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Which child do you not want?
If someone lined up your children in front of you and ask the question, “Which child do you not want?” you would speechlessly marvel at the absurdity of the question. For it is impossible to answer. No matter how many children you have, when you look into the faces of each one, there is a bond and a love so strong, that thinking of being without one of them sends the deepest pains a human can feel right through his soul. From time to time I get those paranoid “mother thoughts”. Those “what if” questions about losing my children plague me. I frankly cannot bare the thought of waking up tomorrow without one of my six children.
Interestingly enough, though, most of us wake up every day without some of our children. Our culture practices, without shame, the preventing of God-given children. It doesn’t pain us because we do not know them yet, and “what you don’t know won’t hurt you”. But when I took the time to think about how I felt for each of my living children, the thought occurred to me that I could have easily prevented one of them. And so I realized that if I treasured these children this much, why on earth would I refuse to let the others be born? I honestly think of the above scenario in reverse now. “Which of my unborn children do I not want?” The answer is clear-I want all of them; I love all of them; I don’t want to live without one.
9 comments
I just posted about this on Amy’s Humble Musings yesterday! You and I think so much alike!! Are you sure we’re not related! LOL! Seriously, though, I get so frustrated when people don’t understand our viewpoint…they just don’t get it. I want to shout it from the rooftops sometimes!
This is another reason why I disagree with artificial insemination, test-tube babies, etc. There comes a time to choose among all those possibilities and among all those embryos…
Wow, I guess the guilt-trip tactic is one way of winning converts to the no-birth-control viewpoint. I prefer love & mercy, but that’s just me.
While I hardly think sharing my own personal revelation is a “guilt-trip tactic”, often the truth causes conviction and guilt. Christians have never been called to water down the truth; in fact, it was the “guilt trip” that so many felt by our Savior’s difficult words of truth, that caused them to want to kill him.
I haven’t the slightest intention to want to cause a guilt-trip. I do, however, have a passion for provoking people to deeper thinking. Sometimes our thoughts are so entrenched in the world’s way of thinking, that it takes a bolder approach to stimulate them.
I hope that it is through love and mercy, and my own personal experience that this blog is shared. But I can not, in good conscience, water down what the Lord has laid on my heart to share. Christians have been too mealy-mouthed for too long. The church’s wordly philosophies evidence that. Speak the truth in love, yes; but speak the truth. If I truly “esteem others better than myself”, I have to love them enough to share what I believe to be truth, even if it means persecution–being disliked or reviled. That is the true meaning of putting others before myself.
Fair enough. I enjoy good, solid debate myself. This is a topic of personal interest to me, although I’m sure we do not share the same conclusions.
The question you ask in this post is: “Which Child Do You Not Want?” This is a loaded question. It presumes that there are thousands of children (since a man has thousands of viable sperm), just waiting around to be sent to earth!
This reminds me of the Catholic doctrine ‘every sperm is sacred’ (to paraphrase).
If, therefore, we “prevent” these children from coming to earth, might we also expect to meet these “Denied Children” in heaven someday? That would seem to be the logical conclusion.
As far as Christians being “mealy-mouthed”–I think that’s an unfair generalization. There are many who agree with your personal revelation. Just because some do not share your views does not, in effect, make us “mealy-mouthed.”
To “elizabeth”:
“Which child do you NOT want” is
likely not referring to sperm, since that is not a complete set. However, the combined egg and sperm IS a living human being, and it will never turn into anything else, as evolution tries to make us think. Eliminating that combined egg and sperm is eliminating a person, although very small, like an acorn is a very small oak tree, in it’s very early stage, and that will also become nothing more or less than an oak tree if allowed to grow. This whole world was made for us humans, perhaps why we were created last of all…You can see that God’s words are true, that He has given us dominion over all living creatures on this earth, and that we are separate and different from the animal kingdom, in part, because of that. Why then should we devalue human life, even in the smallest, weakest, earliest form, when God has made this world for us, and for us to have dominion over it? God knows how many people would be too many for this earth He has created, and He also knows how many would be too many for each one of us. We don’t know how many is too much, and we ought not pretend to. We did not create the world and we can never discover all the mysteries in it. Our job is to take care of it.
Again, humans are different from the animal kingdom, and also in this very critical point–God gave us each a SOUL. Whenever we kill a person, we are accountable to God, the Creator, for the destruction of that life containing a soul. We have more freedom to limit animal populations because they need no forgiveness–(plants are not in the same category as animal life, as there was death to plants before the Fall in the Garden of Eden.)
If you think no one knows of the children we have so discretely disposed of, remember who God is!
Anonymous–OK, then using your logic, the use of condoms is OK because human life is defined as a combined egg & sperm?
So, as long as we keep the egg & sperm from uniting—there is no human life being disposed of?
I don’t know that Word Warrior would agree with you on that one!
You might just find yourself more in agreement with me! Shocking!
“elizabeth”
I said nothing about my opinion of blocking life from forming, which, incidentally, i also believe is vile, as God has given us our reproductive capacities and has designed the world and all its inhabitants to operate by His laws and design. As you recall, I did say that God knows how much is too much; we don’t. Therefore, we ought to completely rely upon His judgment, discernment, wisdom, and foresight for this and all areas of our lives. I will also restate that this world was made for us. We are very precious to God, and I think He would have us reproducing as many of these very precious individuals as He would allow us to do.
Can you imagine an apple tree? (Do you know where I’m going with this one?)The apple tree which, if it could, would say to itself, “I’ll do my duty and produce two bushels of apples this year. The remaining years I’ll just shake off all of my blossoms before they are pollinated. Anyhow, I do a lot of good providing shade. I make a climbing place for the kids here, and later the family here may use my trunk and branches for fire wood or furniture. Well! They certainly won’t mind if I don’t go through the trouble to produce any more apples after this year.” God is sort of like the family in this illustration who had planted the apple tree. God makes us and has a purpose and a plan for each of us. Not all of us are going to be given children, and some are given more than others (not interfering with the way of God). When God gives us a spouse and respectively two working reproductive systems, I think it pleases Him for us to let them work and produce in full. Now the family in my illustration may choose to keep the tree, despite no more fruit bearing, but I think they would be at least a little disappointed with it. I can only imagine how much more disappointed God would be with us! Granted, child-bearing is not our only purpose in life, but it is a function God gave us for to bring glory to Him. Do we glorify God by preventing His beloved human kind from ever being?! I am glad that Eve did not stop after two! I believe that any and all birth control is wrong.
To answer Elizabeth’s original question: “Might we expect to meet our ‘denied children in Heaven one day’?”
Since we denied them life here, we denied them a soul, and thus, I don’t believe they could be in Heaven. Probably the larger picture is that we denied ourselves the greater blessing, by interfering with God’s best plan for us. My “bottom line” philosophy on the whole thing is that altering the way God designed us is going beyond what I feel is our allowance as humans. We take medicine to heal sickness, or prevent sickness, or prolong life, etc. All those things are (mostly) good, I think, because sickness and death are not from God. They were never a part of His original plan. Therefore to “interfere” with medicine is starkly different than injuring a function God has designed. I have a hard time believing God is OK with our taking what He created and obliterating it, or at least, forbidding its proper function. Reproduction is a miracle, and it IS sacred, and it is just “out of our realm” in terms of human wisdom. With Scripture being our absolute guide, there is nothing there to indicate God permits us to deny our children, and there is everything there to indicate He wants us to have all the children He chooses to give us. He opens, He closes.