Our culture tells us children are for self-actualization. They're what you have when you're settled, financially secure, and need something to care for in order to give you purpose and also increase your social status or to make you feel good about yourself. But if children are for self-actualization, then you wouldn't want to have one when it might be difficult or get in the way of other types of self-actualization like having money for vacations or a big house or having freedom to travel or having time to yourself now and then. You certainly wouldn't need very many of them. A single child or maybe two is plenty and having more than that would result in diminishing returns or even negative returns as the workload and expense from multiple children mounts and people start to look at you funny due to your excessive procreation.
Because of this view of children, they are often seen as burdens when they cause us stress or expense or limit our freedom, but also as commodities to be obtained when we want one. People obtain children by surrogacy or sperm donation or IVF because they feel entitled to have one as part of their pursuit of self-actualization. Their life feels incomplete without a child, so they deserve to have one by any means necessary. So even when children are wanted, it is often for selfish reasons of the parents, not because they understand the purpose of children. And when children show up when they aren't wanted, they are seen as invaders or parasites and discarded through abortion or neglected. It's all part of the same false view of children as a means to the end of parental happiness.
Even in Christian circles, we repeat the mantra that children are a blessing, but we don't always understand what that means. We adopt the culture's attitude, but Christianize it. So we're still thinking that children being a blessing means a blessing to us. When you've got a crying baby at 2:00am or you're sitting in the emergency room with your child after they took a flying leap and broke a bone or you're dealing with a difficult teenager or you're doing your 4th load of laundry for the day and your toddler wets their pants yet again, there are a lot of things on your mind, but "This is such a blessing" is probably not one of them. Children are a lot of work and a lot of expense and even a lot of heartache at times.
So what does the Bible mean when it says children are a blessing? Yes, they are certainly a blessing to their parents in many ways, but it's much more than that. Children are meant to be a blessing to the whole world. Even from an earthly perspective, a child is a future worker, innovator, consumer, and contributor to society in many ways. We need children to keep the economy and our culture thriving and to pass it on to the next generation. Having a child is an investment in the future, not just for ourselves, but for the world. More importantly, a child raised in the nurture and admonition of the Lord is a light in a dark world, to lead others to Jesus and influence their culture for Christ. A child is a legacy to pass down a heritage of serving Christ to future generations. And perhaps most importantly, a child is an immortal soul who will live forever and is meant to praise and worship God and bring glory to our Creator.
The purpose for children is not self-actualization of their parents. Children don't exist to make their parents feel good about themselves (which is good, because they don't always do that). Children exist to know and serve God and to be used by Him to change the world, or at least their corner of it. Having children and raising them, for a Christian, is a way of helping to bring the world into subjection to Christ and bringing more people to heaven. It's not about the parents and what makes them happy. It's about fulfilling God's plan.
Every Christian, whether they know it or not, is on a mission to serve God. Having children is an important way of doing that because they're a way to multiply the impact and take that impact down through the years. Even for those who can't have biological children of their own, children are still important and we are all called to foster the growth of the children around us in whatever ways we can. If you can have children, have them because they're part of your mission for God to impact the world around you for many years to come. If you can't, encourage those around you who are having children and help children who need your influence in order to know and love God.
Children are worth the pain and the work and the expense many times over, but not because they make the lives of their parents so wonderful. Sometimes they do, and that's great. But let's not overlook the bigger picture. It's not about the parents. It's about implementing God's plan here on earth and populating heaven with more people to glorify God.
The encompassing maximum information on Divine design in Genesis 1 is that by way of the specifically human cognitive capacity for open ended recursion on that same completed cosmos:
ReplyDelete1. The general Heaven and is special Earth;
2. The Earth and its special abiding maximal abundance of liquid water;
3. That water and its special cycle;
4. The water cycle and its special beneficiary and member, life:
5. Life and its special category, animal life (plant/animal/mineral = animal);
6. Animal life and its special category, human life;
...7. A man and his wife.
If there is one best way of showing the nature of the relation between marriage and the whole Creation and Creation Week, it seems this sevenfold cosmic coherence is it. This coherence may lack any cultural affirmation today, even in the Calendar Day creation community. It also seems it was unknown to any historically influential person of the last two millenia.
But this sevenfold coherence is noticed by the most life affirming, most purely childlike, view both of the cosmos and of Genesis 1. And, in the original Creation, every animal life form was far more robustly alive than are any of them now. Humans, too, were not afflicted with poor circulation, either that defined against the 'good circulation' of today or that defined as the 'good circulation' of today. Therefore, human neurocognition was orders better than that of any human today. Consequently, many things that we today fail to notice at all of how things cohere was taken, then, as too obvious to need outright mention. Thus, many of the outright mentions of things were given mention not as a way of informing the clueless, but as a way of celebrating the wonders that were commonly obvious. There was no state of cluelessness as to the most important created things in terms of which the cosmos coheres. God designed fully functioning human adults, not yet-to-be-programmed robots or four day old infants.
Moreover, this sevenfold set is found by way of the sole prime function of creaturely life, and this of the specifically human cognitive capacity to expound that function for all cosmology. That function is that of the natural organism's self interest, by taking a general concern, and pursuing its own most special interests within that general concern. A songbird cannot spontaneously produce a sonic version of such recursive structure, but a human can, and does. We must not simply repeat what Genesis 1 spells out. If we do only that, then we become, for the account, no better than a songbird when the bird stops hearing paradigmatically human musical structures. As Longhenry (2013) points out, God's very being is nothing less than that of a personal relationship, so His Creation is going to reflect that.
Longhenry, E. R. (2013): God's Divinity in Creation: Romans 1:20. The Expository Files July 20.7. https://www.bible.ca/ef/expository-romans-1-20.htm. https://www.bible.ca/ef/ef-index-2013.htm.