Posted on 01/17/2006 1:31:49 PM PST by WKB
Rev. R. Albert Mohler, Jr., the president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, says it's "an absolute revolt against God's design" if husbands and wives purposely avoid bearing children.
On his Web site and other articles and interviews, Mohler argues that "marriage, sex and children are part of one package" and that "to deny any part of this wholeness is to reject God's intention in creation and his mandate revealed in the Bible."
In a CNN interview, the Baptist leader added, “We grow up by having children. Without that responsibility, we have a generation of perpetual adolescents just growing old."
I prefer to trust in God. Because God knows what is best for me and my family...more than even I do..
It is a matter of faith and perspective.
If we all changed our plans because the NWS issues a "severe thunderstorm watch"...we would miss out on some afternoons.
Just because conditions are favorible for something, doesnt mean it is going to happen. If there is a 50% of rain showers, I am not staying home from a Reds game.
Only God knows what the future will bring.
>> God must be most pleased with India and China. <<
Forced abortions? Conscripted marriages? Brutally unjust economic systems holding people into poverty? A diet designed to provide just enough calories to keep women fertile, but not sufficient protein to make strong-willed or full-grown men? A fascist slave-labor state?
For 400 years in the "dark ages", England managed to maintain a stable population without major wars, without famine, without plague, and without starvation, while maintaining a life expectancy that would not be reached again until the 20th century. Meanwhile, the peasants worked on average only three days a week, devoting the remainder of their time to festivals, worshipping, and resting.
That young couple in Arkansas who have sixteen kids show what can be done on $60,000 a year. The reason why more couples don't have five or six kids as less to do with being able to "afford" then than in the way their lives are organized.
Thank you.
Having kids is too important to do it wrong - and "wrong" includes when one or both parents are unwilling or incapable of being good parents, or when they are had because "everyone else is having them" or as an accessory like many Hollywood babies, or when the marriage is on the rocks and the baby is created to "save it" .
Kids deserve a whole and well mother and father who both want them and are willing to do what it takes to raise them. Having them under the circumstances I mentioned is IMHO a bigger "sin" than not having them at all.
But the good reverend would probably not see it this way - after all, fewer babies born to Baptists equals fewer parishioners and less money, doesn't it.
LQ
If I could find the right woman I would be more than happy to multiply.
I agree with him and there are two components to this. On a personal level I don't think it's possible to fully experience life without children. I think children suffer from not having brothers and sisters.
The second component is the public one. A society that does not have children is going to be replaced by one that does. The society that replaces us may decide not to honor the promises we made ourselves when WE were in charge. And, any couple who plans on getting their social security should plan on having enough children to pay for it. (Sorry I tried but didn't make it).
Muleteam1
Having kids isn't going to "make you happy". If you have kids because you think it will, that's putting a lot of responsibility on them!
>>Boy, the truth looks rather unpopular around here.<<
You should see the "Porn is Good" threads around here then. Moral relativism has struck FR pretty deeply as of late.
I think his question might be addressed to your husband.
>>Only God knows what the future will bring.<<
Amen - and the clay has no right to object to the Potter.
You forgot that little part of marriage vows that promises to stick by the other "in sickness and in health". I didn't bail on him, I fought for him and with him and we got through it. He's been sober for 3 years now and things are better.
I suppose I could've walked but that doesn't say much about me as a person, or as a wife.
I got my husband back but lost the chance for kids. If I had left it would've been the reverse.
For all of you judgemental types out there - pray that's never a choice that you are faced with.
LQ
No excuse...no healthy FR male should have trouble finding a good woman to make a life a with. Don't put it off.
Except for a very select few, most people's memories are only carried on for the long term by their children, and then their children's children.
It can't be a pleasant thought for the elderly when it dawns on them that before long nobody will really remember them or even look at their photographs.
He would say "ADOPT."
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