Dear friends,
In Australia, the birth rate has dropped to below 1.5 children per woman. This is the lowest birth rate we have ever had and is clearly below the 2.1 children per mother necessary to maintain the population. How important is it to have children? Does marriage necessitate children? Is marriage itself necessary? In the special creation of woman in Chapter 2 of Genesis, the subject of parenthood is immediately raised. Peter and I are canvassing some of the issues of parenthood in this episode of Two Ways News.
Yours,
Phillip
Phillip Jensen: Welcome again to Two Ways News with Phillip and Peter Jensen. How are you today, Peter?
Peter Jensen: I'm fighting fit, Phillip, and ready to go on our big subject.
Phillip: For those who weren't following last week, you might like to go back to the first episode on marriage. We're going on to a second episode on marriage today—on parenting, which is where we left off last time. In Genesis 2:24, when the man at last sees this woman who will be taken out of the man, we read:
Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.
Adam and Eve have just been created. But the first thing that is said as a conclusion of that is, “A man shall leave his father and his mother.” Why leave father and mother? And what is this about? Why is it such a consequence for the creation of the woman that a man will leave his father and mother?
Peter: The whole business of marriage involves leaving your father and mother precisely because this is the creation of a new family. He must leave so that he can properly do his duty towards his wife, and she can properly do her duty towards her husband and their children. We must assume a duty towards the husband, and a duty towards the wife overrules the duty towards father and mother if we are going to do the right thing by the new family.
Phillip: There is a physiological and psychological bond with your parents that is unique in a relationship compared to any other relationship you might have with anybody—a boss, a friend, or whoever. It is saying that this marriage relationship has a priority over the relationship with parents.
Peter: The bond is very strong. A new bond has been created between people who may have grown up in very different cultures, in very different parts of the world. But nonetheless, a new bond has been created, and it must take precedence.
Phillip: But it's not as if parents don't have any role in the future. Parents do pass on some things to the next generation.
Peter: The genetic inheritance is one of those things, and we all smile as we see it come out in various ways, both in behaviour and also in appearance. You can't avoid that.
Phillip: It is seen in behaviour and appearance but also in culture. It is more fixed even in behaviour than people sometimes allow. In the question of nature versus nurture, people say, “You have physiological appearance, but you're a tabula rasa when you come out of the womb, and everything from there on is learned.” Whereas we saw that one of our children had the same mannerisms as her grandmother, who had already been dead for some years. It was very disturbing at first to see this little one appearing with the mannerisms of her grandmother.
Peter: What conclusion are you drawing from this?
Phillip: Just that it is nature and nurture. It's the combination of both, and when people try and pull it apart in order to argue for one or the other, I think they have failed. We do get from our parents a genetic background but also a cultural background.
Peter: This is immensely important.
Phillip: Going back to Genesis, does this mean the creation of the man and the woman implies that you have family? Is the point that you can't have a man and a woman without having a family?
Peter: When God says, “It is not good for man to be alone,” that is the origin of what you may call family, that is to say, kinship. It is the origin of people coming together, first as husband and wife, but then as children and grandchildren, but also cousins and siblings and all those other people who make up a family. What we are seeing here is the beginning of that experience of family, which is often so rich and helpful, although sometimes it's the cause of the greatest misery that you may experience because it's so important.
Phillip: We have the family unit, husband and wife. But the family unit occurs in a wider context of the extended family. We are told in Malachi 2:15 that God did this with the hope and expectation of children. That is, that they are born and raised as godly children and that the unity of the husband and the wife is the basic family.
But you don't have to have children. There are many people who are unable to have children.
Peter: Sometimes a marriage occurs between, for example, two people in their sixties, which is not, normally speaking, going to produce children. It is still a real marriage, but it is not the general rule for marriage, which is the intention to have children. Some feel this very, very sadly indeed, who simply cannot have children. They are still married, and they still have that fundamental family, which is so important.
Phillip: As a pastor of large congregations, there are two ends of the spectrum here that are a great problem. At one end of the spectrum, there are people who want to have children but can't. It is some of the deepest sorrow and anguish I've ever seen with adults. I've had women weeping in my presence when this subject is raised.
The other end of the spectrum are people who intentionally choose not to have children, which I find is a difficulty in the concept of marriage because I don't think marriage is to be contemplated as intentionally childless. The couple is married, but to intentionally not have children is to not fulfil the purpose or the intention of marriage in God creating it in the first place. I have seen, sadly, people in great difficulty because their intention at the age of 23 was not the same as at 38, but their promises to each other haven't worked because they have changed their minds, or one of them has and the other hasn't, and the conflict over it has been very great. Part of the intention has to do with both wanting to pursue their other interests, which have then taken them further and further away from each other. So, in several of the marriages where people have talked to me, they never intended to have children. In nearly every case I know, it has turned out badly for them. But I think it's not just because the consequences are bad that I would say it. It's because I think the intention of God in making us one in the first place was to have godly offspring.
Peter: My guess is that almost every one of us, particularly when we're married, has a deep longing for a child or children.
Phillip: I don’t agree.
Peter: But there can be occasions when, because of what the future holds, it may be better not to have children. However, you would have to be very careful that the reason that you are doing this is a very good reason.
Phillip: The reason that is being used today is that there are too many children in the world, and therefore we need to restrict the number of children coming into the world. Frankly, that is nonsense. Our problem is that we have a declining number of children, which is creating terrible problems in several countries, not least Australia, where we're not now reproducing at a sustainable rate.
Do we have an ongoing obligation to our family? I mean, to our children, obviously, in caring for them. Does that mean we no longer have any obligation towards mother and father?
Peter: I'm glad to say, being a father, a grandfather, and a great-grandfather, the biblical command on your father and mother still stands, and the apostle mentions this in 1 Timothy 5:8:
But if anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for members of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.
Phillip: Yes, especially an obligation towards widows. To anybody who doesn't look after their own family, and that's in the context of caring for widows, they're worse than unbelievers.
Peter: We have an obligation that is mentioned three times in the Bible. One is you must leave your father and mother. Another is that you honour your father and mother. The third is that you must hate your mother and father because Jesus says that.
Phillip: Love your enemies and hate your parents?
Peter: What he means by that is that you are to put him first. When you put him first, you will indeed honour your father and mother and cleave to your wife. That's just a vivid contrast. But we do have obligations to family, both close and further away. We have obligations to love, obligations for peace, and obligations to care for the wider range of family. That works in society. We have a great deal of government support these days when we get into all sorts of trouble. But the basic support that we do receive is from family. That's the basic structure of the charitable society, one in which those nearest to us care for us most of all.
Phillip: The many kinds of caring that you see functioning in families are greater than any legislation or regulation could create. It's about things that are so infinitesimally small and so significantly important that you couldn't draft a regulation that would cover it. But I have friends whose families are demanding, and it seemed to me that we need to understand that ‘honouring’ changes over time. As a child, you honour by obeying, but as an adult, you don't honour by obeying in the same way. In fact, ‘the adult child’ is an embarrassment, frankly. As an adult, you honour your parents by bringing them credit in the way you live, that you are the person who doesn't bring dishonour on your family by your behaviour, but great credit to your parents by your behaviour. But then comes the third stage, that one that you mentioned of 1 Timothy 5, where you need to care for your parents. Caring for the elderly is a kind of generational turnover. Those who were cared for are now caring for those who used to care for them. Caring for your elderly parents is part of honouring them, just as obedience is honouring them like a little child.
Peter: I have seen, with my own eyes, sons and daughters caring for their elderly parents, day after day after day, and in ways that interrupt their careers and what they may wish to be doing. They are driven by love, and that's best of all. The statistics are that half the people in aged care are never visited by anyone. And sometimes, alas, those who might visit them and those who are supposed to care for them can only just wait for them to die and may even push them along for the inheritance they will get. Family life can be hellish. Family life can be heavenly when we see true love at work.
Phillip: You're not saying that we should never put our parents into aged care.
Peter: No. I have seen the behaviour of the sons and daughters towards their parents in aged care be outstanding: visiting, caring, and making sure they're being looked after well. There's no reward for it.
Phillip: There is one reward. After they've died, you don't have regrets, and you have the clear conscience that we did all that we could for our mum and dad, given our circumstances of life.
Peter: Let me change the subject. Is marriage for everyone?
Phillip: Here, in Genesis, it says, ”It is not good for man to be alone.” I don't think we can move from that to say every individual must always be married. There is in our society a strange thing that I call ‘Marriolatry.’ It's ‘Mariolatry’ with an extra ‘r’ in it. People have made the mistake of investing in marriage as the basis of their meaning and purpose, thinking that with the right person all their problems will be solved. I think Hollywood is to blame for this. It leaves God out of the picture. It is God for whom we live, not our spouse, and to have our spouse as God is a recipe for disappointment. It's a recipe for dissatisfaction, and it won't work. To feel that you're somehow less than human because you're single, well, the Lord Jesus was single. Yet he is the ultimate epitome of what it means to be human. The apostle Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 7 about singleness and contentment in life, whether it be single or married. The New Testament doesn't teach us that you must be married. In fact, if anything, it is the reverse. But on the other hand, the normal expectation of life is that we will marry because we are embodied. The bodies we are put in are male and female bodies, and they have their drives, urges, desires, and needs.
There's another point, and that is everybody's marriage is for everybody. That's why we have public weddings. Our life is one of enjoyment, and rejoicing in marriage is part of it. Before we go too far, there's a difference between creation and Christianity. Marriage is part of creation. It's true of humans who aren't Christians. Two Muslims who are married are married. Two Hindus who are married are married. You don't have to be Christian to be married, but should Christians only marry Christians?
Peter: That's a serious question because it has serious repercussions in people's lives. You rightly pointed out that marriage is an element of creation. A real marriage can take place between unbelievers. However, we also need to remember how this verse about cleaving is used by the Apostle Paul in Ephesians 5 to refer to Christ and his church. Marriage models the greatest reality of the marriage between Christ and his church. Therefore, it is inconceivable in that model that you would marry an unbeliever.
Take a different example. People become Christians who are already married. Does that mean that they should dissolve their marriage because they're not married to a believer? According to the Apostle Paul, they should remain married. But if the unbeliever now wishes to leave, then the person is free, and I think free to remarry. But that's the unbeliever's choice, not the believer's choice. The Apostle says elsewhere—while I think he's not directly thinking of marriage, it's a principle that is relevant to marriage—“Do “not be unequally yoked with unbelievers.” That principle fits in with what you may call the thinking, the ethos of the New Testament, with marriage being between Christ and his church. It is not right that a Christian should knowingly marry a non-Christian. If they were to be married, it is a real marriage; it is a creation thing. So that is true, but it is unhelpful; it is going to create difficulties with the raising of children and participation in Christian fellowship. Tell me about what you would say in answer to this.
Phillip: There are difficulties in individual situations. So, I've married believers to unbelievers in very rare, unusual situations. People who are living in a de facto relationship, and one of them gets converted and then wishes to marry. 1 Corinthians 7 again is a passage that talks in terms of that situation.
The average Christian should only marry a Christian. The husband is the pastor of the wife. How can you put yourself under the pastoral leadership of a man who doesn't believe in the Lord Jesus? He is to present her pure and spotless on the last day. How is that going to happen if she doesn't even believe in the washing of the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ?
Then there's just the sheer pragmatism of how can you be united with each other when you don't agree about the most important things in life? To be united over which football team you follow is an irrelevance. To be united over the Lord Jesus Christ, over God, over the meaning of life, and the purpose of eternity is essential. It also comes back to parenting. How can you raise children if you disagree about life? What is the child going to take from your disunity on the things of God? In Malachi 2, the reason God has united us is that we may raise children as godly. That's not easy to do when one spouse gets converted after marriage. It's hard to raise your children in godliness. But when you set out into married life as separate on the issue of God, the chance of being able to raise your children as godly is severely limited. The purpose of marriage has to do with children, with all the different exceptions we've mentioned. To enter into marriage, to have children with someone who is an unbeliever, makes the principle of being unequally yoked fairly clear.
Peter: Well, Phillip, this has been a discussion about matters of great joy and human satisfaction, but it's also touched on some very delicate issues. I trust we have been right and sensitive to the fact that people's lives differ in these matters. I think next time we ought to take up the subject of ‘cleaving,’ which we haven't yet gotten to, even though that's fundamental to the text.
Scripture quotations are from The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
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