{"id":78751,"date":"2024-12-18T06:00:44","date_gmt":"2024-12-18T11:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/?p=78751"},"modified":"2024-12-18T06:46:44","modified_gmt":"2024-12-18T11:46:44","slug":"they-will-say-blessed-are-the-barren","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2024\/12\/they-will-say-blessed-are-the-barren\/","title":{"rendered":"“They Will Say, ‘Blessed Are the Barren'”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Advent is about Christ\u2019s second coming as well as His first, a time to reflect on what the Bible says about the end times.\u00a0 Jesus gives a number of signs<\/em> that signify that the end is near.\u00a0 We blogged about \u201cWars and Rumors of War<\/a>,\u201d a sign that keeps re-occuring, reminding us that the end is always<\/em> near.<\/p>\n

Today I want to consider a sign that is more unusual, a baffling phenomenon that has emerged quite recently:\u00a0 that people will consider barrenness\u2013or by extension, not having children\u2013to be a blessing.<\/p>\n

\n

As Jesus is being led away to Golgotha for His crucifixion, this happens:<\/p>\n

And as they led him away, they seized one Simon of Cyrene, who was coming in from the country, and laid on him the cross, to carry it behind Jesus.<\/span> \u00a0<\/sup>And there followed him a great multitude of the people and of women who were\u00a0mourning and lamenting for him.<\/span> \u00a0<\/sup>But turning to them Jesus said,\u00a0\u201cDaughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children.<\/span><\/span> \u00a0<\/sup>For behold,\u00a0the days are coming when they will say,\u00a0\u2018Blessed are the barren and the wombs that never bore and the breasts that never nursed!\u2019<\/span><\/span> \u00a0<\/sup>Then they will begin to say to the mountains, \u2018Fall on us,\u2019 and to the hills, \u2018Cover us.\u2019<\/span><\/span> \u00a0<\/sup>For if they do these things when the wood is green, what will happen when it is dry?\u201d\u00a0 (Luke 23:26-31)<\/span><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I know this is generally interpreted, including by the Lutheran Study Bible<\/a>, as a prediction of the impending destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in 70 A.D., the point being that women will wish they didn\u2019t have children to encumber them while fleeing for their lives. That may be, but the fall of Jerusalem is itself a foretaste of the last days, and the bit about asking the mountains to \u201cfall on us\u201d connects to the Sixth Seal and the \u201cwrath of the Lamb\u201d described in the book of Revelations \u00a0(6:16-17).<\/p>\n

Here Jesus is not condemning these women, who are on His side, weeping for His suffering.\u00a0 He is saying they should weep for themselves and their descendants.\u00a0 What is coming is just sad.\u00a0 And He doesn\u2019t say the barren are<\/em> blessed,\u00a0 but that \u201cthey,\u201d their children, \u201cwill say\u201d that the barren are blessed.<\/p>\n

That anyone would think not having children is a good thing is a strange prediction.\u00a0 Certainly, in the ancient world of the Bible, having<\/em> children was considered a blessing (Psalm 127:3-5), and\u00a0 barrenness was seen as a lamentable condition (as with Sarai, Rebekah, Rachel, Hannah, Samson\u2019s mother, and Elizabeth, though God answered their prayers by giving them a child).\u00a0 Not that being a parent is necessary or that every woman is called to this vocation, as St. Paul makes clear (1 Corinthians 7).\u00a0 But the consecrated virgins of the early church or the nuns of Catholicism with their vows of celibacy would never say that barrenness is a blessing, as such.\u00a0 Nor would we be likely to hear this from women or men in previous centuries.<\/p>\n

But today we hear it all the time.\u00a0 Not from everyone, of course.\u00a0 Today, 1 in 6 couples<\/a> have fertility problems, and many of them would do nearly anything to have a child.\u00a0 But among American adults under 50, nearly half, 47%<\/a>, do not plan on having a child.<\/p>\n

The exaltation of barrenness permeates our culture.\u00a0 Our technology has separated sex from procreation, so we have even made sex barren, as in our embrace of homosexuality and pornography.\u00a0 And when the womb is not<\/em> barren, but conceives a child, we have recourse to abortion.\u00a0 And many people, including much of the medical profession, advocate the sterilization of children<\/em> if they say they want to change their gender.<\/p>\n

Men too want to take away their ability to conceive children.\u00a0 At the Democratic National Convention, mobile clinics offered both free abortions and free vasectomies.\u00a0 Now that Trump was elected, according to Newsweek<\/em>, many women are lining up to get sterilized<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The desire to have children is not just a religious feeling.\u00a0 Even materialists, even atheists have always recognized the biological imperative of reproduction.\u00a0 It is ironic that \u201cprogressives\u201d today seem especially in favor of\u00a0 not having children because the philosophy of \u201cprogressivism,\u201d that humanity is evolving to ever higher levels of goodness, owes much to Darwin, who taught that evolution happens when natural selection causes the best-adapted organisms to have more offspring.\u00a0 Reproduction is the goal of survival.<\/p>\n

Today we have \u201canti-natalists<\/a>,\u201d who believe it is unethical for anyone<\/em> to have children.\u00a0 After all, life entails suffering, and it\u2019s cruel to bring a child into the world knowing that he or she is going to suffer.\u00a0 We have gone from the heroic struggle to survive to not wanting to survive because it takes a struggle.\u00a0 Some environmentalists are saying that the human race, to save the planet, should<\/em> go extinct.<\/p>\n

To say \u201cblessed are the barren\u201d is to give up.\u00a0 It is an expression of despair, of nihilism.\u00a0 Behind it is a death wish.\u00a0 \u201cThen they will begin to say to the mountains, \u2018Fall on us,\u2019 and to the hills, \u2018Cover us.\u2019\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Come, Lord Jesus.\u00a0 Come quickly.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Illustration:\u00a0 Vision in cartoon form by Nina Paley in collaboration with Les U. Knight. Cartoon colorized by Aaron Hackmann., CC BY-SA 3.0 <https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-sa\/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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