Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 550 ｜ The Earth Needs More Babies, Not Fewer

00:00:00.000 Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. Happy Tuesday. Hope everyone is having a wonderful week

00:00:13.520 so far. Today's episode is brought to you by Good Ranchers. They've got completely

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00:00:30.840 slash Allie. All right, today we are talking about one of my favorite topics and that is the family

00:00:37.240 and specifically why having a family and having children is objectively good and important. But

00:00:43.840 we're also going to talk about overpopulation and this idea that it's actually irresponsible to have

00:00:50.500 children. And Elon Musk actually just tweeted something. I didn't know he was going to tweet

00:00:56.620 it, but it fits right in line with what we are talking about today. He said this, he said,

00:01:01.740 we should be much more worried about population collapse. He said, UN projections are utter

00:01:07.540 nonsense. Just multiply last year's births by life expectancy. Given downward trend in birth rate,

00:01:13.520 that is best case unless reversed. And of course, I believe that he is onto something. I think

00:01:20.460 overpopulation, as we will discuss thoroughly today, is not the problem that we are facing. I think the

00:01:26.800 bigger problem that we are facing, not just practically when we're talking about the consequences

00:01:32.840 of a reduced number of births, but also culturally, socially, morally. I want to talk about what this

00:01:42.240 says about what we believe about children and about human nature as a society. Because as the statistics

00:01:49.860 show us, people are having less children, and it is due to the priorities that we have as a country,

00:01:57.360 which I think links back to what we believe about human nature and what we even believe about God

00:02:02.840 himself. Now, this is not something that was being argued even 50 years ago, 20 years ago, that having

00:02:11.980 children is not something that's super important. But this is something that must be argued for and defended

00:02:19.080 today because a large percentage of Americans in the West as a whole does not actually believe that

00:02:24.800 having kids is important. There was this New Yorker cartoon that I saw being circulated on Instagram

00:02:30.160 that one of you shared with me. It was a couple watering plants, and one of them asked as the cartoon

00:02:37.340 caption read, do you think we'll regret having two plants and a bucket of pebbles instead of children

00:02:42.340 one day? And then the caption to this cartoon said, probably not. And then there were hundreds of

00:02:49.300 comments that were agreeing with this, of course, laughing about the fact that, oh, you just need

00:02:53.460 more than two plants. Having plants instead of children is great. And this is a burgeoning trend.

00:02:59.260 We've talked about it before. People are beginning to use this term child-free instead of child-less.

00:03:06.720 There's a book called Child-Free by Choice that talks about this kind of movement. There is also

00:03:12.080 a huge anti-natalism push that claims to exist for the sake of the world, for the sake of the common

00:03:18.020 good, for the sake of the climate. And according to Pew Research, only 34% of Americans today believe

00:03:25.120 that society is better off if people prioritize getting married and having children. 64% believe,

00:03:33.900 according to this Pew study, that society is just as well off if they have other priorities ahead

00:03:39.400 of starting a family. White evangelicals holding down the fort as the only religious group with a

00:03:45.880 majority of people who believe that society is better off with starting a family as a priority. But it's

00:03:54.260 not a large majority of white evangelicals. It's only 56%. Only 50% of Republicans believe that this should

00:04:01.060 be a top priority. And of course, a much smaller percentage of Democrats. But this is yet another

00:04:07.140 reason why I don't care really about political labels. Yes, I vote Republican, but the party as a

00:04:13.540 whole just isn't nearly conservative enough for me. It's weak. And in many ways, it's functionally

00:04:18.720 progressive. So I don't really align with either political party. The things that I talk about,

00:04:24.520 while they do tend to align with conservative philosophy, to me, they're pre-political.

00:04:29.460 They are biblical issues that have become political and cultural. That's why I talk about the things

00:04:33.760 that I do. I am in that smaller percentage of Americans who believes that America is drastically

00:04:40.340 worse off when marriage and children are not a top priority. And this episode is about why,

00:04:47.180 both theologically and a little bit practically, why I believe those things. Now, I can't expect to

00:04:54.020 convince non-Christians on this subject. And maybe I don't even really care to because there is 1.00

00:04:59.860 obviously work to do among my own cohort, among people who identify loosely as evangelicals, people

00:05:07.300 who profess to be Christians. And so I want to do this from a biblical perspective. I want my fellow

00:05:13.900 Christians to be thoroughly convinced of this. But we really have to kind of back up and look at where 0.92

00:05:20.380 this idea of antinatalism and not having kids for the sake of the common good and sake of the universe,

00:05:26.420 where that actually comes from. But first, let's continue to set this up with a look at where our views

00:05:31.980 are right now as Americans. Another study by Pew Research found that the share of non-parents under the

00:05:38.120 age of 50 who say that they are very likely never to have kids is up from 2018. So 32% say today that

00:05:47.760 are very likely never to have kids versus only 26% four years ago. 44% today are saying that they

00:05:55.460 are not too likely or not at all likely to have children. 44% of people under the age of 50.

00:06:02.360 As for reasons non-parents choose not to have children today, the study says 56% say that they

00:06:08.780 just don't want to. So it's not for medical or financial reasons. They just don't feel like having

00:06:13.800 kids. According to a CDC study from last year, the U.S. birth rate fell to the lowest point in a century,

00:06:21.060 dropping by 4% in 2020, the biggest single-year decrease in almost 50 years.

00:06:28.900 U.N. data shows that worldwide birth rates have declined dramatically. The U.N. predicts that will

00:06:34.980 continue to drop. And of course, that is a desire of the U.N., which is why I think they simultaneously

00:06:42.040 project, as Elon Musk said, that the world is just going to be over, you know, over-encumbered,

00:06:47.240 over-populated. The U.N. sees overpopulation as a huge detriment to the alleviation of poverty and

00:06:54.760 the protection of the climate. We hear this from people, as we will talk about more in a few minutes,

00:07:02.300 we hear this from people like Jane Goodall at the World Economic Forum or Bill Gates,

00:07:05.560 or the many sophisticated academics and climate scientists who blame human misery on the existence

00:07:12.660 of too many humans. And so let's examine that claim as someone, you know, as someone who also wants the

00:07:19.760 alleviation of misery and the mitigation of poverty and despair and all of these things. Let's look at

00:07:27.140 that assertion that overpopulation is really our biggest problem, which is what we keep hearing from

00:07:31.900 the intelligentsia and have heard for a very long time. So the assertion that overpopulation is our

00:07:40.160 biggest problem is actually a theory. It's not a proven fact. And as I will try to argue,

00:07:45.960 it's actually a myth. There is no actual science supporting the idea that more people are a hindrance

00:07:52.780 to ecological protection or economic development. This warning of overpopulation first came from an

00:08:00.160 economist and a clergyman named Thomas Malthus in 1789. He wrote that the abundance and production

00:08:08.060 of food in the society leads to more population growth, but then population growth leads to less

00:08:15.220 food. Thus, he argued that if human beings continue to multiply, societies would be thrown into poverty and

00:08:22.360 famine and disease and misery. And this is often referred to as the Malthusian catastrophe.

00:08:28.660 Early evolutionary biologists were influenced by Malthus, including Charles Darwin. It was after 0.55

00:08:36.800 reading Malthus that Darwin is said to have developed his theory of natural selection. As you guys know,

00:08:43.240 this is the idea that the strongest and the most adaptable organisms are most likely to endure and to

00:08:48.500 reproduce. These theories also lay the groundwork for eugenics in the 19th century. So Francis Galton,

00:08:56.160 who is Darwin's cousin, who was Darwin's cousin, invented the term eugenics in 1883. He wrote a book called

00:09:03.040 Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development, in which he argued for the importance of creating a human race

00:09:09.400 quote, good in stock and hereditarily endowed with noble qualities. The Encyclopedia of Genocide notes this

00:09:18.060 about Galton as a pioneer of eugenics. So it says this, eugenics is a term coined in 1883 by Francis

00:09:26.760 Galton, an English scientist and half cousin of Charles Darwin. Galton defined eugenics as a science

00:09:33.240 that would give the more suitable races a better chance of prevailing over the less suitable. Galton

00:09:38.480 came close to justifying genocide, asserting that there exists a sentiment for the most, for the most

00:09:44.820 part, quite unreasonable against the gradual extinction of an inferior race. So he's saying

00:09:51.440 that people, in his view, irrationally are against driving people who you consider inferior into

00:10:02.440 extinction. Eugenicist, the encyclopedia goes on to say, would be strong supporters of Nazi racial policy

00:10:09.700 and many contemporary eugenics advocates continue to justify genocide. And then it goes on to say how

00:10:17.820 these ideas influence the ideology of Nazism and the extermination of different kinds of ethnic and

00:10:28.660 religious minorities throughout history. So not only did eugenics closely link itself with Nazism,

00:10:38.160 it was also influential on the pioneers of birth control and abortion in the United States, namely

00:10:43.860 Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood. And actually, it was Sanger, an American eugenicist

00:10:50.780 who are said to have influenced parts of the Nazi ideology of the superiority of the Aryan race.

00:10:56.660 In a 1939 letter to Clarence Gamble, Sanger explains the underlying motive that was behind

00:11:03.320 what was called the Negro Project. She said, quote,

00:11:06.700 We don't want words to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population, Margaret Sanger says.

00:11:12.920 And the African-American minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of

00:11:18.420 their more rebellious members. That is the founder of Planned Parenthood, who, by the way, is still

00:11:24.240 aborting a disproportionate number of black babies today.

00:11:28.400 This is right in line with Galton's desire to turn eugenics from a kind of science to a kind of 0.64

00:11:36.740 religion in which people saw the extinction of inferior kinds of people as a common good.

00:11:43.440 So Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, was carrying on Galton's legacy and

00:11:48.780 desire through Planned Parenthood. So Malthus's theory of overpopulation influenced Darwin,

00:11:54.440 the pioneer of the theory of evolution and natural selection, which then influenced Francis Galton,

00:12:00.040 the pioneer of eugenics, which then influenced the Nazis and other genocidal actors, as well as 0.77

00:12:05.860 Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood and history's first and fiercest advocate for

00:12:10.880 legal and accessible birth control. And if we want to keep drawing the line, 2014 Planned Parenthood

00:12:17.340 gave the Margaret Sanger Award to Hillary Clinton for her support for, quote, abortion rights.

00:12:23.020 This is an amazing legacy, isn't it? Amazing connections. We haven't even gotten to the

00:12:28.120 kicker yet. OK, so the kicker in all of this, obviously, we know that these ideas have been

00:12:34.320 damaging and literally deadly, resulting in the murder of millions of ethnic and religious 1.00

00:12:38.320 minorities and pre-born babies. But it is also based on a theory that has been completely debunked.

00:12:45.600 So the Malthusian catastrophe, this idea that overpopulation leads to food shortages and misery,

00:12:50.820 has been disproven. So Malthus was writing right at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution

00:12:56.300 in almost an exclusively agricultural age. And while the Industrial Revolution had its own

00:13:02.120 problems, we know that it obviously completely changed the game for food production. So thanks

00:13:07.240 to technology, mechanics, the factories that cropped up during the Industrial Revolution,

00:13:14.000 the industrialization of food production, there was an abundance of food far beyond what was needed

00:13:19.540 to keep the population alive. So what did that show? It showed that human beings as drivers of

00:13:25.180 innovation are a credit to the world, not a debit. See, the idea that really drove Malthus was that

00:13:32.400 humans are just like animals in that they are breeding indiscriminately without any thought to

00:13:39.240 available resources and without the ability to change their environment. And really, Darwin's theory

00:13:44.680 of natural selection held the same assumption, that just like animals, since he believed that human

00:13:50.040 beings are just evolved animals, human beings would need to weed out the types of humans that couldn't 1.00

00:13:55.240 withstand hardship or certain environments, couldn't fend for themselves, weren't resourceful enough to

00:14:00.640 survive. So he saw humans basically as helpless victims of the earth and of their environment, being forced to

00:14:08.240 adapt to it. And he and Malthus, as well as Galton, considered part of that adaptation to be the death and

00:14:15.820 the extinction of people who could not adapt. Galton just thought that the extinction of people who could

00:14:21.800 not adapt also perhaps justified genocide and mass murder, which even if he didn't intend to support

00:14:31.140 those policies, that is certainly how people took his ideas to their fullest extent in the 20th century.

00:14:39.580 But the fact is, human beings are not animals. Human beings are not helpless adapters to their

00:14:46.360 environment. They have the unique ability to adapt the world to meet their needs. Hence, the invention of

00:14:52.940 technology that gave us the ability to feed people more easily than ever before. That's what Malthus

00:14:57.980 didn't understand, didn't realize. And it wasn't just the mechanisms of mass food production that

00:15:04.120 exploded after Malthus' theories were published. The Industrial Revolution paved the way for discovering

00:15:10.480 innovation and technology that drove advancements in medicine and sanitation in the 19th and 20th

00:15:16.440 century that extended the average human lifespan by decades and dramatically reduced extreme poverty,

00:15:22.640 especially over the last 40 years. So get this, we have far fewer people living in extreme poverty

00:15:31.040 today than we did in 1820, which is remarkable considering how many more people we have on earth

00:15:38.480 today. So let's really understand that. According to our world and data, there were 990 million people in

00:15:47.620 the world, almost 1 billion people in 1800, and almost all of them were living in extreme poverty.

00:15:54.240 Today, there are almost 8 billion people in the world, and 733 million are living in extreme poverty.

00:16:01.860 So we're not just talking about the percentage of people today being lower than the percentage of

00:16:06.460 extremely poor people in the early 1800s. We are actually talking about the number of people being

00:16:12.440 lower. That is actually stunning. That alone is enough to debunk the theory of overpopulation.

00:16:20.160 So as the world population has increased, extreme poverty has decreased. That means the resources we

00:16:26.840 have, including natural resources that help us provide our food and water to people, as well as jobs and

00:16:34.080 wealth, have done more than enough to keep up with our demand. Why? Because human contrived,

00:16:42.020 innovation works. Human beings have found ways to care for themselves and each other as the

00:16:49.100 population has grown exponentially. And you know what's amazing? You know what's amazing is that

00:16:54.780 propaganda like the 1619 Project and all Marxist works today, which are so pervasive and influential,

00:17:01.840 claim that oppression and capitalism are inextricably linked, specifically that capitalism is to blame for

00:17:08.340 systems like slavery. That is exactly wrong. Capitalism, markets, supply and demand made possible

00:17:15.100 through industrialization and global trade, which rewards innovation, has been the driving force behind

00:17:21.080 the reduction of suffering that is caused by extreme poverty. That doesn't mean that, for example,

00:17:27.920 regimes like China have not oppressed their people in the name of supply and demand. There are certainly

00:17:35.920 evils that have come with the globalization of the market and are exporting of our own factories and

00:17:44.580 manufacturing in the United States because of the demand for cheap goods. There are certainly

00:17:50.200 problems innate with that. But if you are just looking at the reduction of extreme poverty over the past

00:17:58.180 past couple of centuries and especially over the past half century, you have the markets, you have

00:18:05.340 capitalism to thank for that. The growth of industry, of technology, of factories in the northern United

00:18:12.600 States is what helped make obvious the irrationality of the slave-driven agricultural industry of the 0.97

00:18:18.000 South. That plus a much deeper and stronger motive, which was Christianity. So the first and second Great 0.99

00:18:24.320 Awakenings, periods of revival for the Christian church, corresponded with the abolition of slavery

00:18:29.040 in the West. There were some not so great things that came out of the Great Awakenings, like the birth of

00:18:34.400 cults and denominations without a biblical foundation. But the Lord used these periods to further spread the

00:18:41.040 gospel and the principles of Christianity to the world. Wilberforce, the British politician who was one of the

00:18:47.100 most famous abolitionists driven by the gospel to be the spearhead of slavery abolition in the Western

00:18:55.380 world. He saw his public duty and his Christian duty as inextricably intertwined. He truly embodied what we

00:19:03.840 talk about so much on this podcast that politics matter because policy matters, because people matter. He lived

00:19:10.080 that out. And now, of course, today, Wilberforce would be castigated and condemned as a Christian 1.00

00:19:17.000 nationalist by progressives because he believed that society should be shaped on biblical principles,

00:19:23.280 founded on biblical principles, shaped by biblical principles, and that his job in the public sphere

00:19:28.280 was to advance the cause of Christianity and to let the gospel shape policy. That was his motive behind

00:19:35.360 abolishing slavery or pushing for the abolition of slavery and ending the human suffering that was caused

00:19:41.760 by it. He said this, quote, to live our lives and miss that great purpose we were designed to accomplish is truly a sin.

00:19:49.780 It is inconceivable that we could be bored in a world with so much wrong to tackle, so much ignorance to reach,

00:19:56.180 and so much misery we could alleviate. Yes and amen. He believed one of the Christian duties was to tackle wrong and to

00:20:04.660 alleviate misery. Now note, he did not say that this is the only Christian duty. He is not presenting what would be the 0.88

00:20:13.340 liberal social gospel in which a person's salvation is earned through social justice and achieving so-called

00:20:18.640 liberation. No, that line of thinking is actually founded upon Marx, who was influenced by Darwin and the schools of

00:20:25.320 thought that got us into this whole anti-human mess in the first place. Wilberforce argued that the saving grace of the

00:20:32.080 gospel, that we are saved by grace through faith in Christ, and in that we are driven to give his love

00:20:41.840 and his compassion to other people, that Christianity forces humans to look upon the oppression of our

00:20:49.380 fellow man and to seek to relieve him from it. And Wilberforce wasn't in a vacuum, neither was slavery

00:20:56.220 abolition. And what I mean by that is advancements in human rights, the dramatic decrease in

00:21:01.840 extreme poverty coincided with the globalization of Christianity in the Great Awakenings and the advancement of 0.99

00:21:08.420 technology and industry. The exact opposite of what we hear from academia and the political elite in the scientific

00:21:15.180 community today, which is that we should derive our policies, our theories, and even our morality from Darwin and his

00:21:22.060 theories. But again, what did we uncover? Darwin was influenced by Malthus, largely, not completely, but largely, whose

00:21:29.840 Malthusian catastrophe has been debunked by the fact that as the human population has surged, poverty has

00:21:35.400 decreased. Darwin's faulty conclusions influenced Galton, the father of eugenics, whose ideas influenced

00:21:41.060 Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, and other eugenicists whose ideas helped inspire and

00:21:46.120 justify the genocides of the 20th century, including the extermination of over 6 million Jews by Hitler, and

00:21:52.480 of course, the extermination of tens of millions of wiggling, feeling living babies inside the womb through 0.93

00:21:59.300 today. And these ideas, these debunked ideas, these ideas that have led to mass slaughter, they are the

00:22:06.380 foundation of the secular humanism that still guides people, influential people to this day.

00:22:11.700 Influential broadcaster David Attenborough told the BBC, in the long run, population growth has to come to

00:22:22.040 an end. There are some reasons for thinking that will happen almost inevitably. Interesting. He has said

00:22:29.440 similar things at the World Economic Forum. And if you want to know the significance of the World Economic

00:22:35.280 Forum, I really encourage you to listen to a few past episodes, which I will link in the description.

00:22:41.700 of this episode. Bill Gates has said the same thing at the World Economic Forum. Jane Goodall,

00:22:48.720 an environmentalist and animal rights activist, made a similar comment at the World Economic Forum.

00:22:55.460 She said, quote, all of these environmental things we talk about wouldn't be a problem if there was

00:23:00.500 the size of population that there was 500 years ago. Just to note, the world population 500 years ago

00:23:09.300 was about 500 or 420 and 540 million. So that's about 6.7 billion fewer people than there are today.

00:23:18.980 Even more than that, it's even bigger reduction than that, I believe. A couple interesting things

00:23:25.320 to note in all of this. In 2003, Bill Gates said in an interview that his father was once the head of

00:23:30.700 Planned Parenthood. And the second interesting thing to note is that this is really a theme for the World

00:23:36.060 Economic Forum and the people they invite. They're some of the richest and the most influential people

00:23:41.740 in the world. I hate to sound conspiratorial, but it is well documented that people considered in the

00:23:48.580 elite class that frequents the World Economic Forum. So we're talking Warren Buffett, George Soros,

00:23:54.220 are all big donors to Planned Parenthood and other abortion organizations. Listen to this by

00:23:59.740 Life News, and I'll include a link to this article. Warren Buffett's daughter Susie told

00:24:05.500 the Chronicle of Philanthropy in 1997 that her father has always believed that population control

00:24:11.700 was, quote, the biggest and most important issue. And Roger Lowenstein said in his 1995 biography

00:24:18.660 that Buffett had a, quote, Malthusian dread that overpopulation would aggravate problems in all

00:24:26.620 other areas such as food, housing, even human survival. That's incredible. The people who are

00:24:33.320 some of the biggest influences on policy today have bought into the myth of the Malthusian

00:24:38.560 catastrophe that has led them to fund abortion and to warn about the dangers of overpopulation,

00:24:44.520 which has manifested itself in who knows how many deadly policies. I mean, if you think that

00:24:50.940 overpopulation is an existential threat and you believe it is your duty to stop it for the sake of the

00:24:56.380 common good and you have all the capital and power in the world to do it, what would be your limiting

00:25:01.620 principle? I mean, you don't believe in God. What would be your boundary? Obviously, they won't stop

00:25:07.420 at killing babies living and squirming in their mother's wombs. Obviously, they won't stop at pushing 1.00

00:25:12.440 birth control on women, which has known side effects such as the potential of breast cancer. I mean, it just

00:25:17.780 makes you wonder, is this what's behind some of the propaganda and entertainment that glorifies

00:25:23.060 prolonged singleness? Is this why so many shows today show couples in their 40s with one kid who's

00:25:28.480 usually a toddler? The answer is probably, if I'm being fair, it's probably yes and no. I think most

00:25:36.920 people don't realize the mythical dangerous ideas that influence cultural change, progressive cultural

00:25:43.020 change in values. They just adopt the values and they think that they're just being evolved people.

00:25:48.360 Um, and they got these values from being more, quote, educated and progressive. And what they

00:25:54.220 typically mean is that they, like, watched a Netflix show or they started following an account that post

00:25:59.120 convincing memes. And that's what they mean by they got educated and they were evolved on these issues.

00:26:05.220 So the culture, our entertainment, our education, our media, um, is all colored with these ideas,

00:26:13.500 either because they are trying to push propaganda and they believe that, you know, having just one

00:26:21.220 child when you're 45 years old is better for society, or they just don't realize why they are pushing these

00:26:27.440 ideas because it's just become the cultural norm. The idea today is that the responsible thing to do

00:26:33.680 is to not have kids, or at least to not have more than one. The fun thing to do is to not get married.

00:26:40.860 The acceptable thing to do is to not have a family at all, just to live for yourself. Isn't that so

00:26:46.200 freeing and liberating? And all of this is built on a farcical idea that has built a deadly ideology.

00:26:54.200 But just as it was a century ago in the face of eugenics, and just as it was two centuries ago in the 0.55

00:27:00.680 face of slavery, Christianity is still the antidote to this deadly madness. Christianity 1.00

00:27:07.640 stands against the injustices perpetuated by secular humanism. Now, does that mean that Christians, 0.57

00:27:14.020 people who profess to be Christians, haven't perpetuated injustice? Of course not. Malthus 0.99

00:27:18.860 was a clergyman. Christians throughout history condoned the African slave trade. But these people 0.92

00:27:26.080 were demonstrations of people who had bad theology, who professed to be Christians while failing to

00:27:31.200 represent the Christianity that is so clearly represented in scripture. The first chapter of

00:27:36.440 which is sufficient in deconstructing the entire edifice of the secular humanism that has justified

00:27:42.540 to humanization and genocide. First verse of the biblical canon, in the beginning, God created the

00:27:48.860 heavens and the earth. Then verse 27 of the first chapter of the Bible. So God created man in his own

00:27:55.480 image. In the image of God, he created him. Male and female, he created them. This establishes two

00:28:02.860 principles fundamentally opposed to the havoc wreaked by perpetuators of the overpopulation myth.

00:28:09.540 God created the universe. That's one. Therefore, he and he alone has the authority over it.

00:28:14.980 While people who warn of overpopulation use this fear mongering to justify their social engineering of

00:28:20.360 society and funding of deadly policies like abortion and sterilization and assisted suicide,

00:28:25.740 God has the true authority. And he is sovereign over the growth of the earth and everything in it,

00:28:32.000 including the human population. This is the same God who commands humans in Genesis 1.22 to be fruitful

00:28:38.640 and multiply. This is the same God who says in Psalm 127.3 that children are a heritage from the Lord,

00:28:45.640 a blessing to those who bear them. This is the same Jesus who welcomes the children to him in Matthew

00:28:52.140 19, touches the weak and the infirm and the disabled and heals many of them throughout the

00:28:57.760 gospels. That Jesus is a threat to the eugenicist and the ideology that drives it. This is the same God

00:29:05.860 whose world will not be destroyed by climate change. Heyo, because its fate is in his hands. Controversial

00:29:13.880 thing to say. Genesis 8.22. While the earth remains, seed time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and

00:29:21.920 winter, day and night shall not cease. This is the same God who, of course, forbids murder Genesis 9 and

00:29:30.860 in the Ten Commandments, even if it's for the, quote, common good. These ideas, rooted in the authority

00:29:38.420 of God and his creation of people as image bearers and therefore of equal dignity and respect lay the

00:29:45.460 groundwork for the abolition of slavery, for the establishment of charities, orphanages, women's

00:29:51.700 shelters, hospitals, universities, and more. And yes, while the authors of the Constitution of the United

00:29:57.580 States may not have lived out these Christian principles completely themselves, since many of

00:30:03.380 them actually own slaves, the words they penned that men were created equal with certain inalienable

00:30:09.160 rights that can't be taken away by the government because they're not given by the government because

00:30:13.460 they're given by an authority God who is transcendent, who is higher than the government. That idea planted

00:30:19.160 the seed of liberty and the self-governance to which each human being is entitled that grew into the

00:30:24.820 freest and the most prosperous nation that has ever existed, who in her short span has righted wrongs

00:30:30.200 more quickly than any society throughout history, even with all of our many, many warts.

00:30:36.300 All of this to say, departure from Christianity will always eventually end in oppression. One major 0.56

00:30:43.240 form of oppression we are seeing today is the systemic control of population or the effort to

00:30:48.240 systemically control population through antinatalist and anti-family propaganda, through abortion, through

00:30:53.760 assisted suicide, and a push for mass sterilization in many parts of the world today, especially third world

00:30:59.980 countries. And all of this is helped, of course, by the breakdown of the nuclear family, which I 0.91

00:31:07.200 define as mom-dad-children, as well as the fierce push we see for sexual and gender confusion. This is

00:31:15.520 another departure from God's design, as we see in Genesis 1, which doesn't just tell us that he made

00:31:20.860 humans in his image, but also tells us that he made them male and female in his image, as is repeated

00:31:27.020 throughout Scripture, including by Jesus himself in Matthew 19, a reality that has both physical and

00:31:32.300 eternal significance, as we reiterated yesterday. These are biological categories, not categories of

00:31:39.520 quote, gender identity. They're not social constructs. Gender identity is a concept that we have outlined

00:31:46.180 many times. We've traced back to its disturbing roots in the 1960s. So many of the damaging ideas that we see

00:31:53.480 today are really not new. They're rooted in philosophies and ideas that have actually been

00:31:58.680 debunked, and yet it seems that the people who hold them just continue to double down on them.

00:32:04.980 And once again, who is placed on the altar of this cultural change that is the sexual and gender 0.89

00:32:12.220 revolution that is trying to upend everything that we know about sex and the family and the importance of

00:32:18.380 the presence of a father and a mother and the definitions of male and female, the people who

00:32:24.140 are placed on this altar are women and children. Always. They always are. As I say, often children 1.00

00:32:31.140 are always the unconsenting subjects and progressive social experiments, but so are women because women 1.00

00:32:37.520 and children are the most vulnerable. Women who are forced into spaces and competitions with men much 0.93

00:32:41.860 stronger than them. Children who are being detached from their mother or father through surrogacy and sperm

00:32:46.540 donation to satiate the modern redefinition of marriage and who are also being detached from their own

00:32:51.860 bodies through absolute hogwash about gender. God's design and intention for human beings and for the

00:32:59.020 family are for his glory, but they're also for our good, not just individually, but societally. When we move

00:33:04.500 past that, oppression flourishes. The biblical perspective of human beings is that they add value to the

00:33:12.020 world. They don't detract from it. Everywhere we see childbearing discussed in scripture, we see it in a

00:33:18.920 positive light. We never see any directive, just getting real, to put career or travel or plant or pets before

00:33:28.000 children. There's nothing that teaches a person about love, compassion, responsibility, self-sacrifice, forgiveness,

00:33:35.840 and perseverance like parenting. There are a few things that show us God's love for us and the

00:33:41.720 immensity of the sacrifice involved in giving up his son to die on the cross for our sake like parenting.

00:33:50.020 Parenting gives you a deeper perspective of what's important as well as what's at stake when it comes to

00:33:55.920 political and cultural change. You're no longer impacting the world just for yourself, for your own

00:34:00.960 comfort, for your own security, for your own bottom line. You're thinking about your grandchildren.

00:34:04.900 And what kind of world do you want them to inherit? You no longer play the main character in your own

00:34:10.100 life. Your needs, your wants no longer come first. The hopes and the fears that you once obsessed over

00:34:15.620 for yourself are immediately upon the arrival of your child transferred onto them. And toxic mommy 1.00

00:34:21.980 culture, as well as many feminists and left-wing politicians and influencers today, will tell you 0.83

00:34:27.360 that that's a bad thing, that motherhood will make you lose yourself, that marriage will trap you, 0.99

00:34:31.640 that divorce for the sake of sheer happiness is worth it, and that you need to find a way to be

00:34:36.780 liberated from the unfair expectations of mothering and marriage to, quote, find yourself. That's a lie.

00:34:43.240 It's a lie. When you become a wife and a mom, that is who you are. Yes, you have other interests that

00:34:50.220 aren't exclusive to marriage and parenting, and that's great, but you don't have some kind of separate

00:34:55.700 identity that's out there that you need to take a journey to find. It's a good thing that your

00:35:01.260 identity and who you are becomes wrapped up in the blessing of marriage and kids. Hyper-individualism

00:35:06.440 in the West has robbed us of the realization that family and community don't take away from who we

00:35:11.900 are, but become part of who we are. God made us, married or not, because not everyone is going to be

00:35:18.220 married, and that's okay, but God made us to be communal, interdependent beings because we are made

00:35:24.840 in His image, and He is in perpetual, eternal communion and fellowship with Himself between the Father,

00:35:30.020 Son, and the Holy Spirit. So even if you are not married, even if you cannot have children, and you want

00:35:36.660 to be, or you're feeling alone, feeling lonely is a normal part of the human experience, and because

00:35:44.380 not everyone is called to be married, and because not everyone is going to have children, God has

00:35:50.760 provided you a family in the church. You are made to be a part of a family, which is exactly what you

00:35:57.320 are adopted into when you come to faith in Christ. The church should do, I understand, the church should

00:36:04.060 do a much better job of ensuring that single people are treated as family, cultivating meaningful

00:36:09.420 friendships. Jesus was not married. Jesus didn't have, you know, physical children. So surely singleness

00:36:15.440 for many people isn't simply a waiting period before marriage, but is in itself the fullness of

00:36:21.380 of a gift of opportunity to worship God even more fully. And for those who do not have children,

00:36:29.680 your opportunity to mother is not gone. You have the opportunity to disciple, to teach, to mentor,

00:36:35.540 to influence, to encourage younger generations. And actually, Titus 2 commands that of us,

00:36:40.900 no matter our marital status. If you are married and can have children, do it. In more ways than one.

00:36:50.100 If you are not married and cannot have children, find a way to engage with the family of God and impact

00:36:59.140 the next generation for his glory. And for all of us, let us fight back against this dangerous,

00:37:05.900 bigoted, fear-mongering, deadly myth of overpopulation and antinatalism. Children are a

00:37:11.600 blessing. So let's push for policies that reflect that. Now, I'm not, you guys know I'm not talking

00:37:18.020 about policies that claim to help children through bigger government programs, which I believe the

00:37:23.200 government, the bigger it gets, the more intent it gets on usurping the authority of the church and the

00:37:28.400 family. So I'm not talking about that. Plus, those programs rarely actually achieve their intended

00:37:32.820 goals or their purported goals. Now, I'm not saying that all government programs are off the

00:37:37.660 table completely, but that's not what I'm primarily talking about. I'm talking about policies that honor

00:37:42.200 the family, which in turn honor the image of God, especially the most vulnerable image bearers,

00:37:48.060 women and children. I mean, it's really no wonder that left-wing ideology has this common theme of

00:37:53.160 sacrificing children, abortion, gender ideology, even COVID restrictions that do not keep kids

00:37:58.280 healthy, but just harm their ability to learn and to develop and to function normally socially.

00:38:04.580 School closures. It's no wonder they're pushing all of these things. It's rooted. Their entire

00:38:09.340 ideology is rooted in an anti-human, secular humanism, an anti-human ideology that goes back

00:38:15.300 centuries. Christians throughout history have pushed back against it. And today we're scared,

00:38:21.100 of course, to do so because we don't want to be called names. It's hard to go against the mainstream.

00:38:26.300 It's hard to be human salmon going upstream while everyone is going downstream. It's hard to swim

00:38:32.260 against the current. I understand. And quite frankly, it's also because many of us don't know

00:38:36.920 our Bibles. We have no idea why God calls us male and female. We have no idea why God created marriage

00:38:42.260 the way he did. We have no idea the importance of family and childbearing. We have no idea our history.

00:38:47.400 We have no idea about the foundation of the United States. We just don't know. And so we buy into the

00:38:54.580 propaganda. We are endlessly influenced by the evangelism of the culture. And we just don't

00:39:01.140 have the bravery and sometimes the knowledge to be able to stand up against it. But the good thing is

00:39:06.640 that's not irreversible. Our ignorance and our fear is not irreversible. So that's why, as we talked

00:39:15.160 about last Monday, this is the time right now to commit to courage and clarity. God did not put you

00:39:21.700 and your children and your children's children here and now arbitrarily or accidentally. I know that we

00:39:29.440 like to get nostalgic and we like to think about how things were. I wish that we lived a hundred years

00:39:33.800 ago. I wish that we lived 50 years ago when things were more sane. I completely understand that. I can relate

00:39:38.740 to that. But I know that God is a purposeful God, that he does things with intention. He does things

00:39:45.280 with specificity. And so if I'm here now, if you're here now, we are supposed to be facing the cultural

00:39:51.600 moral battles that we are facing. Just as every generation has had their particular challenges, we have

00:39:58.920 ours. We have to be equipped to face them with courage and clarity. Our courage and clarity comes from

00:40:03.780 the Holy Spirit and the Word of God. Nowhere else. The two things that the church needs so desperately

00:40:09.840 today, courage and clarity. And I hope by the grace of God on this subject, I've given you a little bit

00:40:16.320 of that today. All right, guys, hope you enjoyed that episode. If you love Relatable, please leave us a

00:40:25.440 five-star review on Apple Podcasts. That would mean so much. Make sure you subscribe on YouTube as well.

00:40:30.880 And keep telling me what you want to hear, what you want to talk about over this next week. We've

00:40:35.880 still got a lot of content to cover over the next couple of days. We've got a good interview coming

00:40:40.500 up as well. So excited to get to that. And we will see you back here tomorrow.

Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - January 18, 2022

Ep 550 ｜ The Earth Needs More Babies, Not Fewer

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