Doesn't she know what causes that?

Of course marriage naturally leads into the subject of children, or should. If marriage is scorned in our society, even by Christians, I suppose it follows that children would be scorned also. Marriage is something to be put off, and children are not even to be thought about until you’ve “lived a little”. If a woman has more than two (a girl for me, a boy for you, and we’re through), then someone is sure to say, “Doesn’t she know what causes that?” As if children were a disease that can be cured.

What does the Bible, God’s Holy Word, have to say about children? Psalm 127:3-5 says, “Lo, children are an heritage of the Lord: and the fruit of the womb is his reward. As arrows are in the hand of a mighty man; so are children of the youth. Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them: they shall not be ashamed, but they shall speak with the enemies in the gate.” What man would not want to be happy, or rewarded, or unashamed? Children are always spoken of as a blessing from God in the Bible, and to be childless was always considered a curse. A very popular verse of scripture today comes from Jeremiah chapter 29 verse 11 where God is speaking to Israel while they are in captivity in Babylon. The most quoted is the NIV version, which reads, “For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future.”  If you read the whole chapter it gives a little clearer picture of what God is telling them. He tells them in vs. 5,6 “Build ye houses, and dwell in them; and plant gardens, and eat the fruit of them; Take ye wives, and beget sons and daughters; and take wives for your sons, and give your daughters to husbands, that they may bear sons and daughters; that ye may be increased there, and not diminished.” Build houses? Plant gardens? He was telling them they were going to be there a long time! Just get comfortable folks because this slavery that you’re under is not going away any time soon! What about prospering, and not harming? What about hope and a future? Yes, God had plans for them, to give them a future and a hope and to prosper them, but it would be through their children and their children’s children. You see, now that the Bible is all about me and how these verses apply to me, God is suddenly doting on one person instead of a nation or a church. Christianity today has no hope and no future because we are not having children.

God tells Israel to give their sons and daughters in marriage. Why? “…that they may bear sons and daughters.” Mark Steyn wrote an eye-opening book titled, “America Alone” which basically talks about the end of the world as we know it. It doesn’t come by global warming or famines, earthquakes or wars, but by our own failure to reproduce. We won’t even figure in the 1.6 million abortions each year in America alone, let’s just discuss the children that are actually being born. Stein explains, “For a stable population – i.e., no growth, no decline, just a million folks in 1950, a million in 1980, a million in 2010 – you need a total fertility rate of 2.1 live births per woman. That’s what America has: 2.1, give or take. (Immigrants help our ratio greatly!” Canada has 1.4, an all-time low… Europe as a whole has 1.38; Japan, 1.32; Russia, 1.14. These countries – or, more precisely, these people – are going out of business.” While most countries in the world are well below replacement level, some are well above. “Niger, is 7.46; Mali, 7.42; Somalia, 6.76; Afghanistan, 6.69; Yemen, 6.58” Can you guess what all these countries have in common? You probably guessed it, they are Islamic.  Not only are Muslim people reproducing and thriving in their own countries, but in other countries as well. Steyn questions, “What’s the Muslim population in Rotterdam? Forty percent. What’s the most popular baby boy’s name in Belgium? Mohammed. In Amsterdam? Mohammed. In Malmo, Sweden? Mohammed.” And he surmises, “In the fourteenth century, the Black Death wiped out a third of the Continent’s population; in the twenty-first, a larger proportion will disappear – in effect, by choice. We are living through a rare moment; the self-extinction of the civilization which, for good or ill, shaped the age we live in. One can cite examples of remote backward tribes who expire upon contact with the modern world, but for the modern world to expire in favor of the backward tribes is a turn of events future anthropologists will ponder, as we do the fall of Rome.”

I Timothy 5:14 “I will therefore that the younger women marry, bear children, guide the house, give none occasion to the adversary to speak reproachfully.” What a shame that we as Christians have given up our children and followed the world and the culture of our day in saying that we don’t want to marry, bear children, or guide the house. And women today are much happier, right?