It was small talk while we waited for an appraiser to tell me what i already knew, that my trade-in wasn't worth the electricity a crusher would take to make it into a manageable metal cube. But it was interesting small talk. Probably worth more than the truck i was considering purchasing.
The salesman was saying, given what he's seen in the world and the state of it now, back in '06 when he found out "we were pregnant" he was excited, of course he was excited and happy, but he.. he had reservations. Was it right? He didn't really want to finish the statement. Perhaps he realized at that moment that he was talking to total strangers and sharing something intensely personal. But maybe he left it hanging because there is a...there should be a.. a hesitation before voicing what so many of us may feel. Is it right? Is it good? Is it ..moral.. to bring children into this world?
He was in perfectly safe company. i had the same thoughts when my wife was pregnant. i have the same thoughts now about my children having children. i have those thoughts when i see all the new babies being born in our church. What kind of world are we bringing them into? What future awaits them? My eschatology and my sense of the political winds agree that there are not just rough seas ahead, but rocks, and here there be dragons. What kind of monster would hurl an infant child into that maelstrom?
But in that instant, when my instincts were to nod and agree wholeheartedly, a new thought entered my head:
But that would mean we, as a race, gave up. If all that is required, as so many well meaning folk say, for evil to succeed is for good people to do nothing, then what kind of victory would evil have if all well intentioned folk simply threw in the towel and allowed themselves to perish from the earth? There's a dystopian novel in that idea, i'm sure of it. And i'm fairly certain for many reasons that is all it will ever be: fiction, the feverish dreams and nightmares of grossly over pessimistic authors. And i think the reasons for that are worth dwelling on because they are reasons to bless God and to rejoice and to repent and to find hope in an otherwise hopeless world!
First, blessing, and what is a child if not just that? Pregnancy is sometimes called a miracle. New life. Which only God can bring and God has blessed and God has pronounced as good. If the world is dark then bring light to it! Bring children! Bring life! "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth," was a commandment before, "Do not eat." What we could do, should do was here before what we should not do. God's plan for the earth is wrapped up in this. As a pastor i used to listen to used to say, there are two ways to outnumber the pagans, one is to convert them but the other is to simply breed them out! Have more babies! Being fruitful is always tied to the blessing of YHWH.
A baby is a gift, always. No matter the circumstances, the child did not create them. The child we know to be a gift from God and thanksgiving is always appropriate in the face of God's gifts. Rejoicing is the proper response. To do anything else is ungrateful and to judge God's gifts and timing and come out saying you knew better. To discredit the gift is to disgrace the giver, to dishonor the child is to dishonor the image of the Living God in the child. You cannot mourn the birth of the prince without angering the King. Rejoice! Rejoice that God's favor has not turned from men! In the amazing movie Children of Men, all people have become sterile, no child has been born for almost twenty years. The human race knows it is dying. Even pagans would have to admit the judgment of God in such an event.
But no matter what has happened since the beginning of time no such judgment has come! When an armageddon of ice crept down from the north, and humans were pushed south, they carried their young with them. When God judged the earth with water, eight people (and countless animals!) he brought through and made them all fruitful and repopulated the earth. When a wicked king demanded that the people of God throw their sons in the river, God kept giving them sons. Through war, famine, pestilence, plague, economic depression, refugee flight, through generations of serfdom, slavery and oppression, God has given people children. No age was too dark, no time too bleak, no trial too fiery for mothers and fathers to bear their young through it all. How arrogant are we to think that no, this time, this age is just too bad to bring kids into, this future too hopeless?
And so repent, you who like me may have disdained, even in idle thought, the blessing of God. The very hope we need in this dark age is symbolized in the signs of grace God gives us in new life itself! We who are the firstfruits of the new creation should recognize this more than anyone! We who know Who our hope is have no justification for losing hope! For we must never forget that it is our very hope who is in charge!
“Thus says Yahweh of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have deported from Jerusalem to Babylon, ‘Build houses and live in them, and plant gardens and eat their fruit. Take wives and father sons and daughters, and take for your sons wives, and give your daughters to men that they may bear sons and daughters, and multiply there, and you must not be few." Jeremiah 29:4-6
