In a healthy culture questions like why get married or why have children are taken for granted is there not lifestyle choices one ways but natural givens built into the fabric of reality families justification is self evident and a healthy culture people who have grown up around good models of marriage and childrearing don’t need to seek out their philosophical justification. Their intrinsic goodness is already evident. The collapse of family life reveals a loss of natural affection, which Scripture repeatedly associates with idolatry and apostasy.
The fact that marriage and children are treated as optional lifestyle accessories to take or leave in our contemporary culture is a sign of a deep sickness. Yes, there will always be a few people who are unable to marry and/or have children for whatever reason, and it is true that God grants to some of his own a special calling to celibacy. Life does not always turn out the way we’d like. But this is not really about those who wish they could married and never had the opportunity (such that their singleness is a genuine trial), nor is it about those who have struggled with the pain of unwanted infertility. This is about those who are rejecting marriage and children intentionally. In a healthy culture, such cases are rare. Family life is and always should be the norm. God created us to live in families. Family life is the default and it should be the reality is that, apart from a gift of divine grace, no other institution can make up for what you miss if you don’t have a family. Yes the church should seek to be a kind of spiritual family to widows, widows, orphans, and others who, for whatever reason, lack family connection but even the church cannot provide exactly the same thing that a natural family can.
Getting married and having children is a sign of hope. If fulfills humanity’s original purpose, found in the Creation Mandate. It links us with the past and the future, and is the most life-affirming, hope-affirming, creation-affirming thing we can do.
TPC Pastor's Page 