The article begins like this: “A movement of women have decided not to procreate in response to the coming ‘climate breakdown and civilisation collapse’. Will their protest be a catalyst for change?”
I can hardly think of anything I would enjoy reading about more on a frigid morning in March, so I click.
What I read is predictable but still sad, peppered with photos of earnest looking young women who report being so traumatized by the current state of affairs, whether politically, or environmentally, that they’ve opted out of procreation indefinitely, until or unless things dramatically improve.
The pain these women express as having motivated their decision to forgo motherhood is real, and their concerns are sincere. But the conclusions they have reached are so vastly upside down, so diametrically opposed to reality, such a radical rejection of what it means to be human, that it is hard to read them without getting angry.
Because these women have been fooled. They have bought into the most fundamental lie of all, that we can be like God, can take matters firmly into our own hands, and that we can save ourselves.
Most distressing and ironic is that in rejecting the possibility of motherhood, they are choosing to reject the very thing that makes us most like God: the ability to bring new life into the world, formed in His image and likeness.
I can hardly think of a more diabolical or effective strategy than one which would seek to convince women that in order to save the world, they must forgo participating in the creation of humanity.
Is it any wonder that satan would invert the order of salvation, convincing women that though it was through one woman’s fiat salvation entered the world, now that humanity is all grown up, woke as we are, we find our salvation on our own terms and by our own hands, through the closing of our wombs?
I don’t fault any woman who falls into this trap; many of us have been relentlessly instructed as to the grave dangers of our fertility, almost from infancy.
Even if we received a different message at home or in church, the incessant drumbeat of the culture and the media are loud and clear: fertility is a liability, femininity is a disability, and motherhood is a degradation and a sometimes dangerous demotion.
In order to retain our autonomy and minimize our risk and, apparently, to save the planet, perhaps it is best we not give birth to any sort of future at all, save for one which we create ourselves, for ourselves.
At its heart, rejection of procreation is a rejection of eternity, a rejection of the future.
It is also an echo, however little those who speak it might realize, of the very first non servium uttered in all of creation. It mimics the father of death in his refusal to submit to a larger vision than his own, to participate in a plan outside of his own control and design.
Reject the framework you’ve been given by your Creator, reject the mission He has revealed for you, and it’s no great leap to reject the Creator Himself.
The most audacious and revolutionary thing that a woman can do is to nurture new life into existence in a world gone dim, whether she nurtures that life in her womb or in her heart.
This is the world-shaking, culture-shaping power of motherhood. Its fruits outlive any regime, and its impact outlives any policy or programming.
To speak fierce, radical life into this flaccid, decaying culture of death, to say that come what may, I will choose to shepherd more of God into this world, to stake my life, my livelihood, and my own comfort on the possibility that He has something bigger in mind. . . this is true activism.
Don’t let the world sell you short, women. This is our moment.
“And who knows but that you have come into the kingdom for such a time as this.” – many of us are familiar with that line from the book of Esther. I think the line directly preceding it might be even more crucial: “For if you keep silent at this time, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another place, but you and your father’s house will perish.”
We can’t let ourselves be fooled by what passes for wisdom in this day and age. God has something so much grander in mind for us.
