Time to populate?

Last weekend I chose for my journal passage for the day Leviticus 26:9, which goes: “I will look on you with favour and increase your numbers, and I will keep my covenant with you”.
One of the promises of God is fruitfulness – His people will be fruitful and will increase in numbers and be blessed in the land. God will make His dwelling in their midst.

This got me wondering. I considered my friends around the same vintage as myself – coming in to what has been traditionally the grandparent years. I was surprised when I realised how few of us had become grandparents and those that had with only one or two grand-children.

This is observation rather than statistical argument, but the trend towards later reproduction and small families seems to be very marked. There can be many legitimate reasons why people do not have children, or many children, but I wonder whether we are de-populating ourselves out of existence as a western culture? Many other cultures seem less inhibited about having large families. Whether the demise of western culture be a good or bad thing may be another issue, but it seems to be inevitable that purely by demographics the kind of culture many of us inherited (of European origins) is down to its last few decades of existence.

However, more particularly, from a Christian perspective, I wonder if we are robbing ourselves of God’s blessings and intentions by having small families. It seems to me that larger families can have a lot going for them, being a stronger and richer community of people. Roman Catholics have been better than Protestants at having larger families, and it is a significant reason for the growth of that denomination. It is easier to make disciples of your own children (not necessarily easy!) than it is of anyone else.

My conclusion from this would be to encourage couples to have more children rather than less. Yes, it is a lot of work and there are economic issues to work through, and it may not be appropriate for all, but I am making a general principle. The environmentalists tell us the world has too many people, but it sure doesn’t have too many Christian people. Grandparents already do a lot in many families and this is appropriate – one of the reasons other cultures have larger families is that they are raised by the wider family not just the parents in isolation.

What do you think? Is it time to think again about family life today? Are our economic aspirations too high or is it simply too hard to make ends meet? What could we as a church do to better support and encourage families today? Should my friends and I be challenged to be foster grand-parents to share the load? How do we fulfil God’s promises to increase in numbers?