Whole Reason

As Chris­tians, we have an absolute duty, if mar­ried, to obey the bib­li­cal man­date to pro­cre­ate, as given to both Adam and Eve and Noah and his family:

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)

Then God blessed Noah and his sons, say­ing to them, “Be fruit­ful and increase in num­ber and fill the earth. The fear and dread of you will fall upon all the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the air, upon every crea­ture that moves along the ground, and upon all the fish of the sea; they are given into your hands. Every­thing that lives and moves will be food for you. Just as I gave you the green plants, I now give you every­thing. (Gen­e­sis 9:1–3)

But how many chil­dren is too many? And is it immoral to use any kind of birth con­trol? And is it immoral to over­pop­u­late the earth?

1. Do Chris­tians have free­dom of con­science with respect to fertility?

The short answer is yes, if you fol­low the Augus­tin­ian dic­tum of

In the essen­tials, UNITY
In the non-essentials, LIBERTY
In all things, CHARITY

Fer­til­ity is NOT a cen­tral Chris­t­ian doc­trine, and as per the appli­ca­tion of Romans 14 to non-essential mat­ters of con­science, we absolutely do have free­dom to choose apart from church author­ity, and still be able to con­sider our­selves Chris­t­ian in an ortho­dox sense.

But this does not make the deci­sions equally bib­li­cally jus­ti­fi­able — in fact, we may argue that cer­tain bib­li­cal prin­ci­ples apply, and make some deci­sions less bib­li­cal, and there­fore per­haps less moral, than others.

2. Should Chris­tians EVER limit the num­ber of chil­dren they should have?

There are more prin­ci­ples at stake than just “be fruit­ful,” Although some would quote the scrip­tures that indi­cate that chil­dren are to be viewed as a bless­ing (Psalm 127: 3–5), which is NOT the pre­vail­ing self­ish, anti-human view, there are a few impor­tant bal­anc­ing principles.

A. The abil­ity to PROVIDE for your children.

While some may want to say “I just trust God for mate­r­ial pro­vi­sion,” there is also the issue of EMOTIONAL pro­vi­sion. Do you and your spouse really have the TIME to be emo­tion­ally engaged with your chil­dren? Not if you are a two-income fam­ily. And even if one par­ent stays at home, it is hard to be emo­tion­ally engaged with large num­bers of kids.

I am not say­ing that par­ents of large fam­i­lies are being irre­spon­si­ble, because there are many ways to aid the par­ent­ing of many chil­dren. This includes the help of extended fam­ily, men­tors, and teach­ing the older chil­dren to care for the younger, which, if not done in too bur­den­some a way, actu­ally pre­pares them well to be par­ents themselves.

But the oppo­site must be acknowl­edged — in light of some par­ents’ resources, they may NOT be able to faith­fully care for more than a small hand­ful of chil­dren, given their other respon­si­bil­i­ties and resources. Of course, they must con­sider whether a lifestyle of con­sumer debt or other poor value sys­tem is actu­ally strip­ping them of the abil­ity to be present for their chil­dren, but it is con­ceiv­able that some cou­ples may want to limit their fam­ily size out of a desire to obey the com­mand to PROVIDE for their families.

B. The mother’s health

One point that should not be over­looked is that child birth is very hard on a woman’s body, and it may be in her inter­est to stop hav­ing chil­dren. Not only does this save the woman’s life, but it allows for con­tin­ued emo­tional and phys­i­cal pro­vi­sion for the children.

C. The abil­ity to HELP OTHERS in need, espe­cially other children.

We live in a world where chil­dren around the world are not wanted, and die daily for lack of care. We may want to limit our bio­log­i­cal prog­eny for the sole rea­son that we want to help other chil­dren through spon­sor­ship, fos­ter care, or adop­tion. This care for “orphans and wid­ows” is one of the chief val­ues of Chris­tian­ity, as declared by James, the brother of Jesus (James 1:27)

D. Over­pop­u­la­tion and world resources

I do NOT believe that this value should be con­sid­ered as Chris­t­ian, nor part of a bib­li­cal deci­sion to limit the num­ber of chil­dren one has, except as it applies to your own abil­ity to care for oth­ers (point B above). The rea­son is, I do NOT believe that over­pop­u­la­tion is the true root of today’s resource issues, and bib­li­cally speak­ing, we see no com­mand or prin­ci­ple gov­ern­ing pop­u­la­tion limits.

Are there lim­its?  If so, how do we deter­mine them?  Does God expect us to increase for­ever, and allow plague and star­va­tion keep us to the right num­bers?  Or should we be proactive?

While I think the lat­ter ques­tion is the right stance, we should take care­ful action, acknowl­edg­ing that our mod­els for liv­ing space, lifes­pan, and food and energy cre­ation and con­sump­tion greatly influ­ence our con­clu­sions.  And I seri­ously doubt that pop­u­la­tion is really the root cause of today’s prob­lems with so many orphans.

As many have argued, the real prob­lem is not over­pop­u­la­tion, but cor­rupt gov­ern­ments, war, abuse of nat­ural resources, and resource dis­tri­b­u­tion. Also, anti-population gurus often ignore the plain facts that (a) we have not even come close to reach­ing the lim­its of agri­cul­ture or land use, and (b) they reg­u­larly ignore the role that tech­nol­ogy plays in mak­ing our use of resources more effi­cient, sus­tain­able, and scalable.

Now, in the short run, we may want to make as much room in our own fam­ily to adopt the unwanted, but to say that pop­u­la­tion is a prob­lem is prob­a­bly the wrong cause, even if we are employ­ing a valid solu­tion to the real prob­lems of orphans caused by poverty, war, pol­i­tics, and irre­spon­si­ble parents.

3. How many chil­dren are enough?

While every cou­ple must deter­mine this for them­selves, I will offer a num­ber — at least THREE. Why three? While I have no direct bib­li­cal man­date, I note that, in order to at LEAST replen­ish them­selves, par­ents need to have two chil­dren. And to be fruit­ful and mul­ti­ply (or at least ADD to) the cur­rent pop­u­la­tion? You need one more.  As has been noted, we each need to pro­vide about 2.3 chil­dren to at least main­tain our national num­bers.

Inter­est­ingly, nations like Ger­many and France are hav­ing fail­ing economies, not just because they run expen­sive wel­fare states, but because their shrink­ing pop­u­la­tions (death rate greater than birth rate) are erod­ing their tax base. Not only does this affect their econ­omy, but it means that they will have lesser promi­nence in the future world econ­omy, and less influ­ence over­all since their lower pop­u­la­tion will by default mean they rep­re­sent less of the world pop­u­la­tion, and so should wield less influ­ence in world politics.

I’d like to say this — that it is not only our duty to pro­vide more chil­dren in obe­di­ence to God, but it may be our PATRIOTIC DUTY to pro­vide more chil­dren to a free Amer­ica. There, I said it. Now, I don’t really believe that, but it’s worth con­sid­er­ing. A bet­ter way to pro­vide more freedom-loving Chris­t­ian patri­ots, of course, may be to also con­vert more of the immi­grants and unbe­liev­ers in our coun­try as well. And with the influx of Catholic Mex­i­cans, this is already half done for us (in that even unre­deemed Catholics usu­ally share our values.)

Inter­est­ingly, even Al Mohler, who preaches these same ideas, does not put a num­ber to the “how many is enough” ques­tion, but he also warns that some types of birth con­trol are prob­a­bly immoral.

4. What kind of birth con­trol is accept­able, if any?

To be entirely safe, I’d say there are only two, doc­tri­nally speak­ing — absti­nence or ster­il­iza­tion. Many evan­gel­i­cals are rethink­ing the ethics and moral­ity of birth con­trol , and I’ve even read lately that some Chris­t­ian writ­ers are say­ing that the rea­son we have been unsuc­cess­ful in defeat­ing abor­tion is that we evan­gel­i­cals are tol­er­at­ing birth con­trol, includ­ing such know abor­ti­fa­cients as the mini-pill and IUDs.

CONCLUSION

I am obey­ing my own con­science by stop­ping at three chil­dren. This leaves me room to adopt in the future, and it also means I have at least replaced my wife and myself. I go for a vascec­tomy in a few weeks. And I’m going to be able to fully enjoy inter­act­ing with my three chil­dren. Of course, I’ll teach them to be think­ing Chris­tians, and Chris­t­ian patri­ots. And Chris­t­ian par­ents who have at least three chil­dren apiece.  :D