Is it wrong for a married couple to decide to be childless?
Hi.
Welcome to today's little lesson.
Thank you so much for joining me.
Today's question again is from one of our beloved viewers, and their question ... I'll
just read it to you verbatim as they wrote it to me.
What are your thoughts on intentional childlessness and/or whether limiting the number of children
you have to one or two should be considered outside of the spirit, vision or intention
of God's message and commandment to multiply?
This is actually a much more involved question than what I let on in my introductory question,
not only asking about childless marriage, intentional childless marriage, but intentionally
limiting the number of children that one has, which is only possible through some form of
birth control.
There are natural forms of birth control, of course, that people can practice, a form
of abstinence during the time of fertility, if you can figure that out.
You can, but it takes a little bit of doing.
Let's first talk about intentional childlessness.
Well, I think let's go to the heart of the matter.
The question would be, why?
Why would a married couple not want to have children, and because having children is generally
considered to be a wonderful blessing, and fairly normal to want to have children, and
for all the joy that they bring into your life, and also for the wonderful opportunities
of sacrifice that one makes on behalf of one's children to demonstrate love, God's love for
those kids.
My personal feeling would be that unless there was a specific calling from God to be childless
for the sake of the kingdom, like for example, a married couple that's got a specific ministry
in a very hostile country or something where their lives are in danger and they would be
endangering the lives of their children as well, I could see that there could be some
exceptions there.
I'm looking for that higher principle that would say it's actually a good idea, a good
thing to not have children.
I suppose you could sit and think of a list of specific examples that they'd all be fairly
unusual, I think.
Okay, but it's interesting that for me to say that, but now to answer this next question,
what about limiting the number of children?
Limiting the number is right kind of in the same boat, isn't it, as childless intentional
childlessness.
It's just a lesser form of childlessness.
You're intentionally limiting the number of kids that you have.
Before I go into that, it is interesting.
For some time, scientists and world population actuaries or whatever they call themselves,
were worried that eventually the earth could become overpopulated and not be able to sustain
all the people.
Of course, but theoretically, we have the world.
There's only so much space here and so much land, and so forth.
There are finite resources.
That became a much, much less of a worry when it was finally determined that it's very improbable
that will ever happen because as people prosper, as nations and as geographical regions prosper
and people become ... have more opportunity and more material things and so forth, the
birth rate goes down.
It's just a fact.
Why that is, I'm sure there's a number of reasons, but people limit the size of their
families for numbers of reasons that make sense to them.
In wealthier cultures, one of them, of course, is they have access to birth control.
And so, they're thinking, well, quality, not so much as quantity because the world is a
very complicated place nowadays, and it takes a lot of effort and a lot of money to raise
a kid.
Once you get past a certain amount of kids, if they're too close together, how are you
even going to transport them all around?
These are the kinds of practical questions that come up.
I'm not going to be pointing my finger at anybody and condemning them for that.
Those folks who argue against birth control and say, for example, that, you're preventing
a child from being born that could have become a child of God, I have no argument against
that.
I think that's a strong argument, but not one that was enough to persuade me from limiting
the number of children that my wife and I had.
Now we had three children.
Actually, we intended to have two.
Surprise.
I'm so glad that for that surprise today.
I was very glad for that surprise as very soon after that child was born, even before
that child was born, our third child.
Looking back, I wish we would have had more children.
It's too late now for us, but the Lord has given through our children, 10 beautiful grandchildren.
You just can't get too many of them.
I guess I'm not going to be able to provide a definitive biblical answer on this.
I could certainly encourage you, if you're thinking about family planning, to be in prayer
about it because that's what it comes down to, is obedience to the Lord.
We don't want to prevent children from being born that God wants to be born, but on the
other hand, think of it logically on the other side.
You could argue then that you should have as many children as you possibly can as quickly
and as close proximity as you possibly can, and just fill the earth and multiply because
that's what God said, to multiply.
There's other principles that come into play there.
Husbands love your wives, would be one of them.
Another one is, all the logistics, practical implications of providing for all those children.
Okay.
Again, anytime I've had a friend, and I've had some friends who are strongly against
birth control.
They give me the biblical reason.
We don't want to stop any children that God wants.
I always tell them, I don't have any argument against that, and more power to you.
I jokingly said to some of my friends who only have two kids, I said, "Well, you really
haven't obeyed that multiply, be fruitful and multiply, because if you only had two
kids, you've only duplicated yourselves.
You haven't multiplied."
I'm just joking when I say that.
The commandment to multiply, by the way, wasn't given to everybody.
It was given to Adam and Eve, and I think it probably was given to Noah and so forth.
I don't think there's any reason why God's expecting us.
I don't think there's a reason to think that God's expecting us to have gazillions of children,
that somehow he's got a big number in mind, and that's the all important thing.
Okay.
Boy, I wish I had a better answer.
Thanks for asking that.
I just hope that we can ... if we disagree, that we can do it in an agreeable way.
All right.
Okay.
That's the best I can do.
Wish it was better.
Thanks for joining me.
God bless.