Posted by
Bryn T. Jones on Monday, February 09, 2009 9:20:05 PM
I am stunned by the vigor with which Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity and others have attacked the woman who gave unnatural birth to eight babies. In principle, I agree that the woman is guilty of a lot of things, namely tampering with God's design and order. But she's not alone in her guilt. The doctors are guilty, too. And that argument has nothing to do with the fact that she has 14 babies in a small apartment. It would be as valid an argument if a woman had one child and had plenty of money and other worldly ideas of security to back up her desire to raise a child.
There are two issues that are astounding here: One, the idea that a child is doomed if he or she is born into poverty or difficult conditions, and two, that the crime here is the number of children the woman birthed.
First, as a Christian, I do not believe that someone's financial situation should dictate whether or not they should answer the call of our Creator to be fruitful and multiply. Plenty of loving families grew up on poverty, mine being one of them. Despite living below the poverty line, we ate food grown in our garden, pears grown in the back yard and pancakes on Saturday mornings--sometimes with hot dogs in lieu of sausage. Amazingly, I grew up and paid my own way through private college and am rising up the corporate ladder. My determination to succeed is perhaps driven by the fact that I didn't have priviledge and opportunity. Those 14 children are not doomed to lives of crime and villainy simply because of the sins of their mother. That should remain an argument of the social warfare left, not God-fearing conservatives.
Second, the problem we face is one where life is merely an experiment that we have the power to control. If someone isn't married or has trouble concieving, we simply manipulate cells and voila, we have a baby--and a number of frozen life-forms in storage. We've reduced humanity to seedlings that we can simply discard when they're no longer convenient or wanted. The design in which God made us where two will become one flesh in an intimate way that will allow them to produce offspring is all but destroyed. Sex has been turned into something like a personal drug to which some are adicted. Through science we've eliminated the chance for life, making sexual activity a simple choice of recreation with no fear of responsibility. Drugs allow men to remain 'in the game' long after nature has taken their sexual stamina. Personal satisfaction is prime in our society while intimate oneness is shunned.
In this culture we shouldn't raise our eyebrows at the fact that in our government's current 'stimulus' package contraception is proposed to 'contain costs.' Yes, children are merely financial burdens that we should kill off if at all possible, or prevent while frolicking away in whatever lustful manner we please. And should we want a child, why, we can simply grow a few from the frozen bank of babies we have in sterile rooms.
What should strike fear in our hearts is the degree to which our society has grown cold in love for one another. Women are at war with men over so-called equality and men long for a time when their roles were revered. In the midsts of this conflict are children who have become burdens to bestow on day care centers and after school programs. Our divorce rate is an alarming 50% while children grow up jaded and cynical, committing suicide at the highest rate in history.
In such a bleak society we might argue that it is a crime to bring more children into the world. But that argument has been used for generations upon generations. On the contrary, we desperately need good men and women to rear large numbers of children to offset the darkness that threatens to smother our world. We need beacons of light to show goodness when our culture's values prove vile. And for this reason we need to celebrate life because it comes from God. We can condemn our culture's tampering with God's handiwork, but He allowed those eight children to live. We can trust God will work his purpose in their life, no matter how wacky the mother may or may not be.