What You Need to Know about the Coronavirus

Last updated on: March 4, 2020 at 3:23 pm By Gene Veith

The world is panicking over the coronavirus. China, South Korea, and now Italy are practically shutting down–closing factories and businesses, cancelling sporting events and other large gatherings, restricting travel–in an attempt to limit the spread of the disease. The American economy–so interconnected with that of the rest of the world–is being pulled down, with the stock market plunging, global businesses hit by the loss of production and markets, and uncertainty halting investments.

Some people are predicting the end of the world, practically. Others are insisting that the coronavirus is over-hyped and that the fears are unwarranted.

As of this date, there have been only 149 cases of the coronavirus in the United States, with 11 deaths. The number will probably go up dramatically now that testing kits have finally gone out to the nation’s medical labs. But right now there is no need for Americans to panic. And yet we need to take the prospect of an epidemic very seriously.

Here is what you need to know about the coronavirus infections. (Technically, the virus is known as COVID-19, to distinguish the virus that originated in Wuhan, China, from the host of other coronaviruses, most of which do little harm.) The following information, drawn from the linked sources, is what we know now:

About 80% of the people who contract the Wuhan coronavirus (technically known as COVID-19 to distinguish it from the other more benign coronaviruses) experience very mild symptoms—a cough, fever, shortness of breath, but not usually even a runny nose or a sore throat. But about 20% become very sick, with severe flu-like symptoms, diarrhea, and often pneumonia. About 5% go into critical condition, with respiratory failure and organ shutdowns. And about 3% die.

This means that any given person who catches the coronavirus has an excellent prognosis. A 3% mortality rate seems low. But if the virus, which is very contagious, is widespread, the results could be catastrophic. A 3% mortality rate means that for every 100 people who get infected, three of them die. For every thousand, 30 die. For every million, 30,000 die.

Furthermore, the mortality rate is higher with older people. For those 70-79, the death rate is about 8%. For those 80 and up, the death rate is nearly 15%. Nearly half of the deaths in the U.S. have been among the elderly.

Children, thankfully, seem little affected by the virus. Only 1% of the recorded cases are of children under nine, and there have been no deaths, so far, in this group.

But don’t more people die from the flu than from this coronavirus? To be sure, some 18,000 Americans have died of the flu this season. That compares to 3,000 deaths from the coronavirus worldwide. But the parallel is misleading. The death rate for the flu is only .1%. Many more people get the flu than have gotten the coronavirus, which is just starting to spread. Flu also has a predictable time frame, with a “flu season.” There is also a vaccine for the flu.

Researchers are working frantically to develop one for COVID-19 and progress is reportedly being made, but it would take at least a year for the required testing and development before a vaccine could be made available to the public.

Ironically, that the virus has so little effect on 80% of those infected is one of the reasons it is so difficult to combat. In fact, the disease can be spread even before symptoms have developed. People who do not even realize that they have the virus and so are out and about in their normal lives can spread the infection to people who will die from it.

There is no cure for the coronavirus, though certain symptoms can be treated. The only way to battle the epidemic is to limit its spread. That means quarantining people who have it. Restricting travel from areas with a high infection rate. Avoiding large gatherings.

The surgical masks we see on television in infected areas cannot prevent a person from breathing in the viruses spread in the air by coughs–only higher-tech respirators can do that–but if infected people wear them, they can shield the air from their coughs. Simple hand-washing can also help in preventing infections.

What about church? A church in South Korea–actually, a cult–is reportedly the source of that country’s infections. In high-infection areas, churches are suspending worship services. Already in the United States some Catholic dioceses have stopped offering the common cup in Holy Communion–reverting to the pre-Vatican II practice of receiving only the consecrated bread, which the directives say should be taken in the hand rather than placed on the tongue, for fear of infecting the priest with contaminated saliva. Those dioceses and some liturgical Protestants have also stopped the practice of “passing the peace” with handshakes and hugs. (See, some good can come even from an epidemic.)

But, again, such measures are surely premature in the United States, at least at this point. Still, churches might do well to develop contingency plans if the worst happens, perhaps working out the logistics for online meetings and assemblies.

We have blogged about the newfound relevance of Luther’s writing “Whether One May Flee from a Deadly Plague.” He emphasizes staying at our vocations during an epidemic and taking the opportunity to love and serve our neighbors, caring for the sick and taking measures to fight the disease. Today this would surely include the patient acceptance of quarantines, restrictions, and other inconveniences. But Luther also sees a bigger picture.

When “a deadly epidemic strikes,” said Luther, we should “take courage in the fact that we are mutually bound together.” We should not just see the plague as God’s punishment but as an occasion “to test our faith and love.”

Photo of coronaviruses under an electron microscope: Content Providers(s): CDC/Dr. Fred Murphy – This media comes from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Public Health Image Library (PHIL), with identification number #4814, via Wikimedia Commons.

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Why the West Lost Its Nerve

Last updated on: February 26, 2020 at 4:27 pm By Gene Veith

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I once took a friend of mine from Germany to a Milwaukee Brewers baseball game. He was greatly bothered by the pre-game custom of presenting the flag and everyone standing to sing the National Anthem. Such patriotism, he said, is wrong, is dangerous! I realized then that his society has had a very different experience with patriotism–and thousands of people gathering in stadiums to sing hymns to the fatherland–than our has had.

Postmodernist academics condemn all “totalizing” discourses and ways of thinking–that is, ideologies or religions that attempt to account for all of life–along with all “meta-narratives” (stories that explain all other stories). Why? Because of the Nazis.

The conventional wisdom in these circles is that Nazism comes from believing anything too much. That the way to prevent Nazism from coming back is to reject all objective belief systems in favor of a general openness to existence. (Never mind that, as I have shown, Nazism actually derived from the forebears of postmodernism who repudiated all moral and intellectual absolutes as “Jewish,” insisting on constructing new realities expressive of a national will to power.)

Now the editor of First Things, R. R. Reno, has written a book on this phenomenon, which manifests itself today in the West’s repudiation of its own culture and its inability to assert itself. The book is entitled Return of the Strong Gods: Nationalism, Populism, and the Future of the West.

Texas A&M political science professor James R. Rogers (a member of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod) reviews the book at Law & Liberty. This is one of those especially useful reviews that not only explains the book’s position but engages with it in a way that advances the discussion and criticizes where it falls short.

From James R. Rogers, The Inescapable Particularity of Strong Gods:

Western elites, he argues, overreacted to the nationalist horrors of World War II, and threw out salutary commitments to nation, family, and religion in an understandable desire to deter revival of the forces that led to that devastating conflict. . . .

In recoiling from the horrors of nationalism in the first half of the century, Reno argues, Western elites after the war led a philosophical war on all boundaries, all particular commitments: political boundaries, economic boundaries, social boundaries.

Prof. Rogers quotes from the book: “In the second half of the twentieth century, we came to regard the first half as a world-historical eruption of the evils inherent in the Western tradition, which can be corrected only by the relentless pursuit of openness, disenchantment, and weakening.” This meant breaking down all boundaries–national boundaries (thus the ideology of unlimited immigration), cultural boundaries (in favor of multi-culturalism), religious boundaries (in favor of liberal ecumenism), moral boundaries (as in the sexual revolution), and now even the boundaries between men and women (feminism and transgenderism).

Quoting from the book once again:

This is absurd. It is not 1938. Our societies are not gathering themselves into masses marching in lockstep. . . . Instead, our societies are dissolving. Economic globalization shreds the social contract. Identity politics disintegrates civic bonds. A uniquely Western anti-Western multiculturalism deprives people of their cultural inheritance. Mass migration reshapes the social landscape. Courtship, marriage, and family no longer form our moral imaginations. Borders are porous, even the one that separates men from women.

Prof. Rogers summarizes Reno’s subsequent argument:

Recoiling from the horrors of World War II and the movements that led to it, Western elites embraced “the weak gods of openness.” Reno argues that human flourishing requires boundaries, and only the “strong gods” of family, nation, and religion will do.

This strikes me as a persuasive account of why the West lost its nerve and why “the weak gods of openness,” having done their damage, are now obsolete. Reno calls for the restoration of “strong gods”–above all, the actual deities of actual religions–along with the restoration of national, cultural, religious, moral, and sexual boundaries. These do not lead to Nazism, but are necessary for human flourishing.

But Prof. Rogers says that Reno drew back from his own conclusions.

The main problem with Reno’s argument is that it lacks the very particularity for which he criticizes liberalism. “In an age that, he argues, begs for the power of the particular, he treats the ‘strong god’ of religion in terms more appropriate to the vapid religiosity of the 1950s than to the needs of the present.”. . .

The irony is Reno genuflects to the same weak god of openness and borderlessness in his invocation of a generic neo-Romantic religiosity and a free-floating sacredness. Whether it’s the aesthetic and abstract itch of the Romantic era that something amorphously “sacred” and “transcendent” is out there, or a 1950s, Eishenhower-style latitudinarianism that commends a “deeply felt religious faith, I don’t care what it is,” there is no particularity.

Reno is a Catholic, but he stops short of invoking the Christian God as the “strong god” that society needs.

There are very practical reasons to eschew religious particularity in his argument. Reno goes shallow for exactly the same reason that the liberal theorists he criticizes commend openness: Particularity divides. And so Reno purchases his intellectual reach at a steep cost, because there is no power in the generic. The generic religiosity of the 19th century Romantics never took off, just as the generic commitments of 1950s religion led only to the collapse of the mainline churches that embraced it.

Reno recognizes this in writing the obvious—that he does not desire a return of the strong forces of the sort that led to World War II. Yet here, on this ground, might even Reno reasonably prefer to live under the weak gods rather than live under the wrong strong god?

Prof. Rogers points out that strong gods, including those of family or nation, can be in conflict with each other. Jesus would often warn about putting even one’s family above Him. Allegiance to the nation can be virtuous, but it can also be idolatrous. The Christian God is so strong that His claims upon us are all-comprehensive. His law, though, His providential care for His creation, and His active presence in vocation do provide a basis for family, communities, nations, and our other relationships. As long as we don’t make them “gods,” whether strong or weak.

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The Rapper Flame Becomes a Lutheran

Last updated on: February 1, 2020 at 6:21 pm By Gene Veith

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Christian hip-hop artist Flame has announced that he has become a Lutheran and has made his new theology the topic of his latest recording.

Flame, whose real name is Marcus Gray, has been nominated for a Grammy and several Dove awards for contemporary Christian music. He was in the news recently for successfully suing pop star Katy Perry for plagiarism and winning a $3 million judgment. For more on his background–his troubled childhood, his turn to Christianity, his professional accomplishments, and his good works in his home town of St. Louis–read this.

He recently completed an M.A. (not the M.Div. of pastoral students) at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis, majoring in Systematic Theology, with minors in Church History and Counseling. He had been a Calvinist, just looking for a degree program, but at Concordia Seminary he found a theology that helped him work through issues he had been struggling with and that filled him with a sense of liberation and joy.

In a Twitter announcement about his 10th record release, Extra Nos, he wrote, “My first EP drops Friday! ‘extra nos’ discusses my theological journey over the past 4 years. My hope is that sharing these insights will bring you the Godly peace & freedom that I experienced.”

The ensuing thread reminded me that there are lots of black Lutherans. The African-American pastors I have met have all been confessional, liturgical, and faithful. The same goes for the laity. Check out on that thread the comments and the YouTube video of “St. Typo de Tyre,” who was kind enough to recommend my book Spirituality of the Cross.

Flame’s new release is an EP, an “extended play” recording, which is longer than a single but not quite as long as an album. The seven tracks are dense with Lutheran theology, explained in an affecting, personal way. The lyrics have been transcribed (not always accurately) and are posted at AZ Lyrics, but you really need to hear them. Go here to buy the EP or to listen to it on streaming services (some of which are free). I urge you to buy it, since I’m not sure how many of his fans in contemporary Christian music will stay with him in light of his new theology.

The first track, “Scattered Tulips,” shows rap music at its best, incorporating not just rhythm but also music and complex lyrics in intricate and catchy patterns. The title refers to the TULIP summary of Calvinism (Total depravity; Unconditional election, Limited atonement, Irresistible grace; Perseverence of the saints). He says how Calvinism had helped him get a bigger picture of God and to prioritize Scripture, but how he struggled with the problem of not knowing whether one is of the elect and the need to look within to find evidence of one’s salvation. In a later song, “Sola Fide,” he writes about a Christian in torment.

He’s been saved now for how long and he’s still struggling with the same flaws
And then you prescribe he scuba dive in that same heart
That sin-filled, hope killed, broken willed and super dark
You don’t send that person inside himself
You remind that saint that it’s extra nos (Outside himself)

Instead of looking inward, scrutinizing the state of one’s self, Christians should look for their assurance outside themselves (“extra nos”), to the Cross of Jesus Christ, to God’s Word, to the Sacraments, to Christ’s promises in the Gospel.

Flame says that Lutheranism was particularly helpful in what it taught him about justification. But he has also come to understand the Christian life, particularly vocation. In “Good Works,” which is more straight teaching than a rap, as such, he marvels at Luther’s emphasis on loving and serving our neighbors:

Man I love how Luther emphasized that God doesn’t need our good works
But our neighbor does
I mean that’s so weighty when you think about it because all our good deeds
Our sanctification, our skill-sets, our responsibilities, and various roles
Are for the benefit of those around us
Our families, society, our neighbor, right?
But what makes us right with God, Paul says, is our faith
That’s how we are made righteous
And how we remain righteous, in Christ

Some evangelicals glom onto Lutheranism, with its liberating understanding of the Gospel, as an excuse for antinomianism, but Flame is sensitive to the ethical consequences of justification. He celebrates the Third Use of the Law. In “I Used to Think Like That,” he gives a shoutout to one of his Concordia professors, Dr. Joel Biermann, an ethicist, “who was unapologetically Lutheran (Aye he went hard),” for his influence. One of the tracks is entitled “2KR,” which explores the Lutheran notion of the 2 Kinds of Righteousness. Our righteousness before God (Coram Deo), is passive, coming completely from Christ. Our righteousness before the world (Coram mundo–Flame loves all of these Latin descriptors) is active vocationally in our love and service to our neighbors, or, as Flame puts it, “serving, loving, healing, and building one another up (Go).”

“Used to Think” is a lively rap contrasting with what he used to believe as a Calvinist and what he believes now as a Lutheran.

I used to think like
That bread and wine were elements that represent
I do not think like that
This is my body and blood
He said what He meant
I used to, I used to, I used to, think
Jesus’s death wasn’t for all
It was sufficient for all

It contains lots of good lines: “When I was a Calvinist/ Everything was ’bout an idol, we made an idol out of not making idols.” Whereas Luther taught him about “Serving your neighbor, enjoying creation.” He also says that he used to think that “the only options were Calvinist-Arminian,” something he treats in several of the tracks, that he had never heard of the Lutheran option (which should be an indictment for us Lutherans for not getting the word out beyond our insular circles).

In “Concordia,” which is not so much a rap as a conversation, he tells about how God brought him to Concordia seminary and taught him just what he needed. Flame sums that up in “Ordo Salutis” (Order of Salvation–again, he really likes the Latin):

Faith is a gift
I’ve been baptized
I meet Him at the altar in the bread and the wine
It’s more than a sign
That’s why it’s emphasized
That since Christ died
Only faith justifies

Again, you’ve got to hear these raps, even if rap isn’t exactly your kind of music. You can do that here or here.

Also, Rev. Trevor Sutton, my co-writer on Authentic Christianity: How Lutheran Theology Speaks to a Postmodern World, has written about Flame/Marcus Gray and Extra Nos in the context of Kanye West’s newfound Christianity and other conversion narratives in rap music. His article is entitled Hip Hop and Christian Conversion Narratives: What do Kanye and Hip Hop have to do with Augustine of Hippo? Quite a bit, it turns out.

Illustration: Cover of Extra Nos.

HT: Joanna, Paul McCain

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Martin Luther on the Coronavirus

Last updated on: January 30, 2020 at 6:08 pm By Gene Veith

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The World Health Organization has taken the rare step of declaring the coronavirus outbreak a global health emergency. The fast-spreading virus that originated in China has flu-like symptoms, but 20% of the cases develop into serious and potentially life-threatening conditions, such as pneumonia and respiratory failure. Though the mortality rate is not high–so far, 171 people in China have died, out of some 8,000 cases–the prospect of a pandemic has shaken the stock market, shut down a great deal of international travel, and imposed severe restrictions in China and other countries.

Medical professionals around the world are making plans for how they might deal with a coronavirus epidemic in their countries. Fear of the disease–or others, like it, perhaps more deadly–has Christians in many countries wondering how they should respond. Should they evacuate areas that are threatened by the disease? Should they find ways of helping the sick? If they do, won’t that expose them to the virus? These are especially urgent questions for Christians in China.

Medical student Emmy Yang has written an article for Christianity Today entitled Is It Faithful to Flee an Epidemic? What Martin Luther Teaches Us About Coronavirus, with this deck: “The German reformer’s pastoral reflection on the plague can guide both medical students like me and Christians in China—and everywhere the Wuhan virus has spread.”

In 1527, the black plague–which had wiped out half the population of Europe two centuries earlier–broke out in Wittenberg. The whole city, understandably, panicked. Luther wrote an open letter that would be entitled “Whether One May Flee from a Deadly Plague” (Luther’s Works 43:119-38). It is a profound and practical reflection on the Christian’s response to death and suffering, the obligations that come from loving one’s neighbor, the legitimacy of self-preservation, and–as one might expect–vocation.

Here is Emmy Yang’s summation of Luther’s points:

First, Luther argued that anyone who stands in a relationship of service to another has a vocational commitment not to flee. Those in ministry, he wrote, “must remain steadfast before the peril of death.” The sick and dying need a good shepherd who will strengthen and comfort them and administer the sacraments—lest they be denied the Eucharist before their passing. Public officials, including mayors and judges, are to stay and maintain civic order. Public servants, including city-sponsored physicians and police officers, must continue their professional duties. Even parents and guardians have vocational duties toward their children. . . .

Luther challenges Christians to see opportunities to tend to the sick as tending to Christ himself (Matt. 25:41–46). Out of love for God emerges the practice of love for neighbor.

But Luther does not encourage his readers to expose themselves recklessly to danger. His letter constantly straddles two competing goods: honoring the sanctity of one’s own life, and honoring the sanctity of those in need. Luther makes it clear that God gives humans a tendency toward self-protection and trusts that they will take care of their bodies (Eph. 5:29; 1 Cor. 12:21–26). He defends public health measures such as quarantines and seeking medical attention when available. In fact, Luther proposes that not to do so is to act recklessly. Just as God has gifted humans with their bodies, so too he has gifted the medicines of the earth.

What if a Christian still desires to flee? Luther affirms that this may, in fact, be the believer’s faithful response, provided that no emergency exists and that they arrange substitutes who will “take care of the sick in their stead and nurse them.” Notably, Luther also reminds readers that salvation is independent of these good works. He ultimately tasks them to decide whether to flee or to stay during plagues, trusting that they will arrive at a faithful decision through prayer and meditation on the Scriptures. Participation in aiding the sick arises out of grace, not obligation.

However, Luther himself was not afraid. Despite the exhortations of his university colleagues, he stayed behind to minister to the sick and dying.

Here is a brilliant quotation from Luther’s letter, drawing on Matthew 25:31-46:

This I well know, that if it were Christ or his mother who were laid low by illness everybody would be so solicitous and would gladly become a servant or helper. Everyone would want to be bold and fearless; nobody would flee but everyone would come running. . . .If you wish to serve Christ and to wait on him, very well, you have your sick neighbor close at hand. Go to him and serve him, and you will surely find Christ in him.

Illustration: Plague in the house of Sir Jordan Fitz-Eisulf, Stained glass window, Canterbury Cathedral. Photo by Julian P Guffogg and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence. No alterations were made.

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The Reformation and Science

Last updated on: January 17, 2020 at 4:16 pm By Gene Veith

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The notion that religion suppressed scientific knowledge until science finally threw off the shackles of faith has been thoroughly discredited by scholars, who have been showing the important role Christianity played in the rise of modern science. Early Christianity and Medieval Catholicism made significant contributions, but the Reformation played a direct role in the scientific revolution.

So says Australian scholar Peter Harrison of the University of Queensland, the author of The Bible, Protestantism, and the Rise of Natural Science (Cambridge University Press, 2001) and Science Without God?: Rethinking the History of Scientific Naturalism (Oxford University Press, 2019).

He has published an article in the online journal Aeon entitled Reformation of Science with the deck “Protestantism didn’t hold back science – it revolutionised its methods, its theoretical content and its social significance.”

To take one example, according to Prof. Harrison, Luther dethroned Aristotle, whose deductive rationalism dominated both medieval theology and medieval science. Aristotle taught that a sufficiently intelligent, contemplative individual could apply reason to come to a full understanding of reality, including both God and nature. Luther and the other reformers taught that the human capacity to reason was damaged by sin, so that mere thinking about something from one’s own resources is not enough to fully understand it. Rather, to find truth, we must look outside ourselves for evidence.

As a theologian, Luther did not formulate doctrines out of his own ingenuity. Rather, he made a point of studying the Scriptures as the source of religious data and supporting his conclusions with evidence drawn from the Bible. Such an approach, when applied to the knowledge of nature, would lead in fairly short order to scientific empiricism.

Luther, like the empirical scientists to come, lampooned some of Aristotle’s pronouncements about the natural order, which he made without carefully observing the natural order. Prof. Harrison says that Luther’s emphasis on the limits of the fallen intellect would also manifest itself in other ways that would become important for science:

The new logic of experiment and systematic observation was also premised on the idea that reliable knowledge of nature would be hard to come by, both on account of wounded human capacities and because nature itself was no longer accessible in the way it once had been. Repeated sets of observations, conducted under specific conditions, would scrutinise a recalcitrant nature and help to compensate for human fallibility and cognitive limitations. At the same time, fallen human senses stood in need of artificial augmentation – most notably with the telescope and microscope. These instruments were admissions of human physical limitations in understanding the natural world.

The final piece of the Aristotelian paradigm to fall was the ideal that scientific knowledge would be been attainable by a few exceptional individuals. Now, instead, systematic study of nature could only be corporate and cumulative. Science would henceforth require the combined efforts of many minds, accumulated over the generations. These features of scientific investigation were together known as ‘experimental natural philosophy’, a radical new approach to knowledge that was contrasted with the insufficiently critical and interrogative methods of Aristotle.

There is much more to Prof. Harrison’s thesis, which he illustrates with extensive quotations from the Reformers and from the early scientists. But I have to quote him on another Reformation teaching that proved to be of critical importance not only for the new science but also for its application in technology: the doctrine of vocation.

For different reasons, Protestant Reformers also challenged the superiority of the contemplative life, which they associated with an unhealthy monastic retreat from the world. Luther insisted that true Christians should avoid emulating cloistered monks, who in his view, crept into corners or retreated to the wilderness. Christians, he urged, should ‘use’ the world: ‘to build, to buy, to have dealings and hold intercourse with his fellows, to join them in all temporal affairs’. . . .

Natural philosophy had traditionally focused on understanding rather than practical utility. Bacon and other scientific reformers derided this lack of worldly goals and argued that the study of nature be directed away from contemplation and personal edification and towards the practical task of restoring the empire of man over nature. . . .

This elevation of the active life went hand-in-hand with Lutheran and Calvinist notions of the sanctity of earthly vocations. The priesthood, on this view, was no more religious a vocation than any other. ‘All Christians,’ Luther maintained, ‘are of the spiritual estate, and there is no difference among them except that of office.’ Calvin strongly supported this ‘priesthood of all believers’. This general principle meant that for the first time the formal study of nature could be regarded as a priestly activity. The ideal of the scientist-as-priest would subsequently become a common motif among 17th-century Protestant natural philosophers. Kepler, for example, had originally studied theology at Tübingen with the intention of becoming a Lutheran minister: ‘I wished to be a theologian; for a long time I was troubled, but now see how God is also praised through my work in astronomy.’

What a great quote on vocation from Kepler! I have heard this echoed by many people in many different callings when they finally understand vocation. They often say how had been “troubled” because they thought they should have gone into church work to truly serve the Lord, but are now exhilarated when they realize that they can serve God by serving their neighbor as they use the talents and inclinations that God has given them. To think that Kepler and other pioneering scientists felt the same way!

“I wished to be a theologian; for a long time I was troubled, but now see how God is also praised through my work in astronomy.” Kepler

Illustration: From upper left: Isaac Newton, Robert Boyle, Johannes Kepler, Francis Bacon. Of Newton: Sir Godfrey Kneller; Of Boyle: Wellcome Images; Of Bacon: Frans Pourbus the younger; Of Kepler: Unknown author [Public domain] via Wikimedia Commons

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The Case for Having Children

Last updated on: January 15, 2020 at 2:59 pm By Gene Veith

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In discussing the drop in the fertility rate in the affluent, well-educated demographic, Joy Pullman gives young married couples nine reasons for having children. In fact, she says, go ahead and make it a project for this year to have a baby!

“When I was a teen and in my early 20s,” she says, “nobody told me how fulfilling and meaningful I would find having children. So I suspect nobody has told most other young people either.” She and her husband now have five children. “The truth is,” she concludes, “children are a reliably excellent investment in your long-term personal development and happiness.”

She makes that case in an article entitled 9 Reasons You Should Have A Baby This Year If You’re Young And Married. Read the entire article, which will also be meaningful if you are no longer young and have already had all of your children, like us empty-nesters. Her reflections hold up whether you are looking forward or looking back.

I will give you her 9 reasons. For each one, go to her article for what she says about each point. From Joy Pullman, 9 Reasons You Should Have A Baby This Year If You’re Young And Married:

1. Your Future Self Is Begging You To

2. It Will Loneliness-Proof Your Life

3. Pregnancy Is More Likely to Go Well Before 35

4. There Will Probably Never Be a Better Time than Now

5. Parenting Is Easier and More Fun When You’re Young

6. Kids Make You Happier

7. Kids Aren’t as Expensive as You’ve Heard

8. Kids Are More Adorable Than the Best Instagram Feed

9. It Will Make You A Much Better Person

On that last point, let me give you a sample of what she says, showing too why Joy Pullman (a Missouri Synod Lutheran) is one of my favorite Federalist writers. She points out that we often pay great attention to our physical well-being, to the point of sometimes hiring “personal trainers” to help us with our diet and exercise. But we seldom pay as much attention to our moral and character development, which also requires discipline and effort. Children, she says, can help us become better people:

Children are an excellent moral trainer. Whether you want to admit it or not, we all need one of those. (I guess God decided I need five.) A spouse does the same thing, but since the spouse is an adult the effect is often not as strong as with children. Children are wholly dependent on you putting their needs first. To be a good mother or father, therefore, becoming less selfish is mandatory. . . .

I have also noticed a stronger impetus to listen, observe, and otherwise try to understand and empathize with people with different personalities, as kids are often very different from you and each other, so loving them requires learning. Children are a huge investment in your social capital, as well, for they help you make new friends, spur you to volunteer more, and keep up connections.

Perhaps those of you who are parents can come up with additional reasons why that particular vocation is so rewarding. If so, tell us about them in the comments.

Image by serrano1004 from Pixabay

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