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

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hey, this is Steve Day. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity, and reality itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles, faith, truth, and objective reality. We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort. We ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they leave, even when it's unpopular. This is a show for people who want honesty over hype and clarity over chaos. If you're looking for commentary grounded in conviction and unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed, you can watch this D-Day show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts. I hope you'll join us. Hey, guys, welcome to Relatable.

Starting point is 00:00:50 Happy Tuesday. Hope everyone is having a wonderful week so far. Today's episode is brought to you by Good Ranchers. They've got completely American-made craft beef better than organic chicken ships right to your front door, makes your life so much easier. We love Good Ranchers. Check them out at good ranchers.com slash alley. All right, today we are talking about one of my favorite topics, and that is the family and specifically why having a family and having children is objectively good and important. But we're also going to talk about overpopulation and this idea that it's actually irresponsible to have children. And Elon Musk actually just

Starting point is 00:01:32 tweeted something. I didn't know he was going to tweet it. But It fits right in line with what we are talking about today. He said this. He said we should be much more worried about population collapse. He said U.N. projections are utter nonsense. Just multiply last year's births by life expectancy. Given downward trend in birth rate, that is best case and less reversed. And of course, I believe that he is onto something.

Starting point is 00:01:59 I think overpopulation, as we will discuss thoroughly today, is not the problem that we are facing. I think the bigger problem that we're facing, not just practically when we're talking about the consequences of a reduced number of births, but also culturally, socially, morally. I want to talk about what this says, about what we believe about children and about human nature as a society. Because as the statistics show us, people are having less children. and it is due to the priorities that we have as a country, which I think links back to what we believe about human nature and what we even believe about God himself. Now, this is not something that was being argued even 50 years ago, 20 years ago, that having children is not something that's super important.

Starting point is 00:02:54 But this is something that must be argued for and defended today because a large percentage of Americans in the West is all. whole does not actually believe that having kids is important. There was this New Yorker cartoon that I saw being circulated on Instagram that one of you shared with me. It was a couple watering plants and one of them asked as the cartoon caption read, do you think we'll regret having two plants on a bucket of pebbles instead of children one day? And then the caption to this cartoon said, probably not. And then there were hundreds of comments that were agreeing with this, of course, laughing about the fact that, oh, you just need more than two plants. Having plants instead of children is great.

Starting point is 00:03:37 And this is a burgeoning trend. We've talked about it before. People are beginning to use this term child free instead of childless. There's a book called Child Free by choice that talks about this kind of movement. There is also a huge anti-natalism push that claims to exist for the sake of the world, for the sake of the common good, for the sake of the climate. And according to Pew Research, only 34% of Americans today believe that society is better off if people prioritize getting married and having children. 64% believe, according to this Pew study, that society is just as well off if they have other priorities ahead of starting a family. White evangelicals holding down the fort as the only religious group with a majority of people who believe that society is better off with a start. a family as a priority. But it's not a large majority of white evangelicals. It's only 56%. Only 50% of

Starting point is 00:04:38 Republicans believe that this should be a top priority. And of course, a much smaller percentage of Democrats. But this is yet another reason why I don't care really about political labels. Yes, I vote Republican, but the party as a whole just isn't nearly conservative enough for me. It's weak. And in many ways, it's functionally progressive. So I don't really align with either political party, the things that I talk about, while they do tend to align with conservative philosophy, to me, they're pre-political. They are biblical issues that have become political and cultural. That's why I talk about the things that I do. I am in that smaller percentage of Americans who believes that America is drastically worse off when marriage and children are not a top priority.

Starting point is 00:05:23 And this episode is about why, both theologically and a little bit practically, why I believe those things. Now, I can't expect to convince non-Christians on this subject, and maybe I don't even really care to because there is obviously work to do among my own cohort, among people who identify loosely as evangelicals, people who profess to be Christians. And so I want to do this from a biblical perspective. I want my fellow Christians to be thoroughly convinced of this,

Starting point is 00:05:55 but we really have to kind of back up and look at where this idea of antinatalism and not having kids for the sake of the common good and sake of the universe where that actually comes from. But first, let's continue to set this up with a look at where our views are right now as Americans. Another study by Pew Research found the share of non-parents under the age of 50 who say that they are very likely never to have kids is up from 2018. So 32% say today that they're very likely never to have kids versus only 26% for years ago. 44% today are saying that they are not too likely or not at all likely to have children. 44% of people under the age of 50. As for reasons, non-parents choose not to have children today. The study says 56% say that they just don't want to.

Starting point is 00:06:49 So it's not for medical or financial reasons. They just don't feel like having kids. According to a CDC study from last year, the U.S. birth rate fell to the lowest point in a century, dropping by 4% in 2020 the biggest single year decrease in almost 50 years. UN data shows that worldwide birth rates have declined dramatically. The UN predicts that will continue to drop. And of course, that is a desire of the UN, which is why I think they simultaneously project, as Elon Musk said, that the world. is just going to be over, you know, overencumbered, overpopulated. The UN sees overpopulation as a huge detriment to the alleviation of poverty and the protection

Starting point is 00:07:34 of the climate. We hear this from people, as we will talk about more in a few minutes. We hear this from people like Jane Goodall at the World Economic Forum or Bill Gates or the many sophisticated academics and climate scientists who blame human misery on the existence of two many humans. And so let's examine that claim as someone, you know, as someone who also wants the alleviation of misery and the mitigation of poverty and despair and all of these things. Let's look at that assertion that overpopulation is really our biggest problem, which is what we keep hearing from the intelligentsia and have heard for a very long time. Hey, this is Steve Deist. If you're

Starting point is 00:08:16 listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity, and reality itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles, faith, truth, and objective reality. We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort. We ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they leave, even when it's unpopular. This is a show for people who want honesty over hype and clarity over chaos. If you're looking for commentary grounded in conviction and unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed, you can watch this D-Day Show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get

Starting point is 00:08:52 podcasts. I hope you'll join us. So the assertion that overpopulation is our biggest problem is actually a theory. It's not a proven fact. And as I will try to argue, it's actually a myth. There is no actual science supporting the idea that more people are a hindrance to ecological protection or economic development. This warning of overpopulation first came from an economist and a clergyman named Thomas Malthus in 1789. He wrote that the abundance and production of food in a society leads to more population growth. But then population growth leads to less food. Thus, he argued that if human beings continue to multiply, societies would be thrown into poverty and famine and disease and misery, and this is often referred to as the Malthusian catastrophe.

Starting point is 00:09:47 Early evolutionary biologists were influenced by Malthus, including Charles Darwin. It was after reading Malthus that Darwin is said to have developed his theory of natural selection. As you guys know, this is the idea that the strongest and the most adaptable organisms are most likely to endure and to reproduce. These theories also lay the groundwork for eugenics in the 19th century. So Francis Galton, who is Darwin's cousin, who was Darwin's cousin, who was Darwin's cousin, invented the term eugenics in 1883. He wrote a book called Inquiries into Human Faculty in its Development, in which he argued for the importance of creating a human race, quote, good in stock

Starting point is 00:10:29 and hereditarily endowed with noble qualities. The Encyclopedia of Genocide notes this about Gouton as a pioneer of eugenics. So it says this. Eugenics is a term coined in 1883 by Francis Gouten, an English scientist in half a scientist, cousin of Charles Darwin. Galton defined eugenics as a science that would give the more suitable races a better chance of prevailing over the less suitable. Galton came close to justifying genocide, asserting that there exists a sentiment for the

Starting point is 00:11:02 most part quite unreasonable against the gradual extinction of an inferior race. So he's saying that people in his view are rationally are against, are against, uh, draw, uh, people who you consider inferior into extinction. Eugenicist, the encyclopedia goes on to say would be strong supporters of Nazi racial policy and many contemporary eugenics advocates continue to justify genocide. And then it goes on to say how these ideas influence the ideology of Nazism and the extermination of different kinds of ethnic and ethnic and religious minorities throughout history. So not only did eugenics closely link itself with Nazism, it was also influential on the pioneers of birth control and abortion in the United States, namely Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood.

Starting point is 00:12:05 And actually, it was Sanger and American eugenicists who were said to have influenced parts of the Nazi ideology of the superiority of the Aryan race. In a 1939 letter to Clarence Gamble, Singer explains the underlying motive that was behind what was called the Negro Project. She said, quote, we don't want words to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population, Margaret Singer says. And the African American minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members. That is the founder of Planned Parenthood, who, by the way, is still aborting a disproportionate number. of black babies today. This is right in line with Galton's desire to turn eugenics from a kind of science to a kind of

Starting point is 00:12:55 religion in which people saw the extinction of inferior kinds of people as a common good. So Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, was carrying on Galton's legacy and desire through Planned Parenthood. So Malthias' theory of overpopulation influenced Darwin, the pioneer of the theory of evolution and natural selection, which then influenced Francis Gowton, the pioneer of eugenics, which then influenced the Nazis in other genocidal actors, as well as Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood and History's first and fiercest advocate for legal and accessible birth control. And if we want to keep drawing the line, 2014 Planned Parenthood gave the Margaret Singer Award to

Starting point is 00:13:37 Hillary Clinton for her support for, quote, abortion rights. This is an amazing legacy, isn't it? amazing connections. We haven't even gotten to the kicker yet. Okay, so the kicker in all of this, obviously we know that these ideas have been damaging and literally deadly, resulting in the murder of millions of ethnic and religious minorities and pre-born babies. But it is also based on a theory that has been completely debunked. So the Malthusian catastrophe, this idea that overpopulation leads to food shortages and misery, has been disproven. So Malthias was writing right at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in almost an exclusively agricultural age. And while the Industrial Revolution had its own problems, we know that.

Starting point is 00:14:22 It obviously completely changed the game for food production. So thanks to technology, mechanics, the factories that cropped up during the Industrial Revolution, the industrialization of food production, there was an abundance of food far beyond what was needed to keep the population alive. So what did that show? It showed that human beings as drivers, of innovation are a credit to the world, not a debit. See, the idea that really drove Malthus was that humans are just like animals and that they are breeding indiscriminately without

Starting point is 00:14:57 any thought to available resources and without the ability to change their environment. And really, Darwin's theory of natural selection held the same assumption that just like animals, since he believed that human beings are just evolved animals, human beings would need to weed out the types of humans that couldn't withstand hardship or certain environments, couldn't fend for themselves, weren't resourceful enough to survive. So he saw humans. Basically, it's helpless victims of the earth and of their environment being forced to adapt to it. And he and Malthias, as well as Galtin, considered part of that adaptation to be the death and the extinction of people who could not adapt. Gouton just thought that the extinction of people who could not

Starting point is 00:15:40 adapt, also perhaps justified genocide and mass murder, which even if he didn't intend to support those policies, that is certainly how people took his ideas to their fullest extent in the 20th century. But the fact is human beings are not animals. Human beings are not helpless adapters to their environment. They have the unique ability to adapt the world to meet their needs. Hence, the invention of technology that gave us the ability to feed people more easily than ever before. That's what Malthus didn't understand, didn't realize.

Starting point is 00:16:19 And it wasn't just the mechanisms of mass food production that exploded after Malthias' theories were published. The Industrial Revolution paved the way for discovering innovation and technology that drove advancements in medicine and sanitation in the 19th and 20th century that extended the average human lifespan by decades. and dramatically reduced extreme poverty, especially over the last 40 years. So get this. We have far fewer people living in extreme poverty today than we did in 1820, which is remarkable considering how many more people we have on Earth today. So let's really understand that.

Starting point is 00:17:02 According to our world and data, there were 990 million people in the world, almost 1 billion people in 1800, and almost all of them were living in extreme poverty. Today, there are almost 8 billion people in the world, and 733 million are living in extreme poverty. So we're not just talking about the percentage of people today being lower than the percentage of extremely poor people in the early 1800s. We are actually talking about the number of people being lower. That is actually stunning. That alone is enough to debunked.

Starting point is 00:17:36 the theory of overpopulation. So as the world population has increased, extreme poverty has decreased. That means the resources we have, including natural resources that help us provide our food and water to people, as well as jobs and wealth, have done more than enough to keep up with our demand. Why? Because human contrived innovation works. Human beings have found ways to care for themselves and each other as the population has grown exponentially. And you know what's amazing? You know what's amazing is that propaganda like the 1619 project in all Marxist works today, which are so pervasive and influential, claim that oppression and capitalism are inextricably linked,

Starting point is 00:18:24 specifically that capitalism is to blame for systems like slavery. That is exactly wrong. Capitalism, markets, supply and demand made possible through industrial, and global trade which rewards innovation has been the driving force behind the reduction of suffering that is caused by extreme poverty. That doesn't mean that, for example, regimes like China have not oppressed their people in the name of supply and demand. There are certainly evils that have come with the globalization of the market and are exporting of our own factories and manufacturing in the United States. States because of the demand for cheap goods, there are certainly problems innate with that. But if you are just looking at the reduction of extreme poverty over the past couple of

Starting point is 00:19:17 centuries and especially over the past half century, you have the markets. You have capitalism to think for that. The growth of industry, of technology, of factories in the northern United States is what helped make obvious the irrationality of the slave-driven agricultural industry of the South. That, plus a much deeper and stronger motive, which was Christianity. So the first and second Great Awakening's periods of revival for the Christian Church corresponded with the abolition of slavery in the West. There were some not-so-great things that came out of the Great Awakeninges like the birth of cults and denominations without a biblical foundation. But the Lord used these periods to further

Starting point is 00:19:59 spread the gospel and the principles of Christianity to the world. Wilberforce, the British politician who was one of the most famous abolitionists driven by the gospel to be the spearhead of slavery abolition in the Western world. He saw his public duty and his Christian duty as inextricably intertwined. He truly embodied what we talk about so much on this podcast that politics matter because policy matters, because people matter. He lived that out. And now, of course, today, Wolverforce would be casting.

Starting point is 00:20:32 and condemned as a Christian nationalist by progressives because he believed that society should be shaped on biblical principles, founded on biblical principles, shaped by biblical principles, and that his job in the public sphere was to advance the cause of Christianity and to let the gospel shape policy. That was his motive behind abolishing slavery or pushing for the abolition of slavery and ending the human suffering that was caused by it. He said this, quote, To live our lives and miss that great purpose we were designed to accomplish as truly a sin. It is inconceivable that we could be bored in a world with so much wrong to tackle, so much ignorance to reach, and so much misery we could alleviate.

Starting point is 00:21:18 Yes and Amen. He believed one of the Christian duties was to tackle wrong and to alleviate misery. Now note, he did not say this is the only Christian duty. He is not presenting what would be the liberal, social gospel in which a person's salvation is earned through social justice and achieving so-called liberation. No, that line of thinking is actually founded upon Marx, who was influenced by Darwin and the schools of thought that got us into this whole anti-human mess in the first place. Wilbur Force argued that the saving grace of the gospel, that we are saved

Starting point is 00:21:52 by grace through faith in Christ. And in that, we are driven to give his love and his compassion to other people, that Christianity forces humans to look upon the oppression of our fellow man and to seek to relieve him from it. And Wilberforce wasn't in a vacuum, neither was slavery abolition. And what I mean by that is advancements in human rights, the dramatic decrease in extreme poverty coincided with the globalization of Christianity in the Great Awakenings and the advancement of technology and industry. The exact opposite of what we hear from academia and the political elite in the scientific community today, which is that we should derive our policies, our theories, and even our morality from Darwin and his theories.

Starting point is 00:22:41 But again, what did we uncover? Darwin was influenced by Malthus, largely, not completely, but largely, whose Malthusian catastrophe has been debunked by the fact that as the human population has surged, poverty has decreased. Darwin's faulty conclusions influenced Galtin, the father of eugenics, whose ideas influenced Margaret Singer, the founder of Planned Parenthood. and other eugenicists whose ideas helped inspire and justify the genocides of the 20th century, including the extermination of over six million Jews by Hitler. And of course, the extermination of tens of millions of wiggling, feeling, living babies inside the womb through today. And these ideas, these debunked ideas, these ideas that have led to mass slaughter,

Starting point is 00:23:24 they're the foundation of the secular humanism that still guides people, influential people to this day. Influential broadcaster David Attenborough told the BBC, in the long run, population growth has to come to an end. There are some reasons for thinking that will happen almost inevitably. Interesting. He has said similar things at the World Economic Forum. And if you want to know the significance of the World Economic Forum, I really encourage you to listen to a few past episodes, which I will link in the description of this episode. Bill Gates has said the same thing at the World Economic Forum.

Starting point is 00:24:06 Jane Goodall, an environmentalist and animal rights activist, made a similar comment at the World Economic Forum. She said, quote, all of these environmental things we talk about wouldn't be a problem if there was, if there was the size of population that there was 500 years ago. Just to note, the world population 500 years ago was about 400 or 420 and 540,000, So that's about 6.7 billion fewer people than there are today, even more than that. It's even bigger reduction than that, I believe. A couple interesting things to note in all of this.

Starting point is 00:24:45 In 2003, Bill Gates said in an interview that his father was once the head of Planned Parenthood. And the second interesting thing to note is that this is really a theme for the World Economic Forum and the people they invite. They're some of the richest and the most influential people in the world. I hate to sound conspiratorial, but it is well documented that people considered in the elite class that frequents the World Economic Forum. So we're talking Warren Buffett, George Soros, are all big donors to plan parenthood in other abortion organizations. Listen to this by Life News, and I'll include a link to this article. Warren Buffett's daughter, Susie, told the Chronicle of Philanthropy in 1997 that her father has always believed the population control was, quote, the biggest and most important issue.

Starting point is 00:25:33 And Roger Lowenstein said in his 1995 biography that Buffett had a, quote, Malthusian dread that overpopulation would aggravate problems in all other areas such as food, housing, even human survival. That's incredible. The people who are some of the biggest influences on policy today have bought into the myth of the Malthusian catastrophe that has led them to fund abortion and to warn about the dangers of overpopulation, which has manifested itself and who knows how many deadly policies. I mean, if you think that overpopulation is an existential threat and you believe it is your duty to stop it for the sake of the common good and you have all the capital and power in the world to do it, what would be your limiting principle? I mean, you don't believe in God. what would be your boundary? Obviously, they won't stop at killing babies living and squirming in their mother's

Starting point is 00:26:28 wombs. Obviously, they won't stop at pushing birth control on women, which has known side effects such as the potential of breast cancer. I mean, it just makes you wonder, is this what's behind some of the propaganda and entertainment that glorifies prolonged singleness? Is this why so many shows today show couples in their 40s with one kid who's usually a toddler? The answer is probably, if I'm being fair, it's probably yes and no. I think most people don't realize the mythical, dangerous ideas that influence

Starting point is 00:26:59 cultural change, progressive cultural change in values. They just adopt the values and they think that they're just being evolved people. And they got these values from being more, quote, educated and progressive. And what they typically mean is that they like watched a Netflix show where they started following an account that post-convincing memes. And that's what they mean by they got educated. And they were evolved on these issues. So the culture, our entertainment, our education, our media is all colored with these ideas, either because they are trying to push propaganda and they believe that, you know, having just one child when you're 45 years old is better for society, or they just don't realize why they are pushing these ideas because it's just become the cultural norm. The idea today is

Starting point is 00:27:50 that the responsible thing to do is to not have kids or at least to not have more than one. The fun thing to do is to not get married. The acceptable thing to do is to not have a family at all, just to live for yourself. Isn't that so freeing and liberating? And all of this is built on a farcical idea that has built a deadly ideology. But just as it was a century ago in the face of eugenics and just as it was two centuries ago in the face of slavery, Christianity is still the antidote to this deadly madness. Christianity stands against the injustices perpetuated by secular humanism.

Starting point is 00:28:31 Now, does that mean that Christians, people who profess to be Christians, haven't perpetuated injustice? Of course not. Malthus was a clergyman. Christians throughout history condoned the African slave trait. But these people were demonstrations of people who had bad theology, who professed to be Christians while failing to represent the Christianity that is so clearly represented in scripture. The first chapter of which is sufficient in deconstructing the entire edifice of the secular humanism that has justified to humanization and genocide. First verse of the biblical canon. In the beginning, God created the heavens in the earth. Then verse 27 of the first chapter of the Bible. So God created man in his own image. In the image of God, he created him male and female

Starting point is 00:29:18 he created them. This establishes two principles fundamentally opposed to the havoc wreaked by perpetrators of the overpopulation myth. God created the universe. That's one. Therefore, he and he alone has the authority over it. While people who warn of overpopulation use this fearmongering to justify their social engineering of society and funding of deadly policies like abortion and sterilization and assisted suicide, God has the true authority. And he is sovereign. over the growth of the earth and everything in it, including the human population. This is the same God who commands humans in Genesis 122 to be fruitful and multiply. This is the same God who says in Psalm 1273 that children are a heritage from the Lord,

Starting point is 00:30:04 a blessing to those who bear them. This is the same Jesus who welcomes the children to him in Matthew 19, touches the weak and the infirm and the disabled and heals many of them throughout the gospels. that Jesus is a threat to the eugenicist and the ideology that drives it. This is the same God whose world will not be destroyed by climate change. Heyo, because its fate is in his hands. Controversial thing to say, Genesis 822. While the earth remains, seed time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night shall not cease.

Starting point is 00:30:44 This is the same God who, of course, forbids murder, Genesis 9 and in the Ten Commandments, even if it's for the, quote, common good. These ideas rooted in the authority of God and his creation of people as image bearers and therefore of equal dignity and respect lay the groundwork for the abolition of slavery, for the establishment of charities, orphanages, women's shelters, hospitals, universities, these and more. And yes, while the authors of the Constitution of the United States may not have lived out these Christian principles completely themselves, since many of them actually own slaves, the words they penned that men were created equal with certain inalienable rights that can't be taken

Starting point is 00:31:29 away by the government because they're not given by the government because they're given by an authority, God who is transcendent, who is higher than the government, that idea planted the seed of liberty and the self-governance to which each human being is in titled that grew into the freest and the most prosperous nation that has ever existed, who in her short span has rioted wrongs more quickly than any society throughout history, even with all of our many, many warts. All of this to say. Departure from Christianity will always eventually end in oppression.

Starting point is 00:32:01 One major form of oppression we are seeing today is the systemic control of population or the effort to systemically control population through anti-natalist and anti-family propaganda through abortion, through assisted suicide, and a push for mass sterilization in many parts of the world today, especially third world countries. And all of this is helped, of course, by the breakdown of the nuclear family, which I define as mom, dad, children, as well as the fierce push we see for sexual and gender confusion. This is another departure from God's design as we see in Genesis 1, which doesn't just tell us that he made humans in his image, but also tells us that he made them male and female in his image. As is repeated throughout scripture,

Starting point is 00:32:46 including by Jesus himself in Matthew 19, a reality that has both physical and eternal significance as we reiterated yesterday. These are biological categories, not categories of gender identity. They're not social constructs. Gender identity is a concept that we have outlined many times. We've traced back to its disturbing roots in the 1960s. So many of the damaging ideas that we see today are really not new. They're rooted in philosophies and ideas that have actually been debunked. And yet it seems that the people who hold them just continue to double down on them. And once again, who is placed on the altar of this cultural change that is the sexual and gender revolution that is trying to upend everything that we know about sex and the

Starting point is 00:33:35 family and the importance of the presence of a father and a mother and the definitions of male and female. The people who are placed on this altar are women and children. Always. They always are. As I say, often children are always the unconsenting subjects and progressive social experiments. But so are women because women and children are the most vulnerable. Women who are forced into spaces in competitions with men much stronger than them. Children who are being detached from their mother or father through surrogacy and sperm donation to satiate the modern redefinition of marriage. and who are also being detached from their own bodies through absolute hogwash about gender. God's design and intention for human beings and for the family are for his glory,

Starting point is 00:34:19 but they're also for our good, not just individually but societally. When we move past that, oppression flourishes. The biblical perspective of human beings is that they add value to the world. They don't detract from it. Everywhere we see childbearing disgust in scripture, we see it in a positive. of light. We never see any directive, just getting real, to put career or travel or plant or pets before children. There's nothing that teaches a person about love, compassion, responsibility, self-sacrifice, forgiveness, and perseverance like parenting. There are few things

Starting point is 00:34:57 that show us God's love for us and the immensity of the sacrifice involved in giving up his son to on the cross for our sake like parenting. Parenting gives you a deeper perspective of what's important as well as what's at stake when it comes to political and cultural change. You're no longer impacting the world just for yourself, for your own comfort, for your own security, for your own bottom line. You're thinking about your grandchildren and what kind of world you want them to inherit. You no longer play the main character in your own life. Your needs, your wants no longer come first. The hopes and the fears that you once obsessed over for yourself are immediately, upon the arrival of your child transferred onto them.

Starting point is 00:35:39 And toxic mommy culture, as well as many feminists and left-wing politicians and influencers today, will tell you that that's a bad thing, that motherhood will make you lose yourself, that marriage will trap you, that divorce for the sake of sheer happiness is worth it, and that you need to find a way to be liberated from the unfair expectations of mothering and marriage to, quote, find yourself. That's a lie. It's a lie. When you become a wife and a mom, that is who you are. Yes, you have other interests that aren't exclusive to marriage and parenting, and that's great.

Starting point is 00:36:11 But you don't have some kind of separate identity that's out there that you need to take a journey to find. It's a good thing that your identity and who you are becomes wrapped up in the blessing of marriage and kids. Hyper individualism in the West has robbed us of the realization that family and community don't take away from who we are but become part of who we are. God made us married or not because not everyone is going to be married and that's okay, but God made us to be communal interdependent beings because we are made in his image and he is in perpetual eternal communion and fellowship with himself between the father, son and the Holy Spirit. So even if you are not married, even if you cannot have children and you want to be or

Starting point is 00:36:56 you're feeling alone. feeling lonely is a normal part of the human experience. And because not everyone is called to be married and because not everyone is going to have children, God has provided you a family in the church. You are made to be a part of a family, which is exactly what you are adopted into when you come to faith in Christ. The church should do, I understand the church should do a much better job of ensuring that single people are treated as family, cultivating meaningful friendships.

Starting point is 00:37:29 Jesus was not married. Jesus didn't have physical children. So surely singleness for many people isn't simply a waiting period before marriage but is in itself the fullness of a gift of opportunity to worship God even more fully. And for those who do not have children, your opportunity to mother is not gone.

Starting point is 00:37:51 You have the opportunity to disciple, to teach, to mentor, to influence, to encourage younger generations, and actually Titus II commands out of us no matter our marital status. If you are married and can have children, do it in more ways than one. If you are not married and cannot have children, find a way to engage with the family of God and impact the next generation for his glory. And for all of us, let us fight back against this dangerous, bigoted, fear-mongering, myth of overpopulation and antinatalism. Children are a blessing. So let's push for policies

Starting point is 00:38:32 that reflect that. Now, I'm not, you guys know, I'm not talking about policies that claim to help children through bigger government programs, which I believe the government's bigger it gets, the more intense it gets on usurping the authority of the church and the family. So I'm not talking about that. Plus, those programs rarely actually achieve their intended goals or their purported goals. Now, I'm not saying that all government programs are off the table, completely, but that's not what I'm primarily talking about. I'm talking about policies that honor the family, which in turn honor the image of God, especially the most vulnerable image bears, women, and children. I mean, it's really no wonder that left wing ideology has this common theme of sacrificing

Starting point is 00:39:12 children, abortion, gender ideology, even COVID restrictions that do not keep kids healthy, but just harm their ability to learn and to develop and to function normally socially, school closures. It's no wonder they're pushing all of these things. It's rooted. Their entire ideology is rooted in an anti-human secular humanism, an anti-human ideology that goes back centuries. Christians throughout history have pushed back against it. And today we're scared, of course, to do so because we don't want to be called names. It's hard to go against the mainstream. It's hard to be human salmon going upstream while everyone is going downstream. It's hard to swim against the current. I understand. And quite frankly, it's also because many of us don't know our Bibles. We have no idea why God calls us male and female. We have no idea why God created marriage the way he did. We have no idea the importance of family and childbearing. We have no idea our history. We have no idea about the foundation of the United States. We just don't know. And so we buy into the propaganda. We are in endlessly influenced by the evangelism of the culture. And we just don't have the bravery and sometimes the knowledge to be able to stand up against it.

Starting point is 00:40:23 But the good thing is that's not irreversible. Our ignorance and our fear is not irreversible. So that's why, as we talked about last Monday, this is the time right now to commit to courage and clarity. God did not put you in your children and your children's children here and now arbitrarily or accidentally. I know that we like to get nostalgic and we like to think about how things were. I wish that we lived 100 years ago. I wish that we lived 50 years ago when things were more sane. I completely understand that.

Starting point is 00:40:56 I can relate to that. But I know that God is a purposeful God, that he does things with intention. He does things with specificity. And so if I'm here now, if you're here now, we are supposed to be facing the cultural, moral battles that we are facing. Just as every generation has had their particular challenges, we have ours. We have to be equipped to face them with courage and clarity. Our courage and clarity comes from the whole.

Starting point is 00:41:22 Holy Spirit and the Word of God. Nowhere else. The two things that the church need so desperately today, courage and clarity. And I hope by the grace of God on this subject, I've given you a little bit of that today. All right, guys. I hope you enjoyed that episode. If you love Relatable, please leave us a five-star review on Apple Podcast. That would mean so much.

Starting point is 00:41:47 Make sure you subscribe on YouTube as well. And keep telling me what you want to hear, what you do. want to talk about over this next week. We've still got a lot of content to cover over the next couple of days. We've got a good interview coming up as well. So excited to get to that. And we will see you back here tomorrow. Hey, this is Steve Day. If you're listening to Alley, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity, and reality itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles, faith, truth, and objective reality. We don't just chase

Starting point is 00:42:25 narratives and we don't offer false comfort, we ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they leave, even when it's unpopular. This is a show for people who want honesty over hype and clarity over chaos. If you're looking for commentary grounded in conviction and unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed, you can watch this D-Day show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts. I hope you'll join us.

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

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