Children - A Burden or a Blessing?

Over the past few years Jonathan and I have become painfully aware of the popular mentality that views children as a burden. It comes across everywhere, from grocery-store conversations, to greeting time at church.

When Jonathan and I were engaged, only a month away from marriage, I casually told him about my medical appointment and the birth control pills I was given. Jonathan was upset and surprised that I would even consider the pill, so I promptly tossed them in the trash. That was the beginning of my Spirit-led journey away from the stronghold of this pervasive mentality.

Within a week I discovered Natural Family Planning (NFP) through an organization called Couple to Couple League (CCL). NFP is a natural, safe, and very effective approach to both achieving and postponing pregnancy. NFP does more than act as a device to plan pregnancy - it opens one's eyes to the gift of life and challenges couples to not allow a worldly society to determine the number of children you have.

Since then, Jonathan and I have discovered that the Pill is very destructive. First of all, when it's unable to fully suppress ovulation as a first effect, it can deliberately cause, as a secondary effect, a fertilized egg (i.e. "life") to be killed (a.k.a. abortifacient). In addition, a new book has recently come out reviewing the studies that show how the Pill increases the chances of contracting breast cancer. (See the One More Soul web site and look for the book by Chris Kahlenborn) The Pill is not the only abortifacient birth control device; the IUD, Depo-Provera, Norplant and RU-486 also terminate life in the womb.

We have had mixed reactions when we tell our friends about this. Some are visibly uncomfortable with the news and I allow their conscience and the Holy Spirit to deal with the outcome. But I'm comforted when I find someone shocked, but grateful to know the truth. (This isn't the first time in history that Christians have had to confront culture - slavery in the south and the Holocaust are a couple of examples where, had the church took a stronger stand with the "issue of the day" instead of seeing it as a detraction to witnessing, many lives would have been saved.) We have been encouraged, though, to find others who share our views. We even meet with a group of about 10 couples in Colorado Springs on an ongoing basis to encourage and support each other.

The belief that children are a burden does not just play itself out in the form of birth control one uses. Even more puzzling is the number of people who decide they are finished having children and "play God" by having a vasectomy or tubal ligation. I have seen it time and time again where a couple decides two children are more than they can bear, even so that they can spend more time in the pastorate or a professional Christian ministry. When their birth control malfunctions and leaves them with a third child, the "burden" becomes so great that one of the two gets themselves sterilized. I can't imagine this could ever please God. Certainly the Early Church never saw self-sterilization as an option to devoting oneself more fully to God and in fact saw such a misguided act as grounds for dismissal from any professional Christian ministry. The godly custom of the Early Church was to allow for sexual self-control either through singleness for the Lord or through mutual spousal abstinence, but never through some form of bodily destruction of what God created for good. Just as one would control the tongue through self-control, not through literal physical mutilation of what God has created.

The happiest families I have seen are those who really understand that children are indeed a blessing. They welcome each addition as a gift from God and take seriously their responsibility of raising that child. It is a joy to be around the children, because they seem to know this too. By the way, money is never an excuse to stop having children - Jonathan and I are evidence of this; we have been provided for financially each time we've given birth to or taken in a child. Once a couple is aware of this mentality, they can be free to be live in the truth and take advantage of the blessings God wants to give them.

"Whoever receives one of these little children in my name receives me" Mk 9:37a