Saved in Childbearing?

            Late last summer I drew attention to the cover article of the August 12, 2013 issue of Time magazine: The Childfree Life: When having it all means not having children.  In it author Lauren Sandler notes that the birthrate in the United States is at all-time low.  “1 in 5 American women end their childbearing years maternity-free, compared with 1 in 10 in the 1970s,” she writes.  Though Sandler allows for the possibility that this population decline may result in economic decline – as it has in Europe, where less than a quarter of women choose to bear children – overall her article is critical of those who “scold” women who choose to live child-free and favorable toward those women who’ve been enlightened: “having it all doesn’t mean having a baby.”

            My main intention of that former post was to link to Kathleen Nielson’s thoughtful response to The Childfree Life, which was posted on The Gospel Coalition blog that same week.  In it she points out that the problem with choosing the child-free life is not that those who do so deny that children bring joy.  Nor is the problem ultimately the narcissistic attitude that typically drives the decision to not bear children, nor is it the threat of economic decline.  Rather, Nielson contends, “The most basic problem is that the childfree life does not take God into account.”  She maintains that the Bible speaks of children not as a choice, but as a God-given gift.  She also mentions God’s command to Adam and Eve to be fruitful and multiply, as well as the reality that God saves His people from generation to generation, as “babies are born and the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ is passed on.”  She notes the responsibility of all believers to care for the Church’s children, asserting that not one of God’s people lives child-free.  Lastly, she looks forward to coming of our Lord.  “In the new heaven and earth, there will be no marriage—and no having babies. This part of human life is temporary, until the whole family of God's people is perfect and complete…  Until then, we're in labor! With every birth we're aiming for new birth.”

            Not long ago, a single young man recommended that I listen to a sermon on 1 Tim. 2:15.  That text reads, “Nothwithstanding she shall be saved in childbearing, if they continue in faith and charity and holiness with sobriety.”  It was an excellent sermon, as he had said it was, one that highlighted the blessing of children and the high calling of motherhood, yet I think I listened to it with an enthusiasm that was different than his.  My enthusiasm was tampered at times with tears.  It was interrupted as our one-year-old emptied the contents of a kitchen drawer on the floor, by a dispute between our four-year-old and two-year-old, and when the clinic called to confirm my next OB appointment.  After the sermon was over, I reflected that I am not unaffected by same the narcissistic attitude that drives the birth-rate down.  Sometimes it is hard for me to look past the laundry, the messes, the quarreling, and the physical discomfort to see this: children bring joy.  And too often, my perspective on motherhood does not take God into account.  What He deems a high calling often seems to me to be the most lowly and the most lonely.  If you are a mother, my guess is that you face these same struggles, too.

In the weeks ahead, I plan to consider I Tim. 2:15 and other passages in the Bible that speak about childbearing.  How do we apply God’s Word about childbearing as mothers?  As single women or married women to whom God has not given children?  As all of God’s people, not one of whom lives child-free?  

Re-post: Screwtape Letter to an Exhausted Mom

A must-read letter written in the style of C.S. Lewis's Screwtape.

Eli - 18 months

Don’t let the sweet expression and girly headband fool you…Eli is another “all-boy.”  Since he turned 18 months toward the end of February, and since yesterday afternoon was pleasant and B.J. was around (to help with smiles, of course), I thought I should attempt a few updated photos.  

Too bad the only jeans clean are the too-small, stained-knee ones. 

Too bad I didn’t have time to straighten his hair. 

Too bad there’s something more exciting in the neighbor’s backyard. 

Too bad Will had the backdrop clenched in his fist, resulting in the starburst shape in the background of the few decent shots we got.  Too bad the wind picked up so my hastily-rigged studio-on-the-patio soon looked like this: 

He may be charming, but let me tell you, this child is no walk in the park.

 Speaking of walks…

doesn’t that sound like more fun than sitting still?  After all, when there are fierce, heavily-armed older brothers around…

or maybe not so fierce, but still armed…

Maybe I could help Dad fix the brakes on the van.  Maybe he needs this screw driver.  Maybe he’ll think I’m being cuter than Mom does. 

 Yep, he does.

(This is the way Marie rides her bike, fyi.  We tell her all she has to do is put her feet on the peddles and it'd be waay easier, but she refuses.)

Maybe you do, too.  :-)

"You are What - and How - You Read"

I became aware of this excellent by Rosaria Butterfield through Mr. Charles Terpstra's The 3 R's Blog.  Recently a number of ladies from our church read her book, The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert.  I highly recommend the book - it's very well written.  Read the article for a taste of what you'll get in the book and for a glimpse into the disciplined, educated mind of this God-fearing woman.  Below is a rather lengthy excerpt; read the rest of the article here.

I just returned from a well-known (and well-heeled) Christian college, where roughly 100 demonstrators gathered on the chapel steps to protest my address on the grounds that my testimony was dangerous. Later that day, I sat down with these beloved students, to listen, to learn, and to grieve. Homosexuality is a sin, but so is homophobia; the snarled composition of our own sin and the sin of others weighs heavily on us all. I came away from that meeting realizing—again—how decisively our reading practices shape our worldview. This may seem a quirky observation, but I know too well the world these students inhabit. I recall its contours and crevices, risks and perils, reading lists and hermeneutical allegiances. You see, I'm culpable. The blood is on my hands. The world of LGBTQ activism on college campuses is the world that I helped create. I was unfaltering in fidelity: the umbrella of equality stretching to embrace my lesbian identity, and the world that emerged from it held salvific potential. I bet my life on it, and I lost.

When I started to read the Bible it was to critique it, embarking on a research project on the Religious Right and their hatred against queers, or, at the time, people like me. A neighbor and pastor, Ken Smith, became my friend. He executed the art of dying: turning over the pages of your heart in the shadow of Scripture, giving me a living testimony of the fruit of repentance. He was a good reader—thorough, broad, and committed. Ken taught me that repentance was done unto life, and that abandoning the religion of self-righteousness was step number one. The Holy Spirit equipped me to practice what Ken preached, and one day, my heart started to beat to the tempo of my Lord's heart. A supernatural imposition, to be sure, but it didn't stop there.

…Worldview matters. And if we don't reach back before the 19th century, back to the Bible itself, the Westminster divines, and the Puritans, we will limp along, defeated. Yes, the Holy Spirit gives you a heart of flesh and the mind to understand and love the Lord and his Word. But without good reading practices even this redeemed heart grows flabby, weak, shaky, and ill. You cannot lose your salvation, but you can lose everything else.

Enter John Owen. Thomas Watson. Richard Baxter. Thomas Brooks. Jeremiah Burroughs. William Gurnall. The Puritans. They didn't live in a world more pure than ours, but they helped create one that valued biblical literacy. Owen's work on indwelling sin is the most liberating balm to someone who feels owned by sexual sin. You are what (and how) you read. J. C. Ryle said it takes the whole Bible to make a whole Christian. Why does sin lurk in the minds of believers as a law, demanding to be obeyed? How do we have victory if sin's tentacles go so deep, if Satan knows our names and addresses? We stand on the ordinary means of grace: Scripture reading, prayer, worship, and the sacraments. We embrace the covenant of church membership for real accountability and community, knowing that left to our own devices we'll either be led astray or become a danger to those we love most. We read our Bibles daily and in great chunks. We surround ourselves with a great cloud of witnesses who don't fall prey to the same worldview snares we and our post-19th century cohorts do.

In short, we honor God with our reading diligence. We honor God with our reading sacrifice. If you watch two hours of TV and surf the internet for three, what would happen if you abandoned these habits for reading the Bible and the Puritans? For real. Could the best solution to the sin that enslaves us be just that simple and difficult all at the same time? We create Christian communities that are safe places to struggle because we know sin is also "lurking at [our] door." God tells us that sin's "desire is for you, but you shall have mastery over it" (Gen. 4:7). Sin isn't a matter of knowing better, it isn't (only) a series of bad choices—and if it were, we wouldn't need a Savior, just need a new app on our iPhone.

We also take heart, remembering the identity of our soul and thus rejecting the Freudian ideal that sexual identity competes with the soul. And we encourage other image-bearers to reflect the Original in knowledge, righteousness, and holiness, not in the vapid reductionism that claims image-of-God theology means he loves you just way you are, just the way your sin manifests itself. Long hours traveling the road paved by Bible reading, theological study, and a solid grasp on hermeneutical fallacies gets you to a place where as sons and daughters of the King, people tempted in all manner of sin, we echo Owen: "The law grace writes in our hearts must answer to the law written in God's Word." We also take heart, remembering that God faithfully walks this journey with us, that victory over sin comes in two forms: liberty from it and humility regarding its stronghold. But it comes, truly, just as he will.