January 30, 2009

We live in a secular culture, where the claims of truth and
the claims of Christ fall on deaf ears. Secularization demands
that we live bifurcated lives; that is, it commands us to keep our
private life and our public life (whether political, economic, intellectual,
athletic) in completely separate drawers, and never the
twain shall meet. Our faith obviously belongs in the “private”
drawer. Inaugural prayers and vows in God’s name give a headnod
to religion, but the privatization of faith is accepted dogma
on all sides. As one author has put it, “As American society has
become indisputably secular, the historic influence of Christianity
has ceased to be a significant factor in any segment of contemporary
culture. None of the major public sectors of our
society – the arts, the media, medicine, law, education, popular
culture, government, business, science, industry, or agriculture –
are shaped in any meaningful way by the convictions of historic
Christianity.”

As Christians, we are to love the Lord with all our mind
(Matt. 22:37), and we are to be salt and light in a tasteless and
dark culture (Matt. 5:13-16). In Romans 12:2, Paul exhorts us,
“Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the
renewing of your mind…” Likewise, in Colossians 2:8, he warns
us, “See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy
and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according
to the elementary principles of this world, rather than according
to Christ.” Instead of being taken captive, we are to
“[destroy] speculations and every lofty thing raised up against
the knowledge of God, and [take] every thought captive to the
obedience of Christ” (II Cor. 10:5), since in Christ “are hidden
all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Col. 2:3). Thus we
have a responsibility to think about how our faith applies to
every area of life, and to engage our culture with the truth of
the gospel of Jesus Christ.

One area of public life and thought that pops up occasionally
in our culture is that of overpopulation. You may not know the
name of Thomas Malthus, an eighteenth-nineteenth century
political economist, but you are undoubtedly influenced by his
theories on overpopulation (Aldous Huxley, in his novel Brave
New World, wrote of “Malthusian belts,” upon which high-caste
women would wear their contraceptive devices for ready access).
Malthus taught that an ever-increasing population would
not be able to provide sufficient food for itself; the population
would outpace its food, and would lead to greater poverty. Thus,
Malthus’ thought led to a societal push for birth control and population
control.

Ideas have consequences, and we saw one result of Malthusian
theory in the earthquake that hit Sichuan province in China last
year – parents, who had forbidden by the government’s “one-child
policy” to have more than one child, lost their one and only child,
and thus faced a desperate and lonely future. The Wall Street Journal,
on January 27, noted that the stimulus plan being bandied
about in Congress right now is unfortunately affected by Malthusian
ideas – if only less people were being born, then we wouldn’t
be in as bad shape economically, the government wouldn’t have to
provide for so many people; therefore we need to “stimulate” the
economy by funding family planning and contraception services so
that we can reduce costs to governments.

Not only does such thinking ignore the importance of human
capital and labor in an economy (since Malthus wrote, both the
population and the standard of living has increased across the
world), but more importantly it flies in the face of God’s original
creation mandate to “be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth”
(Gen. 1:28, repeated in 9:1). Children are a “gift” and “reward”
from the Lord (Ps. 127:3), not a curse and cause of poverty. The
world views children as a curse, and seeks to kill them even in the
womb. Children “cost a lot,” so the argument goes. But children
are not merely consumers (another mouth to feed), they are producers
(another strong back and mind) as well. And they are eternal
souls, entrusted to parents by a sovereign God to raise up in
the nurture and discipline of the Lord, to teach them to walk in
the ways of the Lord. I do not believe that the Bible teaches that
birth control or family planning in and of itself is a sin. But the
attitudes underlying someone’s desire to not have children could
very well be sinful. God is sovereign to open and close the womb,
and we are called to be responsible, wise, and obedient stewards.
Christians should view children positively, as a blessing, not least
because each new child is another opportunity to lead an eternal
soul to Jesus Christ; each new child is another soldier in the
Lord’s army. I thank God that there is “something in the water” at
Grace Presbyterian Church (for twins, evidently!), and pray that
God would continue to bless us with children as we seek to cultivate
and nourish a godly seed together for His glory.

Caleb