This article appeared in "All About Issues" August/September 1991. We are sharing this article with you in the hopes that it will cause you to think about your reproductive choice. We do not expect that everyone will agree with the premise of this article, as it flies in the face of everything our society seems to believe about children and family size. We do not stand in judgement against those who would disagree! Each couple must choose for themselves what they feel is best for them and their family. We simply offer this provocative article to encourage those who are seeking God's will to think about their choices.

Have you ever stopped to think why Christian couples use birth control?

"We just got married and we are not ready for kids." "We want to give quality time to the children we already have." "We simply cannot afford another child." "I'd go crazy if we had any more kids."

Do any of these excuses sound familiar to you? Or more to the point, are you using any of these excuses?

When I discuss the notion that we should trust God with how many children we have, I hear the above excuses again and again, plus a multitude more.

I have heard these excuses before - on the doorstep of an abortion mill.

The dreadful truth is that most of the excuses that women give for having their children killed through abortion are the exact same reasons we give for not having children.

At its core, birth control is anti-child. And I am not only speaking about abortifacients such as the pill or IUD, but any drug or device that prevents us from having children. When we use birth control we are saying, "No, I do not want children."

Is it any wonder that the church cannot stop child-killing? How do we expect to defeat child-killing in the world when we cannot deal with child-rejection in our own midst? Jeremiah said "if we run with footmen and grow weary, what will we do with horses?"

I cannot be too hard on Christians who use birth control. My wife and I fell into the same trap when we were first married. We were told by all of our peers and spiritual leaders that it was the "wise" thing to do. Frankly, we would much rather have a nine-year-old son or daughter than such wisdom.

In an age of Christianity when we constantly talk about faith, trusting God, God supplying our needs, etc., why can't we simply trust God for how many children we have?

When we use birth control, we are cutting short our heritage; we are perhaps short-circuiting entire generations of humanity. Consider this: Mrs. Wesley's thirteenth child, Charles, wrote hundreds of glorious hymns; Mrs. Whitefield's seventh child, George, was the most prominent preacher in the Great Awakening in America; Mrs. Washington's fifth child (fifth out of ten) was our beloved first President.

If Mrs. Washington had been in some of our churches today, after her third or fourth child, half of the women in the church would have told her to get a diaphragm or have her tubes tied! What a tragic loss that would be for all of us.

What do you think when you see a woman with five children? Are you happy or embarrassed? Do you approach her with congratulations or condolences? Do you happily exclaim, "Are these all yours?! What a blessing!" Or do you somberly questions, "Are these all yours? You poor thing. How do you do it? I would go crazy."

The horrible reality is that much of the Church today in America is anti-child. We view children as a burden, a nuisance, an interruption in our lives, a drain on our finances, a sapping of our strength, and on and on.

Many Christians can't get righteously indignant about child-killing when in their hearts they sympathize with why some women have abortions.

So what do we do? Hopefully, nobody reading this is on the pill or using an IUD. If you are, stop immediately. They are abortifacients. If you know someone who is using them, be a friend to them and tell them the truth. But, furthermore, if you are using any kind of birth control - stop. Leave the number of children you have in God's hands.

"Oh, but I'll have 10 kids!" I hear someone exclaiming. With all due respect, you don't know how many children you will have. Leah had six, Rachel had two. Sarah and Rebekah had one. The truth is, you simply don't know how many children you will have.

If you have been "sterilized," seek a medical reversal. I recently met a pastor in Oregon who sold his baseball card collection in order to pay for his wife's tubal ligation to be reversed. They are rejoicing in the Lord as she enters her seventh month of pregnancy with a child they almost never had.

One final thought: consider the origins of the birth control movement - Margaret Sanger and Planned Parenthood. Margaret Sanger wanted Christians (among others) to use birth control. She despised God and loathed large Christian families. If someone could laugh in hell, she would surely laugh at us.

I would like to quote one of the least popular Psalms of our day, Psalm 127:3-5:

"Behold, children are a gift of the Lord; the fruit of the womb is a reward. Like arrows in the hands of a warrior, so are the children of one's youth. How blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them; they shall not be ashamed, when they speak with their enemies in the gate."

These verses clearly proclaim how we should view our children - they are our heritage, our reward. In fact, our children are the only eternal possession we have except for our own souls.

God restore to us a respect, a love and a desire for our most precious possessions - the fruit of the womb.

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