Ellajac recently left a comment with this question, and I decided to make a post out of it!
I've often wondered about families who make it a priority to embrace God's gift of (many!) children and longed to ask a question. I'll ask it of you, but if you prefer not to answer that is ok too (but please don't take this as questioning your motives at all). Is your decision to have as many children as God allows (he seems to have blessed you a lot so far!) based on anything other than faith? That is, would disability, handicap, serious financial problems, mental illness, etc, change your conviction in any way? Is there a point at which you would say, "I'd rather raise these (#) kids well than have (larger #) and not be able to raise them properly"?
Let me start by saying that I believe this is an extremely important issue, and one that is very controversial. I'm amazed at how many folks have an opinion about the number of children we should or shouldn't have and how we should raise them. (I'm not saying that Ellajac is one of those people...she's just asking an honest question and I'm more than happy to share my thoughts!) We've gotten so many strange looks and comments, and we only have four children. I can only imagine what kind of looks and comments the
Duggars get! We've heard everything from "Wow" to "You have your hands full" to "Are they all yours?" to "You're very blessed" (my favorite!) to "Don't you realize where babies come from?". And this is the kicker...Adam was working with a patient at the dental school last week. She asked him how many children he had, and then how old they were. When he told her, she looked at him in shock and said "Are you on drugs? Or have you been on drugs?" The nerve! :-)
There are about as many opinions as there are people when it comes to birth control. We have very strong convictions against using it, but it is not our desire or our motive to judge anyone who does not share our convictions. This is a very serious decision and the only people that matter in the making of it are you, your spouse, and God. I also believe that it is vital for us wives to submit to our husbands in this case, as in any other. (I don't say this because I've got the submission thing down pat...not exactly. I've got a LONG way to go.) If Adam thought that we should use birth control, it would be my duty to submit to him and go along with his decision, hard as that may be. Of course there is nothing wrong with discussion, but I would ultimately still need to submit. When a wife submits to her husband she is obeying God, and He will bless that. Even if your husband's decision is wrong, God will not allow that to "mess up" your life. When I was in high school I met a couple that had eight children in eight years...and she was on birth control the entire time! That being said, I am SO thankful that Adam and I agree on this. And we are both very thankful for his parents and my parents, all of whom are very supportive and encouraging to us.
So why do we want to have as many children as God wants to send us? I'll break it down into several points.
1) According to Deuteronomy 28, a fruitful womb is the first blessing that God will bestow upon us if we walk according to His commandments. Children are an unbelievable blessing!!! I have yet to come across a passage in Scripture that talks about God giving people children because they were rebellious and disobedient. Rather, He rewards us with children. I must admit that this is a little hard for me to understand. I feel very unworthy of receiving these blessings, and I know several people who I consider to be a lot more worthy than myself who are unable to have children. However, my understanding of it does not change the fact that it is true.
Since the Bible so clearly states that children are blessings from God, I see no good reason not to eagerly accept as many as He chooses to give me. If He were trying to bless me with money, or a bigger house, or a new vehicle would I readily accept them? Of course! So why not children?
2) God told us to be fruitful and multiply. It was the first command that he gave to mankind. He didn't say to be fruitful and multiply when you feel like it, or when it is convenient for you. He just said to do it! One of the biggest things that bothers me about birth control is that I see no Biblical basis for it whatsoever. Doug Phillips (
Vision Forum Ministries) uses some pretty strong language when he talks about this.
"The Bible is enthusiastically pro-childbirth, and what it does say of relevance to the issue of conception control is comprehensively negative. There are no clear patterns, precepts, or principles found in the Bible which seem to give any leeway to the idea that couples should alter their bodies and cut off their seed. Until recently, this was the universally accepted principle of Christian culture. This is why Christians who advocate conception control have a whopping task: The burden of proof rests on them (not those of us who argue for the normative and plain teaching of Scripture) to prove from Scripture alone that God is pleased with us altering our bodies and thwarting children from coming into the world. It is not enough to argue from the 'penumbras and emanations' of the Scripture, or to hope that there is a stewardship principle which would support the practice of cutting off the seed. One must actively prove from clear patterns, precepts, and principles of Scripture that child prevention is part of the jurisdiction over which man may lawfully exercise stewardship. This is an important point because all sorts of wrongs can be argued on the basis of 'stewardship.' The relevant question is this: 'do we have the jurisdiction and authority to thwart children?'"
That quote was taken from Nancy Campbell's book
Be Fruitful and Multiply, which is one of the best resources that I've read on the issue. I highly recommend it. (It can be purchased from
Vision Forum, or directly from the
Above Rubies website.)
3) God is the One who opens and closes the womb. Fertility is ultimately in His hands, not ours. As
Crystal said in
this post, it is very freeing to not have to worry about birth control. If we find out tomorrow that we're expecting another baby, we will be thrilled and we will rejoice in knowing that God has chosen to bless us again. On the other hand, if twenty years goes by and we don't have another child, we can be assured God has chosen not to bless us in that way. We won't have any regrets or guilt about the fact that we may have prevented children from being born.
There are other reasons that we would like to have a large family. One is that we just love kids! We would also like to adopt at some point...maybe when our biological children are grown, maybe before that.
We recently listened to
Voddie Baucham give a lecture called
"The Centrality of the Home in Evangelism and Discipleship". It is excellent and I think that all parents should listen to it. It includes some very startling statistics. For example, he says that 1) 75 to 88 percent of Christian young people (who have grown up in the church and who call themselves "born-again evangelicals") forsake their faith by the end of their freshman year in college. 2) The current birth rate in America is 1.8 children per couple. So if you're generous and say that the birth rate is 2 children per couple and that we're only losing 75% of our young people, then it takes 2 Christian families (4 people) in one generation to get 1 Christian into the next. Baucham says that in order to make up for what we're losing...to just break even...we would have to be reaching 3 lost people for every 1 Christian. But according to the Southern Baptist Journal of Theology, we are actually reaching 1 lost person for every 43 Christians. So we are basically extinguishing ourselves.
I know that just because we have, say, ten children, does not mean that none of those children will forsake their faith. By God's grace they won't. We most definitely have a monumental responsibility in raising our children, and these kinds of facts remind me that I constantly need to be humbly before God in prayer for my children, my husband, and myself as we raise them.
As far as caring for a large family goes, I definitely can't do it in my own strength. I have to ask God for wisdom, grace, patience, humility, etc every single day. But I don't believe that He will give me more than I can handle with His help (including children with disabilities). I cannot raise one child properly without His aid and guidance, but if I am just a vessel ready and willing for Him to use, then He can use me to accomplish an awful lot! God gives life and He is able to provide for that life...physically, emotionally, spiritually, and in every other way. The hard part is to remember to rely on Him and not to try to control everything myself...something that I need to work on.
There is so much more that could be said, but this is already quite lengthy. Feel free to comment or ask questions. I definitely don't have all of the answers (far from it!), but discussion is good and I would enjoy hearing your viewpoints.
