (Titus 2: 2-8), but what do we do? In many churches we segregate the young couples from the old, the married from the single. What a shame that is! Where should young Christian couples learn about marriage? From other young couples or from older, more experienced couples? Where should Christian singles learn about and see demonstrated the blessings of a Christian marriage? From other singles or from married couples? Let’s look at it from a secular source. Where do you want your doctor to learn to perform heart surgery, from an experienced heart surgeon or another medical school student? Older saints with forty, fifty or more years of marriage are a treasure trove of wisdom, but instead we let younger couples just stumble along and figure it out on their own.

The church must take the Scriptural teachings on the blessings of children seriously. Not just in passing but as a core value of its doctrine. If we are going to sponsor Dave Ramsey seminars, which are fine, we ought to be spending far more time on encouraging the blessing of children among Christian couples than we do about making budgets. We should teach on money so that it doesn’t become an impediment to Christian families, but we should teach on the blessing of children because that is one of the main points of having a family and an integral part of the church and of God’s plan for humanity. What good is a family with a great financial plan that rejects the blessing of children in their home? We are not commanded to leave our mother and father and cleave to a financial plan, we are to cleave to our spouse and become one flesh and be fruitful and multiply.

And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” (Genesis 1:28)