Day 23: Together for Families

A little while ago, at one of our young adult talks, I was asked if it was wrong to not want to have children. I half-jokingly said that it was – that it was wrong to not want children as a society because of God’s creation mandate for us to multiply and to fill the earth.

There was an uneasy laughter throughout the room because of the apparent tensions my reply had surfaced: The tension about what God’s Word really said about building families and having children. The tension between an ancient mandate and our modern way of life and worldviews. The tension between what God wants and our personal choices and freedoms.

Does God call for us to move in the direction of marriage and of building families? The theological answer for that is yes, over and over again.

It was the last of these that put us in the most awkward place because it drew uncomfortably clear lines demarcating the limits of our readiness to surrender our autonomy to some grand narrative about an invisible God.

It cast a harsh light on the misalignment between our desires and will and what the Bible seemingly teaches. It revealed some unpleasant truths about where our loyalties and obedience lie.

The Genesis 1:28 mandate “to be fruitful and multiply” does not simply give us a task and responsibility to fulfil. Rather, it frames human life with a purpose greater than self-preservation. God did not intend for us to simply live well and enjoy ourselves. From the very start, man existed for the welfare of another, and to perpetuate that existence.

This was God’s plan all along, but it was this expected outward orientation of love that so often grates against our sense of self-determination and autonomy.

The call to discipleship is, at its core, a call to yield our will to God’s will.

We do not want our freedom curbed nor to be told how to live our lives. Our flesh rejects any mandate, divine or otherwise, along with the burden of responsibility and the associated costs.

At the heart of this awkwardness lies two foundational issues.

The first is whether there was in fact, a divine will that directs humanity to have children, at the broadest level. Sure, not everyone can be in a place to have children, but does God call for us to move in the direction of marriage and of building families?

I think the theological answer for that is yes, over and over again. The Bible is replete with such examples. Genesis holds an optimistic view of life. It was good and worth continuing, notwithstanding our pain and brokenness.

Having children is, after all, the key to the preservation of humanity as a whole. This seems like an increasingly daunting commitment in today’s pessimistic world, where people tend to prioritise quality of life over the continuation of life. There is a cost, an increasingly high one, to having children that many are deciding is more than they are willing to pay.

True spiritual growth is not a function of perfection, but of surrender to God.

The second issue goes right to the heart of our relationship with God. It is the question of whether Jesus is Lord of all, or Lord at all. The call to discipleship is, at its core, a call to yield our will to God’s will. It is not a contest of wills, but a surrender of our will and allowing God’s will to shape ours.

This will inevitably cost us some of our freedoms. The question about having children just happens to be the presenting issue that tests us on our surrender. And judging from the broad Christian response we see today, it would seem that the Church has failed in our discipling, for while we are now greatly informed, where it matters the most, we seem untransformed and unyielded.

True spiritual growth is not a function of perfection, but of surrender to God.

I would like to end with this quote from the French philosopher Albert Camus, who though an atheist, seems to have grasped this truth better than most. In his novel The Plague, he wrote: “The love of God is a hard love. It demands total self-surrender, disdain of our human personality. And yet that alone can reconcile us to suffering and the deaths of children; it alone can justify them, since we cannot understand them, and we can only make God’s will ours.”

May we consider this hard love in this season of prayer, and join our Lord in Gethsemane to pray (Matthew 26:39):

“O My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as You will.”

In Jesus’ name we pray, Amen!