Where Do Babies Come From?: Why It’s Crucial That We View Children As Begotten, Not Made

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So where do babies come from?

The answer to this simple question has the ability to totally change a Christians’ view on marriage and family. And if we answer it truthfully and consistently, I believe that many of our questions become much clearer.

More than likely, you’ve heard the old pagan legend that babies are brought to your doorstep by a stork. And as humorous as that may seem to some, it may actually be closer to the truth than many evangelicals live out today. If that makes no sense, allow me to explain…

If you ask the typical evangelical Protestant today, where babies come from, the expected Sunday School answer is “Babies come from God.” And then we’d all smile and agree, right? Right, but unfortunately there is a wide gulf fixed between principle (acknowledging from Whose hand children come) and practice.

In the case of the stork, we acknowledge and recognize a higher power that bestows children upon us (did you catch the pun?…lol). But in the case of God, though we acknowledge that in principle he is the one who gives us children, in practice we have really come to view children as a matter of the will. (If this wording makes you uncomfortable, good, it should. I plan to expound more on this idea in an upcoming blog post…)

It’s only when we have wrestled procreation out of the realm of the begotten and transfered in into the realm of the made that we encounter the confusion that is found in evangelicalism today. In Oliver O’Donovan’s lectures delivered in London in 1984, he provides a hauntingly prophetic vision of what has occurred:

“As I looked through writings from other Christian sources in the last quarter-century, it seemed to me that a consistent concern emerged. It found common expression in a distinction that constantly recurred: between the use of technique [technology] to assist human procreation and the transformation of human procreation into a technical operation. It was a concern about the capacity of technology to change, not merely the conditions of our human existence, but its essential characteristics…

…That which we beget is like ourselves. Our offspring are human beings, who share with us one common human nature, one common human experience and one common human destiny. We do not determine what our offspring is, except by ourselves being that very thing which our offspring is to become.

…That which we make is unlike ourselves. Whether it is made of matter, like a wooden table, or of words like a lecture, or of sounds like a symphony, or of colors and shapes like a picture, or of images like an idea, it is the product of our own free determination. We have stamped the decisions of our will upon the material which the world has offered us, to form it in this way and not in that.” (Published in O’Donovan’s Begotten Or Made?)

As O’Donovan notes later, “We have to consider the position of this human ‘begetting’ in a culture which has been overwhelmed by ‘making.’” Unfortunately for many Christians, the technological and cultural shift that began viewing children as a product of the will, rather than being begotten, has gone widely unnoticed and unchallenged. It is no surprise then, the absence of the widespread rejection of birth control, because after all, we’ve been taught that the choice to “make” is up to us. We’ve exchanged the glory of begottenness, for the shadow of human making.

Unfortunately, when a culture loses sight of the “begotten-ness” of children (as ours has done), the consequences extend to every other level of life. Once children are seen as merely a matter of the will, and pregnancy a volitional exercise of the parents; then one becomes culturally ‘justified’ in exercising their will to end the pregnancy. Do you see the problem here? Evangelicals argue against abortion because it murders a child created in the image of God. Abortion advocates argue that it is their right to choose, and the vast majority of them claim (as some level or another) “stewardship” as a determining factor in their choice. The irony is unmistakable. Planned Parenthood argues that it is better to murder a child that can’t be provided for, and Family-Planning evangelicals argue that it’s just better not to conceive the child at all. The reason why both come to a similar conclusion is that both are ignoring the clear teaching of God that children are begotten, not made, and therefore cannot be reduced to “the product of our own free determination”.

As Christians, we must reject this humanistic idea of children and procreation. We must live in practice, what we claim to believe in principle. Make no mistake, our testimony of ‘life’ is at stake. When the world looks at God’s Church, will it see a body of believers that values children as gifts begotten of God, or a people who view their offspring as self-determined accessories to marriage? Will we welcome children as Eve did, in crying “I have begotten a man from the LORD” (Gen. 4:2), or will we seek to be like Ephraim, whose “glory shall fly away like a bird, from the birth, and from the womb, and from the conception. Though they bring up their children, yet will I bereave them, that there shall not be a man left: yea, woe also to them when I depart from them?” (Hosea 9:11-12 -Calvin’s Commentary)

“Our blessed Father, who has given us life, we cry out to you today for vision. Lord, open the eyes of our heart to see your truth. Oh God, lead us into the paths of righteousness for your name sake. May our hearts echo your heart for life and family. May our marriages be a welcoming haven to the fruit of the womb. God, forgive us where we have erred, and give us courage to encounter a culture overrun with ‘making’, with the glorious truth that those who bear your image are begotten, not made. Give us grace we pray, in Jesus’ name, Amen.”

‘BH

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Tags: Birth Control, Christian, Family, Marriage, Protestant, Sovereignty, Stewardship