Should We Control the Number of Children We Have?

Let me answer a Facebook question from Alison, who writes, “Should we ever try to control the number of children we have? More specifically, should a woman ever have her tubes tied, or should a man get a vasectomy?”

I don’t know why people ask me these questions. I have twelve children, nine natural children and three adopted children, so this is probably not a question for me. But with respect to birth control methods that should be avoided at any cost are those methods that destroy or prevent the implantation of an embryo, because an embryo is a living growing human being from the moment of conception.

Openness to children is as well an built in protection against the abuse of sex for mere self-gratification, and it is absolute imperative that as Christians we view children as a blessing not as a blithe. Our attitude of seeing our children as a blessing is something that pleases our Heavenly Father.

I think it’s also significant to recognize what’s going on when you have a fertilized human egg. That’s the beginning for the tapestry of life unfolding with a single thread and then through a process of incredible precision a microscopic egg in one human being is fertilized by a sperm cell from another and that marks not only the beginning of a brand new life, but it also marks the genetic future that life will have. Think about this: A single fertilized human egg, a zygote, the size of a pinhead, contains chemical instructions that would fill more than five hundred thousand printed pages. And the genetic information contained in that encyclopedia determines the potential physical aspect of the developing human being from height to hair color. Of course in time, the fertilized egg divides into thirty-trillion cells that make up the human body. You’re fearfully and wonderfully made (Psalm 139:14). This includes twelve-billion brain cells, which form more than a hundred-twenty-trillion synapses or connections.

If you lived in Darwin’s day, you would think a human egg to be nothing more, for all practical purposes, than a microscopic blob of gelatin. But today we know in an age of scientific enlightenment that a fertilized egg is among the most organized complex structures in the universe. In an age of scientific enlightenment it is incredible to think that there are people who would snuff out that human life in an early stage of existence. And that is precisely what we’re talking about with birth control methods that actually abort a conceptus. So we need to be very careful to guard against that. As long as you’re using a birth control method that does not involve that it becomes a matter of prayer between you and your spouse recognizing the biblical principles that I outlined.

But I’ll tell you as a 60 year old man now with a lot of kids knowing my predisposition early on which was with all the ministry that I wanted to do I didn’t want to have a huge family but my wife did. I am so happy that I listened to the wisdom of my wife because I cannot imagine life without my kids today. So kids are a blessing, and you can’t presume on the future, you just don’t know what’s going to happen in the future, a lot of people who think they can’t afford kids fail to recognize that it’s not about the arm of flesh; it’s about the arm of God. God will give you, what you need. Not always your greed, but certainly He will provide for your needs.