What Song Is That?

Have you ever had a tune stuck in your head that you just couldn't stop playing in your head? What's worse is when you get an awful song in your head that you can't get out of it. The words are on repeat even when you're not conscious of it. The tune is on your tongue. This is likely why the words of the song that warns children everywhere says, "Oh be careful, Little Eyes what you see. Oh be careful, Little Ears, what you hear." 

In a similar way, we each have songs in our heads that have been taught to us by the world. Everyone is singing one song or another with their explicit ideas or humming one tune or another with their attitudes and actions. 

When it comes to the song that Christian women are to sing and hum, it is made very clear in Titus 2 that it is one of a husband-lover and a child-lover. Look at those words carefully. It does not say to be one who is married and has kids. It says that one is to become the very essence of a husband and child lover. This means that the song that is sung in one's explicit declarations and the tune hummed by one's attitude and actions is the song of love for husband and children. 

This would make sense since the woman is saved through childbearing (1 Tim 2:15), that the command given before all commands is to "be fruitful in order to multiply, multiply in order to fill up the earth, fill up the earth in order to subdue it and subdue it in order to rule over it," and that the very image of God, the instrument of God to accomplish this goal of filling up the earth with covenant children is expressed then in having "other sons and daughters" (Gen 5). 

The world has a different song to sing, however, and it sings it loudly. It wants you to sing along. It is a hater of husbands and children. It wants you to roll your eyes at your pathetic husbands and to express how awful the burden of children is. It may be Ok with your expressing that you think your current children are worth it, you know, after you express what a burden they are; but it wants you to follow that up by statements such as, "I definitely don't want any more." Nothing makes children feel more loved than your saying how much you love them but how awful it would be to have any more of them. I personally say that about things I love too (e.g., time with my wife, money, love itself, the security of having food and shelter, forgiveness and peace with God), you know, all the things we only want a little of because we love them so much. If we love it, our motto is "a little dab will do ya."

It is now the weekend after a holiday we call "Thanksgiving," yet nothing but ingratitude for having children is often expressed by Christian women and far worse than this is that there is little thought of whether one is obeying the command to "teach the younger women to be lovers of husbands and lovers of children," to sing God's song to one another, in what they are communicating to one another. When Christian women get together they have an opportunity to lift up God's Word that proclaims children to be a blessing and that the quiver that is full of them is blessed by God. Instead, it is often used as an opportunity for the world to play its broken record yet again. If the same song you can hear at any pagan gathering is sung at our Christian fellowships something might be off.

I get it. It takes time for Christians in our day to understand what's happening. Many are recovering evangelicals and have been taught worldly ideas through it. Evangelicalism sings the same song as the world because Evangelicalism is a Christian cult, not an orthoprax Christian movement. Like any cult it has incorporated Christian ideas into it but not all Christian ideas. It warps certain ones to give a false worldview that is not consistent with the Christian song that has been sung for two thousand years (and I would argue from the beginning of time among God's people). Evangelicalism simply sings a different song on this matter than the church has always sung. It is incumbent upon recovering evangelicals to relearn that song and to sing and hum it everywhere.

I get that children are hard to bear. They are a burden. The world, however, teaches us that they are a burden not worth bearing and that is what must be corrected by God's Word. I used to be impoverished and went around calling my children "my gold." It is clear, however, that many consider children something much less than that. Whether a burden is worth bearing really depends upon what you think that burden is. Gold is worth bearing. More worthless items may not be. Perhaps if children were seen at least as valuable to women as money, time, and sleep it would be considered an even trade. Perhaps if they saw children as more valuable than those things, there would be a joy and praise in their music that is often otherwise absent. Instead, we get the dirge because children aren’t worth it in the eyes of the world’s fallen composer.

But when Christian women complain about children or bemoan the prospect of having more of them what they inadvertently sing is the world's song and the devil loves it. His goal is less covenant people, not a filling up of the earth with them. Everywhere and always he has tried to convince the world to sing his song. From Atra-Hasis to Margaret Sanger, he is relentless. The hardship of joining with God to create life in this world is brought on by him that we might give up, not only in seeing the good of it in our minds but believing the good of it in our attitudes and actions. 

Let me end with a little biography of myself, since I too have been on this journey out of Kinderhassville. Everywhere I went, whether churches or schools, pastors and professors alike would tell me that my gifting to understand the Bible was not common and that they thought I was meant to do something great in the world because of that ability. Students at my schools would say it. I had an old mentor who was in charge of an international ministry call me out of the blue one day after not seeing him in decades and tell me that he had been praying over a mountain of people in his life and my name came up as one who was supposed to do something great. He died a week later as if it indicate that God had this one thing left for him to tell me. So many people thought I would be this great reformer of the modern church. I believed it myself right up until the point when I was made sick at an early age in my career, impoverished, and thrown into obscurity. While in exile, I tried hard to reestablish that path, thinking that this was simply one more obstacle in the way to this great ministry God had for me. Whether studying or writing, I attempted to reacquire what I thought had been lost. All the while my children would constantly interrupt me with things they thought were important. They would come in and sit on my lap and tell me about something they were doing or ask me a question of some sort. The feeling that I could do so much more and be so much better without these interruptions would constantly come over me. But eventually one's theology trickles down to his attitudes and I began to hum a different tune because I began to have a different song playing in my head. My children were my ministry. They were the place of reformation. Their interruptions were God's regular daily schedule for me, giving me opportunities to teach them the gospel and disciple them. I wish I had understood it earlier. Many a thing was destroyed and many an opportunity wasted because I was confused as to where and upon whom the currency of my time in life was to be spent.

I will not likely be the great reformer everyone thought I was going to be. I'm nowhere near it. I live in obscurity and will likely die there. My reformation is happening at home. My children and the little church at which I shepherd is my ministry, not some global movement. I have been called, not only to sing God's song to them, but to teach them to hum it with joy too. This is my ministry because it is every Christian's ministry, whether they can partake in the act of childbearing and childrearing or not. 

It is my hope that when Christians gather together, especially Christian women, they will be mindful of Titus 2 and sing and hum it to one another, that they would encourage one another in the Lord's creational work rather than discourage one another from it.

The world works hard now to blast its music through whatever speakers it finds willing. It works hard to get Christians to join its choir. All you need to do is to not be critical of its song but to be sympathetic toward it, to basically agree with it, to hum its tune. But be careful, Little Ears, what you hear, and, O Christian, be careful, Little Mouth, what you sing.