Food as fetish...

Breaking Point:

[Speaking of Nadya Sulemand and IVF]:

"...it’s a tragedy beyond calculation that our culture is losing the Christian understanding that children ought to be the natural result of the self-giving love between a husband and wife to be raised in the context of family.

Instead, children are becoming commodities to be created by any means.

But, as the Suleman story reminds us, when you try to circumvent the natural order, unexpected consequences are the rule, not the exception."

Can someone tell me how this is encouraging to a person who isn't married?

Denver Todd,

I, as a single woman, cannot be fruitful and multiply. It would seem on the surface that there is little for me to glean from this post. Yet it has been through posts like this one that encourage me to do the following:

love children

support, encourage, and love families who are having many children, while the outside world clucks their disapproval

encourage my friends who are soon to be married (and there are many of them) to be open to children right from the get-go of their marriage, and to warn them of the folly of "planning" their children and "waiting til they are ready".

Resolve to give myself wholeheartedly to being fruitful and multiplying when I am married.

It's posts like this one that encourage me to do these things, and I am grateful to Tim and David for writing them.

In terms of being fruitful for the Kingdom, an example which the singles here might relate to: one thing I have been involved in over the last few years has been active mission, of various sorts - first with international students, then in the context of being part of the prayer team for an Alpha course which was run by the church I belond to.

That said, and looking again at the original post (especially its last line): I think Denver's question was a fair one. Generally, when we talk about a godly legacy, we specifically do mean biological children, and it is only when people like Denver ask the questions they do, that we have to address the situation of the singles (along those lines, good replies from Rob and Chantal).

Denver,

Why do you think this post must be encouraging for you? Not everything on this blog is for everybody and you will have to live the life God gives you, whether you think it's encouraging or not.

As many here have said you have a spiritual family. God has used many spiritual family members from church to heal things from my physical family. Do you realize how I mean, have you ever been adopted into a family from church? If you haven't let us tell you what it's like. In most cases my spiritual family has been closer than my physical one.

After all, isn't the blood of Christ thicker than the blood of man?

Chantal (& Denver),

Thanks for your posts. I didn't mean to imply that it's easy not having a family or that church can exactly make up for not having children (I meant that my church family have been closer to me than my siblings).

We have a friend who is almost as old as my dad - he never married. He's in his mid 60s and he has sort of adopted into my family and us into his.

He has known all my kids virtually since birth. They don't remember a time he wasn't around and when he is old I told him that he can live with us. I meant it and he didn't say anything at the time but he told me later it meant a lot to him, and I think it comforts him to think he may take us up on it.

Denver, put yourself into a family or better, multiple families at church. People do it a lot more readily than you may think.

Besides, I don't know how old you are, Denver, but Chantal, my friend Matthew Campbell was in his 30s when he married, everyone he knew was trying to fix him up - God sent his spouse when he least expected it.

Leslie Taylor
-what about fertile individuals with developmental abnormalities of their sexual organs that prevent fertilization? (In response to circumventing natural order.)

Speaking of "called to celibate life", if one is tempted, Paul exhorts people to marry: I think that if someone struggles, as said Paul, better to marry than burn; such that say they are called to be single, but struggle to restrain themselves, are being like those who hinder or forbid marriage, but to themselves, and they should repent, pray, and enjoy a good, God-honoring, fruitful marriage if/when God so provides them the spouse (not "Lord, give me this, this, this, this", but perhaps they should pray "Lord, temporarily blind me to the faults of the person I ought to marry so I'll be so foolish to do so, then thank you for the blindness, then thank you for joy in spite of themselves when I'm annoyed, yet able to escape temptation and give him/her Christ-like love in spite of their imperfections").

Chantal I.
-great points, I like that you brought-up the point that there are believers who are being led astray, you know, such as Ross who is helpign with that function by participation in an Alpha course (well, if it's Gumbel's Alpha, that is).

Mr. Todd
-perhaps you should bring this up before your Church? very often Churches descend into cliques, as with any other human group, and they need to be shaken out of it. Sometimes people are absorbed in formalities, in "Church is where you go for [these things]" but forget the part about being with and loving one another, and bearing burdens, and etc.. It seems like those invalid churches with a lot of bunk and false worship have been eagerly implementing such stuff to "close the backdoor of the Church', though eventually the sheep seem to leave those anyways (the goats stay) because they're unfed; yet then the sheep seem to pine away alone even in what we'd call "valid" churches with the right stuff, but nothing personal: perhaps those are often just full of goats as well.

No offense to Presbyterians, but I think this is especially a danger in those Churches that presume the "seed of the Church" type teachings, and their childrens' regeneration, and especially this when those children have simply grown-up in the Church and that's what they know: it can be almost like those who attend and who are moral, and who have something of belief, but it appears little spiritual about them. If we wanted to remove the dividing wall between Presbyterians and Baptists, I think it would be these assumptions that would have to go, not so much the difference in mode of baptism: it's not so much that, as so many think, for instance, that the Baptists keep separate from Presby's despite that the confessional/conservative among us practically share the same confession (though yes, there are differences), it's the attachments more than the other (though those questions aren't considered unimportant about either, I think, and the one thing I appreciate about the disagreement is the arguments that force us to examine the Scriptures--though I wish we could also "speak the same thing" in the unity "of the same mind" as we're commanded). (I actually go to a little Reformed Baptist Church and we share a building with a PCA church! I don't personally know the PCA members (yet), I don't know if they're one of those assemblies upholding the standards, if they're one of the remaining conservative ones, or one of those modernizing and descending into social-gospel type stuff, but beyond getting to know the group with which I meet on Sundays, and do Church-stuff (and, hopefully, soon more "life stuff"), I hope to get to know them too: it would be a shame not to when they're even in the same building, and I know the pastors of the congregations, at least, know each other (or did, I think the old PCA pastor just left and they got a new guy).)

Anyway Mr. Bayly('s), one caution: I think it *can* be dangerous to tread onto the grounds of birth control. Not, personally, with the hormonal type (it seems like a flagrant abuse of pharmaceuticals to me, and medically it's one of the more dire threats to public well-being because those extra hormones end-up in the water supply, while affecting women in bad ways); nor do I think it unwise to warn people against "planning" forever: sadly some come to regret that when something, whether accident, age, or some turn of health, renders them inable to have children (me, I had cancer and could have lost that ability: thankfully I have not, so far as I know, though I haven't had a wife to test my hypothesis on, either!).

But we needn't forget that the apostle's exhortation to marriage for those who burn was so that they would not burn, not for children. The children are an expected gift, however, a plus, and should be welcomed when they come, and I think we must honor God about not trying to control things without fervently praying for His will to be done, that we should be sensitive to our spouse's desires, even correcting them if they're just being selfish about something (like not wanting children just to maintain some kind of lifestyle), and etc.. Maybe it's a bit like one of your old posts where you wrote that Presby's drink and smoke, in the same way those things must be considered discerningly (see Challies.com for yesterday's post), so must things like birth control (just not using it to forever avoid having children). I think, after all, that if it is God's will, whether someone is using that (dangerous) pill (for non-medical purposes--there are valid applications of it), or some other kind of "protection" (a bad an demeaning word toward children), the children will come.

Speaking of which, my grandmother, on "the pill", had six children; I know a Christian man who decided to "run away from God" with, as he put it, a "good" Catholic girl and had a "whoops" which, he says, "really screws-up your life", and yet his conclusion? He's thankful: he sees it as something that stopped him from running. Speaking of that feller, I'd love to 'solicit' prayers from any takers here for him, that he'll get from the Vineyard (it's just doctrinally poor with a dubious past and watery, questionable, theology) into a Church with an edifying, protective/guarding pastor.

Denver,

If you want talk over email about this - it's mahoney@pyramid.org

What you're describing sounds like exactly what I experienced a few years ago. I really feel for you brother. What you're describing is really hard and a huge problem in most churches. Don't let it rattle you, cling to the Lord and believe with all your heart that God is sovereign. Work within your church, be respectful to your leaders but trust where the Holy Spirit leads you in submission to God.

I would say try hard to work in the church but if you can't, I would say that it sounds like you're right but be careful you're not letting sin cloud your judgment.