A nearly infallible mark of elite secular culture in the West is hedonic infertility, hostility toward child-bearing and -rearing due to a hedonistic lifestyle: because children crimp a life of narcissistic self-gratification (which is increasingly prized in our advanced materialistic societies), they are simply not an option. Surveys bear out this burgeoning spirit of intentional childlessness, but nobody needs statistical proof to understand the grand march of our society’s natal skepticism; all we need to do is look around. The secularly educated and upwardly mobile tend to have fewer—or no—children. The childless life is now The Good Life. The objective is nothing short of “The Childless Utopia.”
Our first reaction as Christians might be, “Well, at least, thank God, this secular trend hasn’t impacted the churches, especially the Bible-believing churches.” Unfortunately, we would be mistaken. As Gene Veith’s 2020 article in Patheos reported, “Evangelicals’ Birth Rate Is Now Nearly as Low as That of Secularists”:
I used to hear some variation of this: “We Christians haven’t been doing so well in the culture war, but in the long run we’ll prevail because we are having lots of kids, and the secularists aren’t.” This doesn’t seem to be true anymore. The birth rate of Christians—whether evangelicals, other conservative Protestants, and Catholics—has dropped so that it is little different from that of secularists.
America’s overall fertility rate has been about 2.1 births per woman, which is barely replacement level. For conservative Protestants, including Evangelicals, the number used to be significantly higher, at 2.7. Today, that has dropped to 2.3.
In many cases, this troubling imitation of the wider culture is not just a passive worldliness. Christians have often constructed a rationale, often veneered with piety, for not having children. What are the leading examples of this rationale of natal-skepticism? And how would God’s word respond?
Embracing Voluntary Childlessness
First, some Christians embrace “Voluntary Childlessness,” the view that childlessness in Christian marriages is a viable, morally allowable option. How would one biblically support this idea, which on its face seems entirely foreign to the Bible? In the linked article defending this viewpoint, the author frankly acknowledges:
Although there are a variety of . . . individual verses and passages (especially in the Old Testament) which treat the themes of procreation and infertility (Gen. 1:28–29, Gen. 11:30f, Gen. 20:17, Gen. 21:1, Gen. 29:31, 1 Sam. 1:2–2:21, Judg. 13:3, Ps. 113:9f., Isa. 49:19, Isa. 54:1), there are no texts dealing with voluntary childlessness. (emphasis supplied)
We might suppose this omission would settle the matter, but instead the author invokes 1 Corinthians 7 to support celibacy, and from this premise infers voluntary childlessness. Of course, to argue celibacy is legitimate is not the same thing as arguing childlessness is permissible within a Christian marriage. In any case, celibacy is not a higher form of Christian spirituality, and “The Evangelical Singleness-Celibacy Paradigm Is Wrong.” Paul makes clear in 1 Corinthians 7 that his counsel to celibacy is designed for a unique historical situation and is not a normative command. And if celibacy is not normative for the Christian life, intentional childlessness supported by celibacy as an inference cannot be normative. Neither is it even permissible. It is insufficient to suggest this mental skepticism is non-biblical; it is also necessary to recognize it is contra-biblical.
The second rationale often given demonstrates why.
Ignoring Creational Norms
Some natal skeptics flat-out ignore the creational norms of Genesis 1:26–28 that require (1) bearing children and (2) exercising dominion over the rest of creation. We call these, respectively, the fertility mandate and the cultural mandate, and the two are obviously intertwined: God intends for man created in his image to bear children, since humanity is charged with stewarding the earth for God’s glory, and it takes lots of people to do that! And they are mandates, not suggestions, no more optional than the Ten Commandments. For some reason, these mandates seem unimportant or even disposable to many evangelicals. Perhaps this is because they are part of the Old Testament, and many evangelicals believe the Old Testament is no longer applicable apart from certain universal morals, like the Ten Commandments. This is difficult to sustain, since both Jesus (Matt. 5:17–18), Paul (1 Cor. 9:9–10) and James (Jas. 2:8–13), and other crucial New Testament figures assumed the ongoing authority of the Old Testament in many matters.
The New Testament reinforces both the fertility mandate and the cultural mandate. In laying out God’s design for widows, for example, Paul writes, “Therefore, I want younger widows to get married, bear children, keep house, and give the enemy no occasion for reproach” (1 Tim. 5:14, NASB). Paul uses neos, translated here as “younger widows.” “Widows” is not in the original, but completes the meaning of the context, which is how widows are to be treated by the church. Paul is implying younger widows should do what all younger women should ordinarily do: get married, bear children, and oversee their household. Paul could lay down this requirement not because he received from the Lord some unique new covenant revelation (such as he mentions in Galatians 1:11–17) but because the Old Testament had already taught fertility is a human mandate. The fertility mandate is not an Old Testament-only requirement.
Similarly, the cultural mandate is assumed and even reiterated in the New Testament. God had already reiterated it after the Fall in the post-Flood world to Noah (Gen. 9:7). Because man fell, he would now twist his dominion/cultural impulse into a tool for selfish and rebellious indulgence. This happened as early as Cain, who employed both natural and cultural products to violate God’s appointed way of worship. But God inaugurated the New Testament era by sending his Son as the Second Adam, who succeeded where the first earthly son of God (Luke 3:38)—Adam in the garden—failed. Adam failed even to exercise responsible dominion in the garden, much less the wider world. By contrast, the Second Adam rose from the dead and ascended to his heavenly throne from which he exerts all power and dominion over the cosmos (Eph. 1:18–23). All creation and powers and thrones and dominions were fashioned through him and for him so that he would occupy first place in the cosmos, which he holds together (Col. 1:15–20).
But we Christians, too, share rule with him, since he presently rules from the heavens (Eph. 1:20–22) and we have been seated in heavenly places with him, in the place of cosmic dominion (Eph. 2:5–6). In other words, the objective of the cross and resurrection was to restore not only man’s broken fellowship with God but also his original, holy dominion impulse. Ours is the cultural mandate of the redeemed. Woven inextricably into this cultural mandate is the fertility mandate as the instrumental means by which it can be fulfilled—many humans created in God’s image, subduing the earth for his glory. Conversely, natal-skepticism impedes and impairs this mandate.
Living in Eschatological Pessimism
A third common rationale for natal-skepticism among Christians is eschatological pessimism—the world is under Satan’s malign control, and history is marching toward impending war, conflagration, trial, and tribulation for Christians in particular. To bring children into such a world is, they believe, to expose them to hardship and torment and cruelty (such Christians often see the immediate future as “The Great Tribulation Period”). This is the Christianized version of the common unbelieving sentiment, “Who’d want to bring a kid into this rotten world?” The difference is that the Christian version invokes a particular pessimistic eschatology to justify its natal-skepticism, which they then perceive as God-honoring.
This is not the biblical picture of eschatology. While there may be honest disagreement about specific eschatological viewpoints, there is no room for the idea that over time the world is destined to grow so depraved that Christians should bypass the fertility mandate. Even during the Babylonian exile—a time of extraordinary upheaval—God inspired Jeremiah to instruct Judah:
Build houses and live in them; and plant gardens and eat their produce. Take wives and become the fathers of sons and daughters, and take wives for your sons and give your daughters to husbands, that they may bear sons and daughters; and multiply there and do not decrease. (Jer. 29:5–6, NASB, emphasis supplied)
Even if the church is to suffer great privation and persecution, she may not interrupt God’s creational norms under the pressure of circumstances—get married and have and rear children if at all physically possible in whatever situation you find yourself.
But the course of human history after our Lord’s resurrection and ascension is one of his increasingly visible rule in the earth (1 Cor. 15:20–28; cf. Heb. 2:5–8), despite times of hardship and difficulty for his people. There will be no fully perfected society until Jesus returns and ushers in the eternal state (Rev. 21:1–9, Rev. 21:22–27). But while the Bible does not promise the salvation of all humanity, it does promise that our Lord will lay waste to the wicked, not by carnal weapons, but by the word of his mouth—the world-conquering Gospel (Isa. 11:1–10; cf. Rev. 19:15–16). Therefore, “Christians, Expect Nothing Less Than Victory.”
This expectation of victory should fuel the fertility mandate. We should sire and bear children for God’s glory. They are like arrows in the hands of a mighty warrior (Ps. 127:4). They are God’s chosen vessels for fulfilling his desire for a world subordinate to his righteous, loving authority—a chief reason, by the way, “to bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord” (Eph. 6:4). Christians can bring children into a sinful world precisely because Christ came to defeat sin, and he will use godly descendants to transmit the life and message by which it is finally defeated. Christians live in natal optimism, not natal pessimism.
Conclusion
Natal skepticism is understandable for unbelievers in a world driven by depraved, secular suppositions: humanity is nothing more than a combination of chemicals and electrical impulses; there is no telos or final purpose for mankind but it simply ambles along aimlessly, stumbling this way and that; and in the end we can expect nothing but irreversible extinction in death.
But why Christians would ever purchase stock in natal-skepticism is mystifying. We are the recipients of God’s covenant promises to subdue the earth for his glory. We know children are a gift and heritage from him. The gates of Hades will not prevail against the church—including the church our future descendants will lead. Therefore, let us purge every whiff of natal-skepticism from Christianity and restore a joyous, child-producing and -loving, world-conquering Faith.
