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Parenting

Have a child – change the world

In his best-selling book Atomic Habits, James Clear makes the case for committing to tiny changes in your life, for drastic change. “Here’s how the math works out,” he explains. “If you can get 1 percent better each day for one year, you’ll end up thirty-seven times better by the time you’re done.” The reverse is also true. “If you get 1 percent worse each day for one year, you’ll decline nearly down to zero.” With time, little changes cause exponential shifts.

That is exactly what is happening beneath the surface when it comes to the world’s fertility.

The challenge, simply put, is a lack of children. The world is aging quickly, with too few children to replenish the work force, let alone care for the seniors. We are on the brink of a population collapse.

Our opportunity is to welcome the gift of children even while the world isn’t.

The contrast between the two directions may hardly be noticeable in one year or even 10. But in 75 years (by the end of this century), it could result in a world filled with people who know the LORD. But that will only be true if Christians embrace new life, and raise these children with love and in the fear of the LORD. Unfortunately, God’s calling for us to do this is increasingly being shushed, including in Reformed churches.

The world is aging quickly

From the 1800s to the 1960s the average woman gave birth to 5 or 6 children. In the 6 decades since, the fertility rate has plummeted worldwide – in Canada, we’re down to 1.26 children per woman, and in BC it is even worse, at just 1 child per woman. That is even lower than China. To put this in context, for the world’s population to stay stable, the fertility rate must be 2.1.

This demographic challenge is widely recognized, but especially in some countries where fertility rates decreased a little sooner. For example, according to Pronatalist.org,

“at current birth rates, there will be six great-grandchildren for every hundred Koreans. This is equivalent to a disease that wipes out 94% of the population.”

And if we look at Italy, in just 30 years it is projected that 60 percent of Italians will have no brothers, no sisters, no cousins, no aunts, and no uncles.

In just the last year or two, the rest of the world has been waking up to the problem as well, as it’s become evident that decreasing fertility rates are far more widespread, and dropping faster, than previously thought. That includes countries like Iran, known for its hardline Muslim population, which has seen its fertility rate drop from 6.5 children per woman in 1982, to 1.68 in 2022. Two-thirds of the world’s population now have a fertility rate below replacement. Like Iran, the countries that have had high fertility are decreasing the fastest (1-3 fewer children per woman in just 20 years).

Most people still don’t see this as a big issue today because it feels like there’s no shortage of people. Indeed, the world’s population will likely keep growing for a few more decades as people live longer and we continue to experience the fruit of the higher birth rates that occurred in the 20th century.

But the effects of how the world is increasingly saying no to children will become far more acute soon. The first thing most people will notice is an aging population. The number of seniors in the world is expected to double to over 1.4 billion in just 30 years. Let that sink in. The number of seniors is projected to double in just 30 years!

Generally speaking, seniors need more care. Their health care costs increase substantially even as their employment income plummets. Normally we look to the next generation to step in, both through providing care for their parents and grandparents, and by becoming the new labor force to keep the economy moving. But in places like Korea, if there’ll be just 6 great-grandchildren to replace every 100 Koreans, how is that going to work out?

For those for whom fewer children has been a deliberate choice, efforts to change this attitude have so far been futile. According to the Globe and Mail, “no country has successfully reversed birth-rate decline.” And if that is true of individual countries, it is hard to be optimistic about the population of the world as a whole.

“Great civilizations are not murdered. They commit suicide.” These words are credited to the famed historian Arnold Toynbee, who wrote about the rise and fall of 26 civilizations. I believe it is fair to conclude that much of the world is committing civilizational suicide. Technology is allowing us to live according to our desires. What we are witnessing in the world today is, for the most part, not the result of sickness, calamity, or oppression. Much of humanity, and western civilization in particular, is choosing this.

The difference between the empires of centuries ago and now is that the challenge isn’t contained to a relatively small geographical area. Most of the world is succumbing, and the rest of the world is rushing even faster to join in.

There is no reason the Church has to follow course

In a world of birth control, having children is, increasingly, an act of faith that our life is a part of something much larger than ourselves. Perhaps this is why God’s first words to humanity were a command to “be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it.”

One of our readers recently wrote to Reformed Perspective expressing concern that we’ve been trumpeting this topic, since fertility can be sensitive and personal. But this call to be fruitful and multiply isn’t just my opinion, or Reformed Perspective’s hobby horse. It is God’s commission to the world.

The goal isn’t political dominance, or to outbreed other religions. No, God has made it very clear from Genesis through Revelation that He is a God of the covenant. Already in the Bible’s third chapter we are promised that the seed of the woman – one of her offspring – would crush the head of the serpent. Likewise, most of us are very familiar with the encouraging words that “The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off—for all whom the Lord our God will call.” Fertility is the means through which God grows His kingdom. That kingdom includes both those who become Christians mid-way through life and the children of believers born into the covenant.

And this calling isn’t the burden the world believes it is – it is a blessing! Psalm 127 is well known and loved for good reason: Children are a reward. We are blessed if we have many!

Imagine the impact on the world if Christians embraced God’s gift of children! Deciding to pursue a spouse, and then get married, and welcoming the children that the LORD gives is exactly what this world needs. It is exactly what the Church needs. Having a child, or another child, and raising them with love and in the fear of the LORD can be one of the most impactful things you do for God’s kingdom.

I got a glimpse of this when I spent time in a couple of American towns, such as Lynden, Washington, and Sioux Center, Iowa this past year. It is probably the closest thing I have experienced to seeing the gift of life welcomed. These places are strikingly different from most Canadian towns and cities, even than my own home town. Families are everywhere. Kids are the norm. Playgrounds are busy places. There is something very special there. And it’s no coincidence that these are very “churched” towns.

That the world wants to reject children is no reason for the Church to follow! It only means we can be a massive light to the world by bringing new life into the world. Notice how sad faces brighten when a child walks by. That child is a light! Want to be missional? Bring new life into the world!

Our decisions are more impactful than we realize

Not only does God want us to reproduce, He is looking for multiplication.

Here too, in His wisdom, God has designed life in a way where the cultural mandate is very realistic for most people. My parents were married in 1971. Unlike most Canadians, they didn’t contribute to the fertility rate decline. They were blessed with eight children. Now if a couple has 8 children, and this is maintained for just 10 generations, how many descendants will they have in about 200 years?

Over 1 billion! That is almost twice as many people as in North America.

Now, I didn’t have 8 children, at least not yet. We have 6. If each generation had 6 children, how many descendants would there be in 10 generations?

Over 60 million! That is one and half times the population of Canada.

What about 3 children? Even with three children per generation, there would still be 59,000 descendants – enough to fill an NHL stadium three times over.

How about two children? Unfortunately, it is very well possible that we never get to 10 generations. The family line will likely disappear.

The point here is that a decision to have another child, multiplied over successive generations, can have a monumental impact on the world.

What is holding us back?

So, what do the stats tell us about the fertility rate of Christians compared to the world?

Our fertility rate is higher than the “nonreligious,” but only a little bit more – just over 2 children per woman in America, and about 2.7 worldwide.

Looking at the Reformed community, it is evident that the fertility rate has dropped significantly in the past few decades. We still have more children than our neighbors, but we have far fewer than we had not long ago.

And the difference is more apparent in urban areas than rural. When I was doing presentations on this topic to Reformed communities across Canada over the past two years, it struck me how rural areas responded to the message very warmly. In contrast, in the more urban areas, I was clearly walking on sensitive ground.

Yes, fertility is a sensitive topic. There is no way that I can understand the pain and heartache that many women and couples face daily because they aren’t able to have children, or because they have lost children. Likewise, there are many singles who would love to be married and have children, but haven’t been blessed with a spouse. Or their spouse is no longer with them. To add to this, many people grew up in homes where their parents had many children, but then failed to provide the care that those children really needed – the impact of this neglect can carry on for a lifetime. We live in a very broken world, and the curse of the fall is still being felt daily. There are very good reasons why many people can’t have children. Likewise, there are good reasons to not have more children.

The challenge with sensitive topics like this is that, out of love for the hurting, we might feel a pressure to just stay quiet. But we so easily forget that encouraging God’s people to marry and have children isn’t just some opinion that we can choose to hold to or not. It is, instead, God’s express command to humanity. We are silent to our own peril.

And whatever our situation, all of us can play a role in welcoming the gift of life.

1. Considerations for couples with children
If you already have children and wonder if you should have more, I heard one Christian couple recommend that you literally write out each reason you may have for not having another. And then, for each reason, put it in a column. Is this reason an example of faith, trust, love, or fear, or selfishness? Since this is a self-administered test, it’d be easy to skew the results however you might wish. So be careful to use it to evaluate your thinking, not simply justify it. Remember that one day we will all stand before the Judge of the universe and it is His standard that matters.

If you are open to having more children, first confirm that your spouse is as well. God wants us to be faithful to the marriage and baptism vows that we have made, which means we have to have the physical and emotional capacity to love and care for our spouses and the children He has given us. The goal is not to have as many children as possible.

If, based on your feelings right now, you think there is no way you can have more children, it likely isn’t wise to take measures that would prevent you from changing your mind a few years from now. It is amazing how much our situation can change in just a couple of years. We can only see and feel this moment. God may have something very different for us in the future. I have had people pull me aside to tell me how much they regret taking steps to prevent more children. And I’m sure you are aware of many families who thank God almost daily for every child He has given them.

2. A thought for couples without children
If you are a couple who has decided that you want to wait with getting married, or wait with having children until you have reached certain milestones that have to do with studies, career, or finances, how does this align with this passage from James 4:13-17:

“Now listen, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.’ Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, ‘If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.’ As it is, you boast in your arrogant schemes. All such boasting is evil. If anyone, then, knows the good they ought to do and doesn’t do it, it is sin for them.”

The world promises that women can make plans to have it all – they can plot out their career track and after they are established then they can have their children. But as many women have discovered too late, fertility declines sharply in a woman’s thirties. We never know what tomorrow might bring us.

3. Singles
The number one reason for the declining fertility rate is that more women are childless. This is also evident in the Church. I have been struck time and again by the number of quality girls in Reformed churches who are age 20, then 25, then 30, and guys still haven’t snapped them up yet. I see groups of young adults where the guys and girls seem to prefer to hang out as singles rather than to date, get married, and start a family.

Single young men, it is your responsibility to find a girl and start a family. This takes courage and effort. But you can do it! What are you doing to make this a reality? If your fears, career, or your hobbies and sports are keeping you immobilized or too preoccupied, make changes starting tonight. Ask God to give you eyes to see a godly woman who could be a great wife. And when He shows you one, ask her out on a date!

Young women, are your decisions about career and studies making it harder for solid Christian guys to meet you? Are your standards for guys aligning with God’s will or your own?

Both guys and girls, if practical things like the cost of housing is keeping you from getting married, my encouragement would be to prioritize marriage. Trust in the LORD’s provision, and be open to changing some of your expectations if need be. As Christ tells us, “seek first His kingdom and righteousness, and all these will be yours as well.” If the cost of housing means you think you can’t get married or have children, consider moving to a new community where housing is less expensive, or be content with renting for the time being.

4. Everyone else
If God hasn’t given you children, or if you won’t be having more children, you can still be a massive help simply by looking beyond yourself and loving your neighbors, young and old alike. This can be through your job (we need teachers, nurses, and truck-drivers), and on the side (catechism teachers, baby-sitters, and coaches), and in hundreds of other ways.

Changing the world, while being sanctified

A lot of people are trying to change the world through activism, political engagement, and missions. These things matter a great deal – in fact, they flow from our identity as prophets, priests, and kings. But we can get so caught up in good things that we neglect our most basic callings.

One lesson that I have learned is that the greatest blessings I have are not the things that I have worked the hardest to make happen. They are the gifts that God freely gives. After high school I studied in university for 7 years and received a diploma, then a degree, then a Master’s degree. I then worked for 15 years and gave that job my blood, sweat, and tears. Around that same time, my wife and I worked very hard to tame a wild piece of land in northern BC to be a place where we could raise our family.

What has come of these things? All of them I have given away or would be willing to. My wife and I sold that land a few years ago because it was too difficult for me to stay on top of it with my other responsibilities. And I left that job about a year later. And if my degrees were taken away from me, it would make almost no difference in my life or to anyone else.
But it is very clear to me that what matters the most is my marriage to Jaclyn, my six wonderful children, the many blessed relationships I have in church and beyond, and most of all, the promises of God.

These things are not a result of my effort. They are a gift from God. But I had to be willing to accept these gifts willingly and to prioritize life accordingly. It takes courage to ask a girl out, to leave a career to prioritize raising a family, to be open to having more children when there are already toddlers around our legs. Like many of you, I was scared about the prospect of having more children and about seven years ago the epicenter of a burnout I experienced was when our sixth child was born. It isn’t easy. But I wouldn’t trade these gifts for anything. There is incredible pressure in our culture for women to be something more than a mom. Yet a mom can have a monumental impact on this world for centuries to come. A career may come with perks like money and recognition, but these things can disappear overnight. Your offspring will change the world and will live into eternity.

As we get older, we go to more and more funerals. They are always hard, but I also can’t help but be convicted every time again when I go to a funeral. I get such clear perspective on what matters most in life. At a funeral, does it really matter if someone really nailed that hobby, or built up a successful business? Only if these things were a blessing to others. So many of the things they worked so hard for are not even considered at the funeral. What matters most is whether they loved their family and others, and whether they loved the LORD.

I don’t think I’m the only one who doesn’t know what is best for myself. I need to follow God’s Word, even if it clashes with how I feel – my fears, my ambitions, my desires. That is true for all of God’s children.

If you made it to the end of this article and still aren’t convinced, consider these two questions:

1) to Whom do you (and me) owe our own existence?
2) Shouldn’t we trust the One who made us to know what’s best for us, and best for the world He’s placed us in?



News

Taxpayer-funded drug trafficking exposed in BC

BC’s NDP government and provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry have long denied or downplayed the concern that the free drugs they are giving to addicts are being trafficked. However, a leaked document from BC’s Ministry of Health now admits that “a significant portion” of the drugs are being sold and trafficked “provincially, nationally and internationally.”

When confronted by reporters about the revelation, BC’s Health Minister Josie Osborne admitted that “there’s absolutely no denial of it.” As the opposition Conservatives pointed out, this means that the BC government is guilty of “taxpayer-funded drug trafficking.”

The BC government has been operating a so-called “safer supply” program since 2020. The leaked document revealed that from 2022 to 2024, the government gave out the equivalent of 2.5 million hydromorphone 8-mg pills and 70,000 20-mg oxycodone pills. As an addition outreach worker explained to the National Post way back in April of 2024:

“You can stand in front of just about any of these pharmacies that are involved in this – usually close to the safer supply prescribing office – and you can sit outside for five minutes and watch all kinds of transactions going down.”

In 2023, BC’s provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry acknowledged that “some diversion is occurring” but her suggestion was to expand the program and make the drugs more powerful so that addicts wouldn’t want to sell them for something stronger.

The BC government’s drug strategy has been built on a worldview that does not acknowledge sin and its resulting misery. The “harm” that they are trying to reduce is not the misery resulting from wrecking our bodies and lives through drugs, but the stigma (i.e., shame) associated with drug addiction. It has only taken a few years and the world has witnessed just how devastating this strategy has been. One of the root issues is that shame is not something to be minimized or avoided, but instead heeded. It is an alarm from our conscience and God telling us we need to stop. Trying to reduce stigma is akin to putting our fingers in our ears to deal with the noise from our fire alarm – that avoids the real issue, to our harm.

The 6th Commandment gets to the heart of true treatment. Here God’s reveals His high regard for the value of every human life. The Heidelberg Catechism explains that the commandment not only condemns murder, but “I am not to dishonor, hate, injure, or kill my neighbour by thoughts, words, or gestures, and much less by deeds” It also adds “moreover, I am not to harm or recklessly endanger myself.” A loving God wants to protect us from things that harm and kill us. A deceitful Satan wants to do the opposite.


Today's Devotional

February 10 - The challenge to Esther

“And who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?” - Esther 4:14 

Scripture reading: Esther 4:5-14

Esther feared for her life when Mordecai urged her to speak to the king. Queen Vashti refused to come into the king’s presence when called. Now Esther is afraid to come into the king’s presence, having not been called. But >

Today's Manna Podcast

Manna Podcast banner: Manna Daily Scripture Meditations and open Bible with jar logo

God listens to His people's request

Serving #749 of Manna, prepared by Rev. Cody Swaving, is called "God listens to His people's request".











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Assorted

On a wife deciding to leave her husband

Dear Janelle, I received your letter yesterday, and had already heard from your brother and sister-in-law. They confirmed for me the very difficult and challenging situation you are in with your husband, and they said that they had encouraged you to write to me with your question. I was glad to hear from you. From what you wrote, and filling in details from them, you really are in a terrible spot – and I hope this letter is a real help. One of the things I like to do, if you don’t mind, is repeat back the presenting problem when I am asked about something like this. I do this to make sure that I have understood properly and, if I have, I want the person I am counseling to know that they were heard. This is often a problem that people in horrific situations have – they don’t feel like anybody could possibly be listening. You know that you need to leave your husband, but you don’t want to find yourself leaving God behind also. You know that your husband is behaving like a domestic tyrant, and so leaving him seems straightforward. But you have certain questions about some passages of Scripture, because you want to leave, if you leave, as an act of obedience. And that’s what it needs to be – obedience. If you leave your husband, you want to do so in the will of God. You don’t want to settle for some level of tolerated disobedience, or some Protestant version of venial sin. Two and three witnesses That said, your problem is that your husband is well-respected in your Christian community. He is an elder in your church. You believe that if you just “up and leave,” everybody is going to demand an accounting from you, and not from him. You have good reason for thinking that everybody would sympathize with him, and not with you. He is well-connected and well-liked in your church. You are not, and nobody knows that this is because of the insane restrictions he has placed on you. Now you know your Bible well enough to know that if you were to bring charges against your husband, the threshold to convict him would be two and three witnesses (Deut. 19:15, Matt. 18:16, 1 Tim. 5:19), and you don’t have that. Your brother and sister-in-law would be willing to testify, because they have seen a small portion of all this, but you believe that they would simply be dismissed. They don’t live in your town, they are related to you by blood, the elders who would be hearing this testimony are your husband’s close friends, and so on. In short, the deck is really stacked against you. But then, on the other side of the coin, you are not sure how much more of your husband’s heavy-handed hypocrisy you can take. Some days you feel like you are going to crater under his brow-beating, and other days you are simply exasperated by the two different faces he presents – to you on the one hand, and the world on the other. Sometimes you think you can go for two more days, tops, and other times you think you can manage it indefinitely. It all depends. He has never struck you, but there are times when you think he might. His fits of anger are unpredictable, and seem to you to be getting worse. You think that he is out of control, but if he answers the phone in the middle of one of his rages, he can turn off the anger like a switch. That indicates to you that there must be an element of deliberate malice in it. He is requiring more arbitrary and very difficult things of you, and you think it might be because he is trying to provoke you into doing something that is manifestly ungodly so that you will clearly be the one in the wrong, and will give him something to point to if the whole thing eventually blows up. Have I got the problem right? You know what his problem is, and it is an intolerable one, but you are not in a position to prove an accusation against him. Because you are dedicated to the authority of the Word, the fact that you can’t meet the standards for public charges (that justice requires) troubles you. Does that mean that you are not allowed to leave until you can prove it? The testimony of just one So this issue revolves around what justice requires in bringing a formal charge against someone, as distinct from what justice requires when a victim is simply getting out of range. But think about this for a minute. If you were attacked by a mugger or a rapist, you wouldn’t be thinking about the trial, and whether you had two or three witnesses available. You would just be thinking about getting away. Let me take an illustration from a law in the Old Testament concerning runaway slaves. “You shall not give up to his master a slave who has escaped from his master to you” (Deut. 23:15). While the circumstances are obviously not identical, they are comparable – close enough to provide us with an a fortiori argument. If this principle applies to slaves, and it does, then how much more would it apply to a Christian wife? So here it is. Suppose for a moment you lived in ancient Israel, in a time when slavery was practiced. A runaway slave shows up on your doorstep, and he tells you a horror story about what caused him to run away. The law here is straightforward. You may not return such an escaped slave to his master. Suppose a couple days later the master shows up and demands that his slave be returned to him. He says that the charges and accusations made by the slave are entirely false. The master denies them all, but even if he does this, the law nevertheless requires that the slave not be returned. This is the case even if it is just one person’s word against another. The escaped slave does not need to show up on your doorstep with two or three witnesses in tow. And this is where things get “curiouser,” as we might read in Alice, and this is where I want to derive a principle that we should apply to your situation. Suppose the slave wanted to press charges against his master, and let us suppose further that all the abuses he alleges against his master were in fact against the law, even against slaves, and were very serious – felonies, in fact. The slave still does not have two or three witnesses, and so this means that he cannot bring a charge against his (former) master. The master cannot be charged with crimes apart from independent corroboration, but it is nevertheless possible for the master to have a pay some kind of penalty for his behavior—that penalty being the loss of the slave. Now let’s translate. Your brother told me that they have already told you that you are welcome to come and stay with them. You have a safe place to go. Your kids are both away at college, and so you don’t have to worry about leaving anyone behind. You show up on your brother’s doorstep, and you say that your husband’s behavior has been ungodly and intolerable. According to this principle found in Scripture, they have every right to take you in, even though they have not heard your husband’s side of it. Let me say that again—there is a lower bar for a reception of a refugee than for charges to be filed against someone. This is not because we suddenly don’t care about Proverbs 18:17, about which we’ll have more in a minute. One of the first things that will happen – given what I know about your church’s practices in these things – is that one of the elders will contact you and say that you need to return. If you feel you need to bring charges against your husband, he will say, they will schedule a meeting for you to do so, and so on. At this point you should say that Scripture prohibits entertaining a charge against an elder if you don’t have two or three witnesses (1 Tim 5:19), and in fact you don’t have two or three witnesses. You are the only real witness. If you were to come back to charge him, it would simply be your word against his, and you know that they would be scripturally bound not to convict him, not to excommunicate him. You would support them in not convicting him. Because of your commitment to justice and due process, you have no intention of bringing a charge against anyone that cannot be independently verified. You also have no intention of putting up with it any further. Now if your departure shakes him up, and your husband acknowledges his fault, acknowledges what he has been doing, then your position has been independently verified, and it might be worthwhile returning in pursuit of some kind of marriage counseling and reconciliation. But if he does not humble himself, and simply denies everything, and you know that he is denying what you know to be undeniable, you are in no way required to return. But let me include something else here that really needs to be emphasized. Because I am saying that a wife in your position can simply “go,” then it follows that all any woman needs to do is just say she is in your position (whether she is or not), and there she has her automatic “get out jail free card.” What is to prevent a woman from applying this principle in a way that grotesquely wrongs an innocent husband? This is a fallen world, which means we must take risks. This is one of them. The biblical approach is that it is always to be preferred to allow a guilty person to go free, a guilty person to “get away with it,” than to ever penalize an innocent person. This is what necessarily happens whenever you insist upon two and three witnesses. What happens when just one person sees a person do some awful thing? You have to let it go; it is not actionable. You cannot convict anyone for anything on the basis of just one person’s say-so. It is the same kind of principle here. It is far better to let one lying wife go free without penalty than to keep an innocent wife in the penalty of living in a terrible situation. In the worst-case scenario, an innocent man loses a wife, but keep in mind it was a lying wife. When one person knows But let’s take that one-person-as-witness situation one step further. I am going to make up a very unlikely scenario simply in order to highlight the principle. Suppose I get called out in the middle of the night – as sometimes happens to pastors – in order to fetch somebody out of a place he ought not to be. I do so, and am escorting a straying sheep out of some nightclub and back to the parking lot. It is 2 am, and the nightclub is attached to a hotel. As I am helping him down the hallway, a room door opens and I see another one of my parishioners standing there behind a woman who is very much not his wife. He reaches over and slams the door. I know that I did not mistake him for somebody else. I go to confront him the next day, and he denies everything. In the interim he has lined up some other people to lie on his behalf. He was someplace else. His word against mine, and yet I know he is an adulterer. Would I have a problem serving him communion the next Sunday? No, I would not. He should have a problem with it, but I do not. I have no authority as a pastor to act publicly on the basis of individual knowledge that I cannot independently verify. But there is more to the story. While I cannot excommunicate anyone on the basis of one witness, even if that witness is me, there are any number of other things I can do. I have the authority to arrange my personal relationships on the basis of personal knowledge. I can refuse to go fishing with him. I can leave his employment. I can decline to go into a business deal with him. I can configure my own decisions on the basis of what I know. Someone might guess that there is something disrupting my fellowship with this man, but not because I am making a public charge. The person who guesses is drawing an inference from personal decisions. Application and misapplication This is what your elders will do if you leave. They will say that even if you are not making a formal charge of “abusive tyrant” against him, people will infer that you are alleging something very serious against him, and this is why they say you must come back and make your allegations in some public way. And they will say that if you can’t prove your allegations, such that he is excommunicated, then you have a responsibility to remain with him. But this doesn’t follow. It is possible that they will move to discipline you for leaving him without adequate biblical grounds. This is why I think they would be unjustified in doing so. “To the married I give this charge (not I, but the Lord): the wife should not separate from her husband (but if she does, she should remain unmarried or else be reconciled to her husband), and the husband should not divorce his wife.” – 1 Cor. 7:10-11 If you could prove that your husband were unfaithful (Matt. 19:9), or that he was utterly unwilling to have you as a Christian wife (1 Cor. 7:15), then the scriptural permission to divorce carries with it the permission to remarry. The innocent party is not bound in such circumstances. A brother or a sister is not under bondage in such cases. But if you cannot prove either infidelity or a rejection tantamount to divorce, then your circumstances vary accordingly. If he were proven to be guilty of either of these sins, and either unrepented sin would result in him being excommunicated, and declared not a believer, then that would leave you free. But if you cannot prove this against him, then the full extent of the action you can take is that of simply leaving. But, with that said, you can leave with your head held high. Your only options at such a point are to remain unmarried or to be reconciled to your husband. It is interesting here that Paul advises a woman not to leave if she can help it – “the wife should not separate from her husband.” That is his apostolic counsel, but it is clear from the context that it is merely advice. If she sees that his generally good advice is not pertinent to her situation, she is left free to leave without being hassled about it by the apostle. So if he would leave you alone in this decision, then so should the elders of your church. It is also interesting that Paul does not here get into the grounds for the separation. If there are not grounds for a divorce that allows for a subsequent remarriage, the church doesn’t adjudicate it. If the parties are willing, the church must provide pastoral counsel, but if there is simply a separation over intractable differences, Paul just allows for the separation, even though it may be one that has gone against his counsel – he did in fact urge the wife not to separate from her husband. Note also that it is the wife he is exhorting in this passage, meaning that in the larger scheme of things, he is assuming that wives could have plausible reasons for thinking they had to go. Husbands can be brutal, as the apostle knew. At the same time, I have known situations where the wife thought her husband was her central problem in her walk with God, but then after she left, her walk with God really fell apart. It turns out in that the husband wasn’t the big problem after all. You should also know that there is a cottage industry of busybody counselors, bitter women, who will want to swoop in order to enlist your grievances into their causes, whatever they are. Beware of them. Steer clear of them. One of your biggest challenges will be that of staying free from resentment and bitterness, and not only is their counsel usually bad, their resentments are contagious. That is the last thing you need. Running it by objective eyes One last thing. The Westminster Confession, in its teaching on divorce, says something profound and wise that I believe applies to your situation. They say that the corruption of man is such that we are liable to “study arguments” that would justify ungodly divorce, and they then go on to repeat the two standard justifications for a divorce – those being adultery and willful desertion. The word used in Corinthians for an unbelieving husband being willing to remain with his wife, or an unbelieving wife being willing to remain with her husband is suneudokeo – “pleased to be together with.” The semantic range of that word does not include your reports of what your husband does – constant anger, outbursts of wrath, sexually degrading behavior, ongoing manipulation and gaslighting, treating you like a slave, total control of all things physical and financial, and so on. You have no biblical obligation to put up with things like that. In a situation like yours, they say “the persons concerned in it not left to their own wills, and discretion, in their own case” (WCF 24.6). I believe you are in a position to leave – you have run it by others who are outside the circumstance, and who have an objective set of eyes. You have done this with both your brother and with me. Having done so, you should make a plan, and then pack your bags and go. The plan should include a list of your husband’s ongoing offenses against you, a list that should be shared with your counselor/s, and with the elders of your church when they contact you. Because you can’t prove them, you should share them with no one else, and above all you should not publish them online in any way. And so, given what you have described, my counsel would be for you to go. If you are concerned for your husband’s salvation – as you should be – you are far more likely to be used as an instrument to bring him to repentance as you pursue obedience to God this way. For the rest, leave the consequences to God. “For what knowest thou, O wife, whether thou shalt save thy husband” (1 Cor. 7:16). We will be praying for you, and God bless. Cordially in Christ, Douglas Wilson This a fictionalized account, which first appeared on Pastor Wilson’s blog dougwils.com and is reprinted here with permission. It addresses some of the issues raised by readers after the article "Justin Trudeau, and what the need for two witnesses would have us do" appeared earlier this month....

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Theology

Dealing with the Bible’s troubling texts

Whether it's passages about slavery, or gender roles, or the imprecatory Psalms, some sections of Scripture make Christians uncomfortable. God’s command to kill all the Canaanites in Deut. 20:16-18 is one example. Here we read: But in the cities of these peoples that the Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance, you shall save alive nothing that breathes, but you shall devote them to complete destruction, the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaanites and the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites, as the Lord your God has commanded, that they may not teach you to do according to all their abominable practices that they have done for their gods, and so you sin against the Lord your God. When confronted with a text like this, a liberal Christian will offer a full-throated apology. “The text doesn’t mean what it says,” he’ll explain, “because the writer was confused about what God wanted Israel to do – God didn’t want anyone killed.” The conservative Christian, who professes the Bible to be the Word of God, knows better than to explain away the passage. If God said it, it must be right – that’s what our heads tell us. But our hearts might say something different – this is genocide! So we split the difference and instead of an apology, we are simply apologetic. We try to modify the apparent nastiness by focusing on whatever good we find, maybe noting that this was just a one-time command, for only a particular situation. And we’ll point out that this same God who is punishing the Canaanites is also the loving God who took our deserved punishment on Himself by coming to earth in the person of the Son. Good points, all. But there is more going on here, and being apologetic is getting in the way of understanding what God is telling us about Himself, and about ourselves in this passage. It’s only when we approach a troubling text like this in humility, with a desire not simply to get past it but actually understand it, that we can search its depths. A closer look at Deut. 20:16-18 will reveal that God’s command here should be understood in the context of Genesis 15:13-16. It’s there that God tells Abraham his ancestors are going to have to wait 400 years to take possession of the land of Canaan. Why so long? Because “the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure.” What was this “sin of the Amorites”? Leviticus 18 details it as including incest, adultery, homosexuality, child sacrifice, and bestiality. So, it’s by digging into these passages on the Canaanite destruction that we learn: God is holy – We minimize evil, especially when it’s our own. But God will not overlook evil. We think we’re not so bad – In objecting to the destruction of the Canaanites, we misunderstand our sinful nature. Sure, as Christians, we speak of deserving hell…but we don’t really believe it, not of ourselves, and not of the Amorites. We object to their destruction because we think they couldn’t actually have deserved it. But in sharing this passage, God wants to clear away that kind of delusion… about the Amorites, and ourselves. God is patient – He waited 400 years to deliver a deserved judgment, and today too, even as the West kills millions of its own unborn children each year, God is being patient. But as Proverbs 29:1 makes clear, if we stubbornly reject His rebukes, our destruction could happen suddenly. We should not put off our own repentance. God is gracious – There is a reason these lands were taken from the Amorites, but the Israelites hadn’t done anything to deserve getting them. It goes to show there’s lots to love in troubling texts! And if we avoid a passage like Deut. 20, then we rob ourselves of a better understanding of our own depravity, our need for a Savior, and the holiness and graciousness of God. Worse when we are embarrassed by such passages we are judging God and saying, at least implicitly, that He isn’t living up to our standards. That is an arrogance that we need to repent of. Now, that doesn’t mean we have to pretend there are no troubling passages in the Bible. It only means we need to recognize the fault lies with us, not God....