Not a curse. . . not a disease. . .

How odd it is that we have now come to believe that fertility is a curse and children to be a disease!  Who would have thought that this quickly Americans would begin to believe (across the political spectrum) that fertility must be managed and pregnancy prevented or that children are like a disease that must be healed or a cancer to be expunged from the body?  Who would have thought that the child in the womb would become a possession of the woman which she is free to deal with as she chooses (even though society as a whole has come to disdain motherhood and the whole notion that any sacrifice for the sake of another is noble)?  But that is where we are now.

The birth rate among fertile American females is shockingly low and from conservative to liberal the idea that anyone would want or choose to have more than one or two children is considered extreme.  We would not allow other drugs to be so easily accessed but we now insist that a pharmacological means of preventing fertility and expelling a fetus from the woman's body are not only a sacred right but a duty belonging to the whole of society.  Fertility is not a pathology to be treated; fertility is the norm for all of creation.

Even among the so-called pro-life there are those who would insist that life must be willingly protected among the willing but the rest of society should be free to act according to their own conscience.  This has become part of the normal of a society in which children are rarer than they were at any age before and preventing or ending pregnancy has become as virtuous as being open to pregnancy and carrying the child through delivery.  How else can we explain that fact that since the Supreme Court sent the issue back to the states and a significant number restricted access to abortion, the actual numbers of abortions not only did not decline but increased?  We are upholding these pro-life ideas in principle but not practicing them in our own lives.

The expectation of Scripture fruitfulness as a gift and blessing from God.  This is true of seed and vine and life and children.  Whereas the reproach of infertility was once a shame, it has become a banner with fertility becomes the scandal.  Where do you find this in Scripture?  Instead of listening to Scripture, we have fallen into the trap of trying to find a way between the two positions -- upholding life and fruitfulness in theory while in practice looking like and living as the folks who are more consistently pro-choice and anti-child.  This is the fragile underbelly of the LCMS.  We talk the talk abut demographics insist that we are not walking the walk.  Just in anecdotal evidence I find that children raised even in faithful LCMS homes are not necessarily sure that marriage is a good thing or that a child or many children are good.  The hesitation here on the part of the child is the fruit of our own inability to find a via media between the ways of the world and the path of God and, with the influence of the world so prevalent, our children seem to know instinctively which side on which to err.  They are delaying marriage like the rest of society and choosing not to have children or to have two at the most.  What this means is that our church body would continue to shrink even if we were better at drawing in those outside us because infertility has become the new norm in practice if not in theory.  In this we have bought into the lie that the life is in the branch instead of the vine, that fruit are optional, that the vine is the servant of the branch, and that plenty of leaves is a fit replacement for blossoms and fruit.  A vintner would go out of business by this philosophy and so will we.