Be Fruitful or Be Forgotten: Why the West Doesn't Want Children examines global fertility drops from 5.3 in 1963 to 2.2 in 2023, linking South Korea's 0.7% rate to secularism and consumerism rather than just economics. Hosts argue that theological shifts away from marriage, combined with birth control pills acting as abortifacients, drive decline while Pentecostals outperform educated Catholics. Ultimately, the episode warns that viewing children as burdens masks idolatry of convenience, urging a return to Psalm 127's view of offspring as divine heritage against elite manipulation fears. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, WAV2VEC2_ASR_BASE_960H, sat-12l-sm, script v26.04.01, and large-v3-turbo
Time
Text
Why We Need Five Star Reviews00:03:47
Leave us a five star review on your favorite podcast platform.
I get it.
It's annoying.
Everybody asks, but I'm going to tell you why.
When you give us a positive review, what that does is it triggers the algorithm so that our podcast shows up on more people's news feeds.
You and I both know that this ministry is willing to talk about things that most ministries aren't.
We need this content for the glory of God to reach more people's ears.
Last year, South Korea hit a record fertility rate of just 0.7%.
Too, the lowest ever recorded in the world.
Meanwhile, in the US, for the first time in history, women over 40 are having more children than teenagers.
Global population growth isn't just slowing, in some places, it's collapsing.
And no one seems to know how to stop it.
From Beijing to Budapest to Boston, birth rates are in free fall.
Governments have tried cash bonuses, tax breaks, and even subsidized minivans.
But none of it is working.
Secular progressives cheer the decline, claiming that it means liberation for women and fewer carbon footprints.
Meanwhile, conservatives raise alarms, arguing that civilizational continuity is impossible without children.
Beneath it all lies a deeper conflict between a culture that celebrates self and one that honors sacrifice.
Population collapse isn't just an economic or political problem, it's a theological one.
A culture that abandons marriage, motherhood, and the moral imagination required for building homes and futures is a culture that has already chosen death.
No nation survives long when it forgets how to make families.
And unless the West recovers its love for life, ordered, fruitful, and future facing, then it will not recover at all.
This episode is brought to you by our premier sponsors, Armored Republic and Reese Fund.
As well as our Patreon members and our faithful donors.
You can join our Patreon by going to patreon.com forward slash right response ministries, or you can donate by going to right response ministries.com forward slash donate.
Today we'll break down the fertility crisis, what's causing it, why conventional solutions aren't working, and what a Christian response must look like.
So let's dive in.
All right, GA, welcome back.
We're glad to see you guys.
It is Wednesday.
We have the one, the only Michael Belch back in the studio.
Glad to be back.
Yeah.
His voice is going to be maybe a little rough.
Yeah.
It was a long weekend.
Yeah.
I think that was your first sick day in about a year and a half.
So you get one.
Matt Walsh would say you don't get any.
But you get one.
He earned it.
We did a Zoom meeting two nights ago, and your voice was pretty rough.
It was pretty bad.
So you're already substantially better.
I saw somebody on X again today.
This is, I mean, it's almost a daily.
Experience at this point, but saying, you know, what is a nation?
What is a nation?
And I just thought, you know, we should continue to plug your book.
Do you want to just real quick tell people the title where they can get it?
Yes, I can answer that question in about 500 pages.
I'm just kidding.
Sure.
Yeah, the book In Defense of Christian Nations.
And you can just find it on Amazon under that title.
And it's available in paperback, hardback, and Kindle versions.
Right.
In Defense of Christian Nations00:13:44
Christian nationalism is important, but it assumes, in some sense, that we know what a nation is, which Usually, I mean, most of human history would probably be a safe assumption.
You know, what is a nation?
Just like what is a woman would probably be a safe assumption, you know.
But when you enter into 20th century liberalism and ridiculous, you know, modernists that are basically just scrutinizing and questioning everything, then you actually have to say, well, here's the definition of a woman and here's the definition of a nation.
And so you can't have Christian nationalism if you don't have nations.
And so Michael does a great job in attempting to answer that question what is A nation from a biblical premise.
All right.
So, Michael, why don't you just frame out our topic for today?
Absolutely.
So, we are going to be talking about the fertility crisis, the population, global population decline, which actually is somewhat of a misnomer because there are places in the world where people are reproducing at a high rate.
And so, while much of the West and developed nations like Japan and China, China is probably not quite developed.
Are in population decline.
There are some predictions that say we're going to be at 10 billion globally by the year 2070, for instance.
And so there are places in the world, Africa, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, where population rates are higher, birth rates are higher, and fertility rates are higher.
And it's going to be producing, I mean, according to our best guesses, a net increase globally.
But our concern is that the civilization that we are a part of, Western civilization, is on a drastic downward trend with its fertility rates.
And so That's what we're going to talk about today.
What I want to do to kind of set the stage is just go over some of the facts, some of the statistics, some of the quotes, because there is a branch of liberal political perspective out there that says two things.
It says, number one, it doesn't matter if global population is, or if Western population is going down because global population is going up.
So, the net is that the earth is going to be more populated.
This is not a concern in any way.
The second perspective is actually this is good that the population is going down.
In fact, we have too many people as it is.
And if the population of the earth were a few less billion people, then that would be actually better in the long run anyway.
And so, there are people who argue either that the global population isn't shrinking, which, in a sense, is true because of the third world nations that are increasing.
or that argue it is shrinking and this is a good thing, right?
This is, we just need to manage the decline of the West and of the huge populations that we have in the West.
So, just to establish some facts, even though this is pretty well established, I was surprised doing the research that there are people who say it's just scaremongering, right?
It's just scaremongering.
It's just an attempt to scare people into having lots of kids or being conservative or things like that.
So, we want to tackle that head on and just show that this is, in fact, not only a global problem, but a Western problem as well.
So, Here are a couple stats and statistics.
Global average.
This is going to be something that shows up on the graphs, the TFR, which is the total fertility rate.
The global total fertility rate has declined from 5.3 in 1963 to 2.2 in 2023.
In other words, that means on average, families were having 5.3 kids globally in 1960, 1963.
Now, even globally, it's 2.2 kids per family globally in 2023.
Isn't that by woman even more specifically than family?
I'm not sure.
It might be.
Some of the statistics broke it down by women, and some of them, yeah.
So I'm not sure.
I don't know.
Gotcha.
Yep.
Africa.
Africa remains the region with the highest fertility rate, averaging still in 2024.
4.1.
Oh, here you are, Wes.
4.1 children per woman in 2024.
East Asia is some of the lowest.
Countries like South Korea have some of the lowest fertility rates, with South Korea's total fertility rate at 0.72 in 2023.
Wow.
0.72.
So South Korea.
Is in trouble, which is sad to me because a number of years ago, I remember a lot of missions agencies really touting how Christian South Korea was.
It was at 60 or 70% at one point.
And you would think that a nation that has been won with the gospel would also have been won with the dominion mandate and the creation mandate to be fruitful and to multiply.
Well, sadly, I think Christianity, Christendom leads towards prosperity and opulence, blessing, and then blessing.
If not suited well, it lends towards being overly altruistic.
And in addition to that, also, it kind of seems like a bit of an oxymoron.
But on the one hand, overly altruistic, on the other hand, self centered.
And hoarding blessings, just convenience, thinking about yourself.
In some sense, it feels like nations that have been particularly Christianized have the lowest.
Birth rate, and I think part of it is there's a lot of factors, but I think part of it is because they've reaped a lot of blessing.
And there's a lot of statistics about like just economic classes, and like the rich don't have kids, right?
They don't, like it's the poorest of the poor that keep having, unless you're the Elon Musk type rich and you know, Andrew Tate, you know, like right, but they don't, but but in that case, they don't typically raise their kids, they have them, um, they're somewhere out there, yeah, but they're not necessarily involved.
And so, so my point is that like Christian nations are blessed by God and tend to be, um, opulent, you know, nations, blessed nations, pro, um, Prosperous nations, but then those nations that tend to be rich tend to mitigate childbearing the most.
And I think part of it because of just becoming selfish by their own riches, by their own opulence, their own blessing.
And then at the same time, I think also in the name of Christian charity, but misguided, they become overly altruistic to all the other nations of the world.
They open up their borders and they have full blown invasions of third worlders.
And then they feel as though they don't actually, their children don't actually have a future.
And so they're not particularly bullish on, like, hey, we're going to have eight kids, you know, and they're going to do great.
You know, the future is bright.
Like right now, like for a lot of the West, the future is not bright.
It's bleak.
The future is, it looks like if you're in European, certain European countries like England, the future is not bright.
It's Islamic.
That's the future.
And it looks like the burqa.
Yeah, right.
It's literally dark.
Yeah, it's not bright.
It's literally dark.
There is a moon, though, a crescent.
Yeah, a crescent through.
It's just a little, a sliver of brightness, the brightness of Allah, who is a false demon god.
So it's not great.
You know, it's not great.
And so I say all that because you were commenting about South Korea.
It actually doesn't surprise me.
I know it's counterintuitive.
It's not what Christianity purports, not in the genuine, authentic sense.
It goes completely against what the Bible actually promotes and the dominion mandate and all these things.
But so much of Christianity today in first world nations, particularly, Is 20th century liberalism walking around in a Christian skin suit?
It is not historic Christianity.
It bears hardly any resemblance to historic Christianity.
It's just gay race communism.
It's invite the world.
It's just suicidal.
It's lost the will to excellence and to survival and to greatness.
And so, nations like that, first world nations that have been Christianized, I almost feel like we could probably draw a direct correlation to the more Christian the nation is.
The lower the birth rate.
And now, but with the caveat of the more Christian the nation is in first world countries, because that wouldn't be true of some nations that are, you know, really becoming Christianized in sub Saharan Africa, where the birth rate is probably still very high.
Well, I remember Robbie Zacharias once pointed out that suicide is really only the privilege of developed nations.
You do not have people in third world countries committing suicide.
And his point was nihilism is the privilege of the rich.
And somewhere along the line, the Christian message has to deal with the opulence that we've created with so called developed nations.
And that is really a serious hurdle where, when you're nihilistic about the future, because comfort breeds that sense of there's no meaning in life because you've had everything and there's nothing that you're striving for, pushing for, everything has let you down.
And so, apart from a true Christian view of the world and life, Just the opulence that has been produced by the blessings of Christianity, like you say, Joel, that will tend to make people want to give up.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And being unrooted, deracinated, so you live all these different places, so much of, for example, Europe, you would grow up in a town, you'd have the church there that your father attended, your grandfather attended, the cemetery, and you saw yourself in much more of a continuity that I'm a link in the chain from the past to the future, and I have a duty to do.
But when you have people that just are cosmopolitan, they live everywhere.
You know, what is my duty?
And then, of course, they don't see themselves as having a burden and a responsibility to the future.
It's, well, what do I want to do?
Honor for our fathers, hope for the future.
Those are intrinsically linked together.
A generation that has been taught that their fathers are a bunch of racists and they're not worthy of honor at all is usually not going to be a future oriented nation.
If you sever people from their past, like what you said, Wes, deracinated people, if you sever them from their past, honor for the past, honor for fathers, and hope for the future.
I don't really know cultures, any culture that has no honor for their fathers, but has all of this ambitious hope for the future.
So, if you can sever people from the past or get them, you know, better yet, you know, get them to actually hate their past, to feel a sense of guilt and shame for their past, to dishonor their fathers, then they're not going to be probably a future oriented people, you know.
And like I saw an ex just the other day, somebody posted, you know, a picture of this couple, you know, that made the news.
Of having like a farm, an estate, and it was sizable that had been in their family for 25 generations.
Yeah.
And they're sitting there.
They're British, right?
They're British, of course, classic.
So they're your classic Christianized white Westerners in Europe, of course, England, no less.
And they're sitting on the couch and they're smiling as they're being interviewed.
And they say, you know, the estate has been in our family for 25 years and we're selling it.
25 generations.
25, yeah, generations.
I'm sorry.
And we're selling it.
Wow.
And And that, I mean, that's like, that's kind of your quintessential boomer.
Like, there are exceptions.
Like, I'm not saying that every boomer is terrible.
There are godly boomers.
But you can look to a generation and say, on the whole, right?
Speaking in generalities, this generation is known for X, Y, and Z.
And I'm fine with that.
And it's not just to pick on boomers.
Like, if people want to say, in general, millennials are limp wristed, overly sensitive, PC to the max, politically correct.
You know, like, Then I would say, yeah, that is a generally true statement.
Millennials were the participation trophy generation.
However, millennials did not go to the store and purchase those participation trophies for themselves.
Boomers.
So I think every generation, you can do this with nations, with people, right?
You can say, well, this particular people group has these strengths in a general sense and these weaknesses in a general sense.
I would say Europe, like white Westerners in a general sense, not each and every individual, but in a general sense, I would say are gullible, cowardly, and suicidal, right?
They're kind of content for their entire civilization to end with their generation.
So you could say that about a particular people.
You can also say it about a generation.
And my only point bringing up the boomers is when I think of that severing from honoring fathers and that being linked.
Honor for fathers being linked to hope for the future.
I don't know any generation that worked harder to sever honor for fathers than the boomers.
The boomers, even just speaking theologically in seminaries, they were the generation of critical analysis of the text and questioning everything.
Boomers Severing Honor for Fathers00:08:25
Are we sure there's really a virgin birth?
Probably not.
Was it really a bodily resurrection?
Probably not.
Do we know that these 66 books of the Bible are actually infallible and inspired?
Probably not.
I mean, the boomers, like, they took a thousand years of Christendom and questioned all of it and just lined it up on a wall, got a firing squad, shot a million holes in it, and then said, What's happening to our country?
Well, I mean, they were a product of the postmodern perspective, you know, as much as the academia was.
Like, the postmodern pill was really, really devastating in that sense of, like, There's no meta.
There's no narrative.
There's nothing we can trust.
Yeah.
That's true.
And a lot of that was started like in the 1920s.
Yeah.
There was a lot of critical analysis towards theology, towards inerrancy, and those kinds of things.
That is true.
That did actually start a little bit sooner, even pre World War II.
Well, German rationalism, like even Machen in his time was going over and being really confronted back and forth.
Like, I don't know, this higher German, it was liberal theology, this higher German rationalism is pretty compelling.
They did a number.
Yeah.
All right, let me hit a couple graphs here before we go to our first break.
So, Nate, this is image one.
So, this is specifically focusing on Europe, Europe's fertility problem.
So, the dots on the screen, the one that's open is 2011.
The one that's filled is 2021.
And so, this is just showing the average number of live births per woman in the European countries in 2011 and 2021.
And so, there are a few countries where it has increased.
Czechia?
Yep.
Czechia or Czechoslovakia has increased.
But in a lot of European countries, the number has dropped quite drastically.
Yeah, thanks, Nate, for zooming in there.
Um, go to the next one.
This is a forecast, so you know, I was gonna say to be fair to Germany, Czechoslovakia, that doesn't necessarily matter who is having more children.
So just you read that and like, no, that is Germany's on the up, Germany's on the up and up, you know, like, uh, the Muslims that came into Germany in the last 10 years are having a lot of kids.
This is this is 100% true, yep, yep.
This is a prediction of by 2050, the European countries well, not just European, but a lot of them are European countries what their population increase or decrease will be, and in this case, the The percentage that you see on the right is not an increase, it's a decrease.
There's a lot of European countries, such as Bulgaria, Lithuania, Latvia, even Ukraine, right about there, Serbia, almost there, where the prediction is that by 2050, they will have lost about 20% of their population simply because of their fertility rate.
When was this done, this study?
Because I'm wondering, like when you put Ukraine up there.
I want to say 2022 or 2021.
I bet you Ukraine is.
Far worse now.
Yeah, I'm sure it probably is worse after three years of being ravaged by war.
It's like, who are these women going to marry?
Yeah.
When Zelensky gave all the sons of Ukraine immigrants to die.
Yeah, they're going to marry immigrants.
But you see some developed nations, such as Japan, they're expected to be 16.3% lower.
Italy, 10% lower.
Portugal, 11% lower.
Even Poland, which is a Catholic country and has publicly said, Christ is our king.
They're pretty low.
Hungary, Viktor Orban.
Yep.
Hungary, Viktor Orban.
Yep.
Absolutely.
They're on the decline as well.
And those countries, too, I know for Poland and Hungary, they have pulled out all stops to try to actually fix this.
I don't want to jump ahead of you.
No, go ahead.
And don't be looking at them and like Poland's like, hmm, these are falling.
I wonder if they'll reverse.
South Korea has been trying for decades to fix their problem, not been able to do it.
Poland and Hungary, pro family policies, all these different things, they haven't made a dent.
Like those trends are still in place.
Yep.
It's been the same in the US.
So let's hit one more graph before our break.
Nate, this is image three.
So, this is trends in US birth rates.
And this is from 1980 through 2020.
And you see 2007, 2008, there's a steep decline.
And it has not, maybe right in 2014 or so, there was a slight upward trend, but it has just continued to drop.
And I have a quote from the article that this came from.
This says, commenting specifically on this phenomenon, on it starting in 2008, the theory was for a long time that it was related to the housing crash.
In 2008, and discouraged people from starting families.
But the conclusion of the paper that published this study said this, no obvious policy or economic factor can explain much of the decline.
The onset of the Great Recession clearly played a role in the early stages of the decline.
But beyond that, it's difficult to identify any political or policy or economic factor that can statistically account for the continued decline.
And the point is what you said earlier, Wes, and this will be my last comment, and you guys can chime in before we go to the break if you want.
But there is a westernized first and second world problem globally in the US, in Europe, in developed Asia.
And like Wes said, people aren't sure what's causing it.
It's a variety of religions, although it's true that even immigrants, Hindu and Muslim immigrants, they have higher birth rates, but it's a variety of level of developed nation, religion, predominant religion of the nation, economic circumstances within those nations.
And it seems like generally the Western and developed worlds are dropping substantially in their birth rate and in their populations.
Yep.
Yep.
All right.
When we come back, we're going to talk about some theories about why this is happening and weigh in a little bit on a Christian perspective on this.
Our sponsor, Private Family Banking, wants to help you with one money move that'll implicate itself in multi generational wealth building starting the first day.
They help you to avoid taxation and to draw compound interest to your money.
Now, if you're a high net worth individual, someone who has maybe even $10 million in net worth, then they can help you even more.
W 2 workers, contract workers, business owners, it's all about cash flow and making tax deferred gains on all your money for the rest of your life.
Don't avoid this.
It's a big move, but it's a great time to make it.
Click the link below and you can get on Chuck de Lauderante's calendar and he'll go over your background and what you want to accomplish.
And he's going to help model a program that exactly fits your needs.
So go ahead and send an email to Chuck at Private Family Banking.com.
Again, that's Chuck at Private Family Banking.com.
Or you can click the link below.
Make a free discovery call now.
America is a country that was founded for the purpose of allowing Christians to do their duty before God and not to have their consciences ruled by the doctrines and commandments of men.
Reese Fund exists in order to see the Ten Commandments properly applied, not just as a plaque on the wall, but to actually be used in business as though.
Their commandments from God that we're supposed to obey.
Our goal is to find businesses and to buy them and to build them up.
We want to find manufacturing businesses and use them to make sure that we can maintain our capacity to do things here.
Reef Fund, Christian Capital, boldly deployed.
All right, we're back.
You're back.
Some would say we're so back.
We are.
We're more back than we were the last time we were here.
The birth rate is not so back.
All right, so what do we think it is?
Well, it's interesting.
The question that a lot of Countries are trying to figure out why this is happening.
And like Wes said, some countries are putting significant effort into this.
They're buying minivans for families that have more kids.
They are giving longer maternity leaves.
Trump has proposed a $5,000 stipend for families that have a baby.
This one, maybe if your kids are around, just give it a pause for a second.
Why Countries Have Fewer Kids00:08:02
But in Japan, there have been some industries where they have gone to a four day work week.
So, that I'll say it tactfully, mom and dad would have a third day to be home alone while the kids are at school to try to incentivize certain child producing behaviors.
That also has not really had much of a dent in Japan, you know?
And so, this is actually quite a question that a lot of leaders and thinkers around the world have tackled and have really put some serious consideration into.
Yeah, for me, I think, you know, there's a lot of different contributing factors, women in the workplace.
Not being at home.
We'll talk more about that in a moment.
But also, like, just chemically, for lack of a better phrase, or biologically, maybe I should say, but just lower testosterone levels.
Like, the average woman is just, I mean, she's just never going to have the libido of the average man.
Not even close.
I mean, it pales in comparison.
Like, women have sex because of men.
I mean, like, everything, you know, that I mean, I feel like there's so much, even, you know, just, Economically, and when you think of like the markets and everything, it's all geared around like you know selling products and things for men to you know somehow you know get lucky, as the world would say.
But even within the confines of marriage, it is pretty rare, and you know, every woman is going to chime in, you know, in the comments, I'm sure, and say, like, not me, I you know, I love my husband, and blah blah, and that's great.
Then, you know, well, that's not the way general group dynamics work.
You would be the exception, and good for you.
Praise God for that.
A wife who You know, her libido meets her husband's, that's great, but that is not the average.
And so, then what do you, you know, it's the husband predominantly.
What I'm building up to is it's the husband predominantly who is initiating sexual intimacy.
And so, what do you do if the husband has, you know, a quarter or a third the testosterone levels of men, the average man, just, you know, 50 years ago?
Right.
Right.
Like he literally has less of, A drive, less of a sexual drive, less desire than ever before.
So there's like a chemical factor where men don't want sex as much.
And you look at like Gen Z and they're all incels.
Yeah.
You know, they're because outside of marriage on the Gen Z side of things generally.
So you talk about men and drive, a lot of that drive then is being satisfied by pornography.
Right.
So they would have a drive and it would have its only outlet in finding a woman, especially in a Christian culture and marrying her.
But all of that energy that could be going towards that, well, I need a home, I need an income, I need a profession, I need all of these things.
That's what it used to be channeled towards if a man wanted to have sex.
However, now all of it is just sapped, some of it certainly by pornography, but also just a culture of consumerism and junk food and clothing.
They're also not in any literal flesh and blood context to meet the opposite sex.
Yeah.
They're not like, they're not meeting, you know, young men are not meeting young women.
And it's like, well, go to church.
Well, turns out all the young women are actually leaving church, the young men are actually coming back, you know, and so.
So, there's all these factors of lower testosterone levels than ever before.
That absolutely plays a factor.
Birth control, my goodness, the pill is responsible for a time.
And people are waking up to that.
There was just an article, I forget where it was.
Might have been in The Guardian, talking about how women, Candace Owens and others, they're telling them, ditch the birth control pill and it's happening.
So, thank goodness, at least at some level, people are waking up to that pill.
But that's going to take time to overcome.
So, the birth control pill.
Time to recover from.
Yes.
Oh, yeah.
Like physically.
Yeah.
There are women who have been on the pill for, you know, they got on the pill not even because they were trying to, you know, inhibit pregnancy, but for some other reason because, you know, their, whatever.
That time of the month was particularly difficult for them or for their skin or for all these other terrible reasons.
They're all terrible reasons.
The pill absolutely messes up women, it messes them up.
And we've talked about that and we could talk more about it.
But my point is if I'm thinking of major contributing factors, I'm thinking the economy, that it's just almost financially impossible to have children in a single income home.
Women not being home because of economic reasons and feminism.
And so nobody's there.
So you're going to have to pay exorbitant amounts for somebody else to raise your kids.
Everybody's deracinated.
So you don't have grandma and grandpa because they live on the other side of the country, you know, and in between cruises, you know, they might visit for a few days once a year.
And then you have the pill and then you have lower testosterone levels than ever before.
You have the rise of homosexuality.
That certainly doesn't help the equation 3%, I think.
Yeah.
So you have some low T guys who don't really even want.
Sex and then you know who are heterosexual, and then you got a bunch of other guys who are gay.
Um, and and uh, yes, just not a great recipe for uh continuing the human race.
Well, and so let's let's look at this graph and then I'll say what I was going to say about it.
So, this is uh, image four, Nate.
This is a really interesting graph.
It's a picture of the globe, and the darker orange or red that you see is places where um, women would have more kids, they want to have more kids, but for a variety of reasons, and it doesn't specify here on the picture.
But for a variety of reasons, they have fewer kids than they want.
The kind of neutral colors in there, the tan colors, is where women's perceived amount of kids that they want to have is what they actually do have.
And then there are some places, the blue, the dark blue, where those are places where women are having maybe a kid more than maybe they think that they would be able to support or have.
So what's interesting is a lot of women globally.
Say, at least, you know, I would have on average another kid or another half a kid.
Again, we're dealing with averages, but something is keeping me from being able to do that.
And like you say, Joel, this could be economics.
I know in Taiwan, a man is very hard to buy property there, it's very expensive.
Germany's the same way.
You don't buy houses in Germany.
No.
You rent a small little place for the rest of your life and the houses are passed down.
Yeah, a little flat.
Families in Taiwan, basically, they had the option of.
Having a kid or two and living with grandma and grandpa for a very, very long time.
You buy a tiny little apartment for a million dollars if you're lucky, and then you pay what is like 50% in taxes.
Germany very clearly seems like a country that lost a significant war and never recovered.
They're just defeated people.
I remember going to Germany when I was in high school and all the men, like physically looking at the ground, they wouldn't even quite make eye contact when they spoke to you.
It's really sad.
I did see Hermit's correction.
Thanks for that, Hermit.
I'm thinking too of like the fact that China reversed the one child policy in 2015, which was quite a while ago.
Their population is largely aging out too.
So, well, that policy was mostly disadvantaged women.
So it favored one child policy, favoring of one child only.
And then a lot of abortions were carried on girls.
That's correct.
And so it's destroyed Japan, China, and to a certain effect, Korea as well, because then there's a dearth of women.
Like the average, I've read a paper a while ago, but the average male in Japan is 29, single, never even kissed a girl.
There's no option to because the ratio is off.
And it's not like, oh, he's not getting out there.
There's tons of opportunity.
Australia is one of the places, actually, where there's more women than men.
But that terrible, wicked policy in China has destroyed now for a generation the actual literal availability of women to marry men and to have a family.
Talking about the one child policy?
Economic Status and Fertility Rates00:15:27
Yes.
So that's one thing that people look at and they try and explain what's going on around the globe.
That is, that it's for a variety of reasons, economic or cultural, it's just not feasible to have more kids where women or families would like to, but they can't or they choose not to for a variety of reasons.
Okay, so that's the first.
Way that people are trying to explain this.
The second one has to do with the potential, and here we delve into the conspiracy a little bit, but of global control of population and the idea that it's in the best interests of those who are in control to have the global population decrease for a variety of reasons.
And we're going to play two clips from Tucker Carlson's most recent interview.
And the interview is about the global banking system and how.
This was a fascinating episode.
This was super interesting.
Yeah.
You guys should get to that.
I did find it a little funny.
It's like centralized bankers versus the West.
And I was like, you're telling me that there's a profession known as centralized bankers and that they're somehow trying to oppress and destroy the West?
You're telling me this for the first time.
Who are these bankers?
Who are these bankers?
Alex Jones.
That doesn't sound right.
You know who they are the globalists, the Marxists, the bankers.
Okay.
All right.
So Nate just told me that we only have the one clip.
So I'm going to summarize the first one because it's important for the second one.
Okay.
The guest is saying that there is a link between.
Global currency, the control of global currency and finance, and AI, and the emerging need for energy.
Because AI takes so much energy, we are going to have to produce energy on an unprecedented scale.
And so she says that really what's been going on since 1994, which, if you guys, it's so interesting that that was such an important date.
But even before that, global control systems being built up.
And that now the idea of AI being attached to financial systems, payment systems, things like that, that the elite have in place systems of, she calls it the control grid.
So her theory is that a ton of new energy is going to have to be produced, right?
And so, with that being said, let's look at this clip.
It's about, It's about two minutes long.
And you're going to think for a minute, oh, we're kind of in the weeds, and then the hammer is going to drop.
Okay, so stay with it, and you're going to see Tucker's response.
All right, let's.
So I wonder if the AI, if the data center boom, which really is the only sort of crackling, sparkling piece of the real estate market right now, I think it's building data centers, development market.
Just call them control grids.
Control grids.
Control.
I mean, look, I'm.
They're control nodes.
I'm totally opposed to it, but massive bets, economic bets on the success of AI, right?
And the missing piece is energy.
And how do you power all that?
And we're already, as you pointed out in an analysis I read, you have to bring out the breakthrough energy.
That's what I'm saying.
So, like, either they're going to build it on coal deposits in Wyoming, or, which is going to be kind of hard because they're going to have to say all that climate stuff we've been yelling at you about for 30 years is total bull.
Now we're burning coal.
I don't know if they could.
Well, there was just an article in Bloomberg that Texas needs 30 new nuclear plants.
And the Chinese are building enormous numbers of nuclear plants.
Yeah, and there are risks in nuclear.
I mean, never.
I'm a right winger and I've always defended nuclear, but let's be totally honest.
Like, it's not risk free, big time.
Well, here's the thing how do you govern and manage nuclear plants with leadership that's not agreement capable?
Completely.
And also, like in a country that's not turning out enough people in the hard, not enough engineers.
Right.
So, no, there are huge problems with that.
And, but that's like that question is being forced on policymakers.
Like, what do you do about energy?
What do you do about energy?
What do you do about wind and solar?
Like, we're going to be laughing about that in five years because it's just silly.
Well, one of the things you can do about energy is depopulate.
Right.
Right.
And I know for a fact, I'm not guessing at this, that there are people.
Running countries around the world who've thought about, like, what does AI mean for my population?
Means I've got too many people.
So, this is something I know for a fact.
I'm not guessing that leaders of countries are talking about between each other.
Like, I know that.
And I'm not saying they're committing genocide or whatever, but they know that they're about to be killed.
They're just looking at heart statistics.
They are.
That's exactly right.
So, there's the second explanation is that we are in a managed, Decline of population, global population.
Manipulated decline.
A manipulated, managed global population decline.
People with families, they're hard to control.
Like men and women that own land.
I mean, that is your greatest risk of a revolution, right?
Talk about the American Revolution, whatever it would be.
I mean, that's a risk factor.
And so if you can take men and you plug them into the economic machine, by golly, take the women too.
And if they get a kid, you were just talking about the inability to actually buy land and dirt and all of these things.
I can't imagine if my wife had to raise our kids.
In a condo, like no backyard, no fresh air for them to go out to, no, just go outside, get your energy out.
Of course, she'd be at one and she'd be like, I can't do it.
We can't have any more.
I'm trapped in here all day.
And literally, that's millions and millions, billions of people.
And they're like, I maybe got one at best, too.
This is too much.
I can't have anymore.
Give me the surgery.
Give me this.
I'm done.
Yeah.
Yeah.
All right.
So that's explanation number two.
The second, the third explanation, this is really interesting.
And so, Nate, let's show image number five.
This is a perspective on the religious.
Birth rate among religious people versus non religious people.
And so I'll actually show a couple graphs in a row here.
So, number one here shows the fertility rates by religious attendance.
Nate, do you have any before that?
Okay.
So, I will just summarize two other ones.
There is a significant difference.
Now, the study that I looked at just said religious attendees in America.
So, obviously, most of that is going to be Christian attendees just because Christianity is still the highest.
The most dominant or most popular religion, but there is a significant increase.
People who attend church over once a week and who believe that the Bible is the inspired word of God, their birth rate has been from about 2.2 up to 2.5 down to 2.2.
As soon as you start moving to less than once a week, but sometimes or never attending church, the birth rate drops significantly below two per woman.
Okay, so that's one thing to consider.
The other thing, Nate, you can go ahead and put that graph up.
So, this is the replacement rate.
So, this study was so interesting.
It took into account, now, this is from 2022, I think, as far as it went.
So, it's not accounting for the massive increase in Orthodox and Catholic converts right now going on.
But the blue line is the number of.
Children that women in a religion would have to have to keep the current number of people who are part of that religion stable.
So this is barring any sort of conversion.
If you've got a million people who are Buddhists or a million people who are Christians, and they calculated in the fact that people are leaving Protestantism, they're joining Hinduism, or they're joining Eastern Orthodox, things like that, this is how many people,
how many kids a woman in a particular religious group would have to have without conversion or evangelism or anything like that to maintain the level of that many Christians or Mormons or Jehovah's Witnesses, et cetera.
And is that related to because they're dying?
Only or because they're dying and leaving, it factors both in.
Okay, okay, so Nate, put it back up.
So, so it's taking in consideration, like right there where it says Catholic or Orthodox, Eastern Orthodox, it's saying that they, uh, the average Catholic or Orthodox woman, and this is for America, or yes, this is in the U.S. in the U.S., would have to have over on average a little bit above three children, yes, in order to just maintain the current numbers of Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox in America, and that's because not just because all the Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox are all.
80 years old and dying, but because people are leaving.
But this was again, this was done in 2022.
Yes, so the red bar is probably changed.
The red bar is the actual rate, okay?
So there are no religious groups, um, that are Christian.
There are some all the way on the right where it says other religions.
This is, um, they went pretty broad, they went even into like Native American religions and things like that.
But there are no real Christian uh religions that currently on their own have a high enough fertility rate to just keep their population stable and steady.
With the trends of people leaving Christianity and Protestantism.
Pentecostal churches.
The Pentecostal church.
Oh, you're right.
The Pentecostal church is high.
And that makes sense to me.
Like, and I don't mean any, I, you know, I was Pentecostal for a time.
So I don't mean to disparage Pentecostals.
They're brothers in Christ.
I guess it depends what stripe of Pentecostal, you know, but, you know, but like assemblies of God.
Like these are Christians, brothers in Christ.
We have some theological differences, but we're grateful for them.
So I don't mean to disparage, but this would be my theory, my working theory on that is I do believe that Pentecostalism.
Number one, it has been, you know, over the last like half of a century, it has been the fastest growing denomination within Christianity.
So part of it is probably just the rate of attrition of people actually coming into Pentecostalism.
But then also, I would imagine that part of it in the case of Pentecostals, you know, because like right there, that red line, it's saying that they're having the most kids.
Well, and the non denominational Christians actually are up there too.
Yep.
So non denominational and then also Pentecostal.
And my guess is, you know, kind of like what I was saying earlier, there's, you know, you can look at like economic status, you know, of like richer nations having fewer children, poor nations having more children.
But not just economic, but I think you can also look at, you can look at like education brackets, you know, like people with PhDs aren't having kids, you know, not for the most part.
Whereas like people with high school diplomas, you know, are having more children.
And when it comes to Pentecostalism, again, not trying to disparage genuine brothers in Christ.
But the doctrinal standards, like Pentecostals, it doesn't tend to attract a lot of intellectuals, highly educated people, or high class people economically or in terms of education.
Pentecostalism tends to attract more blue collar, either lower to middle class, high school diplomas, maybe a few bachelor's degrees.
And again, I'm speaking on average because somebody's going to email me and say, well, I, you know, I know one guy who has a PhD who's a Pentecostal.
I'm sure there's one guy.
I bet there might even be three across the whole.
So I get that.
But in terms of group dynamics, I was raised, I think of small rural Texas areas where I was raised.
Most of the churches are non denominational and charismatic.
Some brand, some version of Pentecostalism.
And small towns like that, it could be a town like the town I grew up in, 18,000 population, and yet there's over 100 churches.
And most of the people, probably half of the city at least, goes to church.
But probably 70% of those churches are some stripe or color of Pentecostal churches.
They're all speaking in tongues, you know, and it's just your everyday salt of the earth, you know, blue collar people who, you know.
So, anyway, so to me, that's actually not surprising.
Whereas you get like Catholic and Orthodox, and although we have our theological differences with, you know, Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox guys, Um, that you know, like, um, it you know, even though the Catholic Church has had you know one of the best positions on life, uh, historically for a very long time and really held the line, uh, with that, um, Catholic Church, uh, and I would assume Orthodox also, I think both, uh,
tend to attract a higher intellectual type of person, you know, more highly educated that lends towards having less children.
I think there are lots of practical reasons for that.
One of the reasons being, you know, if you go to school and you get your bachelor's and your master's, and maybe you know, A doctorate, you know, to top it all off.
Well, by the time you're actually out of school and in the workplace, and you physically, you know, if your medical finished your residencies and all these kinds of things and finally got, you know, some of the $180,000 worth of school, you know, student loans that you took out under, you know, at least they're certainly not paid off, but at least, you know, manageable with your $2,000, you know, $3,000 a month payment, but your job is caught up, you know, and all those things, and you're ready to start a family.
Well, that's great, but you're 65 years old.
I'm exaggerating a little bit, but you're well into your 30s.
And so, you know, the window of fertility is already closing, and that can be a factor too.
Eastern Orthodox is the most educated denominationslash tradition in the United States.
Pains me to say it, but it's to your point.
I believe it's true.
And Catholic is probably, I would be willing to guess, they're probably second.
And then it's First Baptist Church, Main Street, Alabama.
Probably not.
Probably not.
Men is probably Anglicans, Episcopalians.
I was going to say, I would think some of the main lines, right?
Like you've got the Anglican liberal who's.
Gone to college, Anglicans for sure would be up there.
Um, yeah, and then uh, and then way, down, you know.
And then you have Pentecostals, you know.
But the Pentecostals are not gay, you know.
So I appreciate that.
Um, assemblies of God's been bad in women's ordination for a while, that's true.
And it's funny, they've survived as long as they have.
So have Nazarenes, not to Nazarenes are shocking in terms of because it really is a direct.
Well, what I'm saying is that there's a direct correlation of you know, you start uh, ordaining women to.
The clergy, and you know, typically in like 10 to 15 years, you know, you're gay affirming as a denomination.
And Nazarenes are really one of the only ones that started ordaining women to the clergy like decades ago.
Like they were one of the first ones to do it and actually held the line on traditional marriage.
All 5,000 of them.
All 5,000, but they have, yeah, to your point.
Yeah.
The Global Fertility Crisis Explained00:14:01
All right.
We have two other potential reasons why this is happening.
Wes is going to talk about one, and then I've got a Some quotes on the other, but we'll hit those when we come back from this next commercial break.
Are you a Christian struggling to find companies that align with your values and beliefs?
Well, then Squirrelly Joe's has you covered for all your coffee needs.
All of their coffee is hand selected and roasted fresh every day by a family of fellow believers.
Try them out and you'll savor exceptional coffee while knowing that your investment supports a company committed to following God's teachings and upholding truth and righteousness, ensuring that your hard earned money contributes to the growth of God's kingdom.
Stop giving your hard earned dollars to pagans who support evil.
Right Response listeners have access to an exclusive deal.
Your first bag of coffee is free.
All you have to do is cover the shipping.
So head on over to squirrelyjoes.com forward slash right response.
Again, that's squirrelyjoes.com forward slash right response to claim your first free bag of coffee today.
All right, here we are.
So One of the things I wanted to touch on, I actually, it was about a week ago or so, I had an exchange on X that was super helpful.
Is there's also, you think about some of these, we talked about diversity as a problem.
Well, some of these nations, like America, going through a fertility decline, we are pretty diverse, but South Korea is not necessarily the kaleidoscope of multiculturalism that the West is.
And so there's no one solution.
But another factor to keep in mind, and I really think it's a big one, is what does a country export?
And so in the case of South Korea, which has one of the worst, they're facing one of the worst fertility crises.
Someone commented and clarified, it's only been a couple years that they've been trying to fix it.
So they've been on decline for, I looked at the rate last week.
It's about two to three decades, I think, that it's been declining.
Only the last couple of years have they tried to fix it.
But check this out the primary export of Korea.
So, what does South Korea provide?
What do they do?
It's technology and it's service.
Those are jobs that are very suited for women to be able to do.
Women, as far as technology, they don't require physical strength.
They don't require a lot of, like, you can think of a resource extraction.
You can think of agriculture.
They don't require that.
And so when you're looking at, well, we want to incentivize women to stay home and have children.
Well, that's really tough to do if she's like, Well, I'm making $150,000.
I have a great social life.
I go out for drinks every evening and I live in an awesome city.
That's very hard to do, certainly because of the city, certainly because of all these different things.
It's also just hard because all of the jobs are available.
What that society exports is service, versus apparently, Mongolia was starting to have this problem and they got some policies in place and they turned it around pretty quickly.
Here's the difference Mongolia is an agriculture based society.
So you had women that were leaving the home and doing different things.
But honestly, just generally speaking, women are not begging, like, please send me out.
Send me into the mines, send me into the forest, send me out there to get some cobalt.
It was much easier if your primary export is something physical like that, where really only men can do it.
It's a lot easier in those cases to reverse it, to say, hey, men, you want your wife to stay home, but I understand rising costs made that happen.
Here's a tax cut.
The wife goes, thanks goodness.
I was just working a desk job anyway.
I wasn't really suited to it.
I wasn't making much money.
I didn't have a robust social life.
I'm happy to go home.
Now we're able to afford it.
So, every single country is going to have a different dynamic.
What are we exporting and what type of jobs are women occupying instead of being home and having children?
Real quick, I got to point out somebody in the chat named Adam, which I appreciate you being here, Adam, listening, but I just want to help you out a little bit.
He said, Homes in Los Angeles are a million dollars unless it's a gang infested area, and rents are $4,000 plus.
In addition, medical insurances cost me, wife and son, $2,500 a month.
Add car payments, insurance, life insurance, food, utilities.
Good luck, right?
Good luck having a single income.
Home where the wife is able to stay at home and raise the children.
So I wrote a little book.
It's called Fight by Flight.
And the solution to the problem is what the heck?
And everything that is holy and good in the world, why?
Why are you in Los Angeles?
Get out of there.
Problem solved.
All right.
Continue.
All right.
Well, we have these are some of the.
I live in hell and it's not particularly family friendly.
What could the problem be?
Like, I, you know, my next door neighbor is Lucifer and I, you know, we're trying to raise our kids to fear the Lord and I, you know, hell just, it's just not conducive to having a family life.
I don't know what the problem could be.
Yep.
Leave.
All right.
Um, All of these have some explanatory power and are, you know, they I'm sure there's a degree of validity to all of these theories that we have just talked about.
But I think, Wes, you mentioned it earlier.
Really, at the core of this is women have been sold a bill of goods and men have been sold a bill of goods too.
And it's easier for the man if he doesn't have to apply himself and become excellent at his trade or his craft to support his family, to allow his women to go out into the workforce.
I just We've talked about feminism a lot and the link between feminism and a woman being in the workforce, not wanting as many kids, rejecting the mandate to be fruitful and multiply.
It goes without saying almost.
But these were two quotes that, as much as we've talked about it, they still managed to shock me.
So I'm going to read two quotes, and these are from feminist perspectives on the global population, or at least the Western population decline.
So here we go.
This is the first one, and it says this.
According to one perspective, women have greater autonomy and fertility decreases as more women engage in higher education and employment.
Having access to better education means women have more control over their relationships, increased knowledge of contraception, and more say in family planning.
An increasing number of women have chosen to postpone having children to continue their careers.
Having children also compromises the opportunity to earn more when women's incomes grow in comparison to To those of their male spouses.
This was specifically talking about the drop in fertility, even though Africa is still above the rate that they need to sustain themselves.
It's dropped.
It's dropped over the last couple of decades.
And so this article was saying actually it's good that it's dropping there because what it proves is that the quest and the conquering of women's rights is marching on and marching on, and it's even getting to Africa where.
Now, women, we're going to see lower population rates in Africa because finally women boss babe, feminism, contraception has arrived.
Even to the, you know, it's almost like a missionary effort.
You think even to the farthest parts of the globe, right?
The gospel is going to go.
No, no, even to the farthest parts of the globe, the message of good news for women that they don't have to, you know, be subject to their husbands, that they can work, that they can choose, they can have contraception, you can have it all.
Yeah.
And so that was surprising that they were happy.
That the fertility rate in Africa is dropping so quickly.
Wow.
Thanks.
I hate it.
Yep.
Quote number two.
Quote number two.
This is from an article called The Global Fertility Crisis is Worse Than You Think.
And the quote is addressing some claims that The Spectator, which is a magazine or a newspaper, was saying.
And the point of this article was to say this is one of the ones that claimed, yes, the population is decreasing and it's a good thing.
So it's trying to debunk a bunch of the scare tactics.
It calls them scare tactics that the spectator was pointing out.
The spectator was saying, no, population is declining.
This is terrible.
We need to do something about this.
Okay, so here's the quote.
The above claims in the Spectator article don't just get the facts wrong on population, but they form part of a wave of pronatalist articles falsely scaremongering that low birth rates are a cause for alarm when instead they should be celebrated.
We should celebrate low birth rates as it means more enlightened, empowered women who have agency over their lives, women who are educated, employed, and have limited barriers to accessing modern contraception.
And instead, focus on how ending global population growth and reducing our overconsumption of resources are key to solving the environmental crises the world faces.
We pulled this graph up not even a week ago, and it was a survey of women, married, unmarried, kids, no kids.
The most miserable women, actually, it was unmarried with kids, but married versus unmarried.
Besides that, unmarried women with no children.
So they're saying this is good, they're having less.
And that's great.
They're happier, right?
They're thriving.
Oh, they're freaking miserable.
Yep.
Yep.
They hate women.
Yep.
Oh, yeah.
Like, what's going on here?
They hate women.
They hate the way that God has structured, not just structured society, structured reality.
And they said, we can undo it.
We'll beat nature.
Spoiler alert, they won't.
That's Psalm 2, right?
The kings of the earth, you know, that they try, they seek to break the bonds.
You know, it's speaking of like God's.
It's speaking of God's sovereign power over all the earth, but it's also speaking about, you know, you can read implicitly in the text how, you know, the means by which God exercises his sovereign authority over the earth.
And one of those means, of course, is the church and through special revelation and the word of God, word and sacrament, but also through natural order, through nature.
That's one of the ways that God sovereignly exercises his authority over the earth, his providence by what he has made through nature itself.
And so the kings of the earth seeking, you know, together to.
To stick it to the man in the sky, stick it to God and cast off his restraints, break the bonds, Psalm chapter two, is, I think, one great example of that is elites in any society that is trying to somehow fight against the natural order.
And feminism is a stark example of that.
Yep.
Someone asked, and it's a great reminder can you please remind everyone that all hormonal birth control pill and the copper IUD are abortive fashion?
Yes.
Yes.
They're not just preventing pregnancy.
The way abstinence does, but they would also, if the sperm and the egg come together, you'd have the fertilized egg, which is life.
They also have a third mechanism in place that makes sure of the uterine wall that that can't implant, effectively killing the baby.
Yeah, you're creating an inhospitable environment, the thinning of the uterine wall, so that if an egg is fertilized, and we believe that that is conception, that it begins at fertilization, not merely.
There's scans that actually show a flash of light.
When the sperm actually meets the egg, it's really cool.
They've seen like a little electron flash, a light.
Maybe it's the soul.
Maybe.
I don't know.
From the parents.
Yeah.
From.
Oh, snap.
Traditionism.
So, yeah.
So that's when life begins.
And the pill is actually making an inhospitable environment.
That's not the only mechanism.
There are two other mechanisms the cervical fluid thickening so the sperm doesn't reach the egg, stopping the ovulation cycle so that there's no egg being produced to be fertilized.
But that third mechanism, thinning of the uterine wall, is creating an inhospitable environment so that if the first two mechanisms fail to prevent fertilization and the third mechanism succeeds, well, now you've just killed one of your children.
And you might say, well, I'm not of the persuasion.
My conscience, you know, I just don't believe that the first two would fail while the third.
Mechanism remains intact.
Well, first, you're playing Russian roulette with life, with the lives of your children.
There's no serious studies that have been performed, and they probably never will because there's no incentive to produce studies on something like this.
So there's nothing that proves that scenario can't happen.
But then, secondly, what has been proven is that long after, not in every case, but in many, many cases, long after a woman is ready to start having children and she stops taking the pill, especially if she was on the pill for a long time since her teenage years and through.
Puberty, you know, or right at puberty, and you know, she's been on the pill for 10 years for a decade and she stops.
And now, her and her husband are trying, and God bless that they're trying, you know, to be parents and to have children.
But that last mechanism, the thinning of the uterine wall, is usually one of the last things to be restored if it's able to be fully restored.
So, all of a sudden, again, that you know, the cervical fluid is now, um, is now, you know, thinning, um, and not thickened, slowing down the sperm.
You're now going back onto your ovulation cycle, you're producing eggs, but the uterine wall.
Could take in some cases.
I've read where people say it can take years, often six to eight months.
That's somewhat regular, normative, but in some cases, years.
So you and your husband could be trying every single month during ovulation.
And for two years, you could be, you don't know, because it would be a very early miscarriage that might just look like a little bit extra blood or may even look normal with your period.
But it's entirely plausible that you and your husband could have killed 24 children.
Over the course of two years, uh, without even realizing it, so you really are playing with life and death.
Misunderstanding Implantation Timelines00:04:35
We're not trying to, um, to unnecessarily guilt or shame people.
Um, but but what we are trying to do is, um, is to inform people, um, of the reality of what you're doing.
And I know plenty of couples, including my wife and I, um, much to our shame.
But in the first, uh, I think it was a little less than a year, first like six to nine months of our marriage, uh, that's you know, we hadn't heard any teaching against it.
Um, and then we had to repent.
That's what Christians do.
So we're not trying to.
To unnecessarily shame people.
But what I am trying to advocate for is that you would do the same thing that my wife and I had to do.
We had to repent and run to the foot of the cross, ask the Lord for forgiveness, and change our actions.
And we're so glad we did.
Yeah.
It was the same with us.
We had a doctor that we were seeing, and he was on some sort of board, pro life state board.
He was a Christian doctor.
And he said, I guarantee you these things are not a board of patients.
Right.
And he said, I would not say that.
I'm on the board of this.
Christian pro life doctors organization, blah, blah, blah.
And yeah, so we.
Well, there were guys in the medical industry, doctors who were also lay elders at John MacArthur's church who were making the same argument and saying, no, it's, you know, but the reason why, you know, so I had to look into all this because at the time there wasn't a whole lot of information on the subject.
This was almost 10 years ago.
And so I was like, well, John MacArthur's elders, you know, they're making arguments where it's okay, you know, and they're, you know, this so and so, he's an elder at his church and he's also a doctor.
But then come to find out if you do some of the reading, the reason why these guys are saying, you know, they're looking in the eyes, you know, without flinching and they'll, you know, and they'll, you know, attempt to assure you that it's, that there's no abortive, you know, function whatsoever is because they, the quiet part, the fine print is that they changed the definition of conception to implantation instead of fertilization.
So that's one of the reasons is that many, many, many doctors, that is Kind of like the medical consensus.
Do you think that was knowingly, like, was that changed in the literature?
And so a Christian would read conception and I don't know.
You're asking a guy who's a bit of a conspiracy theorist.
So I, and you know, if you're asking me, I'm going to say, yeah, I think it was intentional.
I think they knew exactly what they were doing.
But yeah, the medical definition of conception, when life begins, historically for centuries has been fertilization, for centuries before we ever had, you know, CAT scans or, you know, or sonograms or any of these, before we even knew all the inner working dynamics.
Medically, and could articulate it, there was still just this consensus, overwhelming, universal consensus that conception began at the moment of fertilization.
And that is not just, oh, for 70 years we believe this.
No, for centuries and centuries and centuries, arguably all the way back to some of the church fathers.
And you can find it in some of their writings.
And so you're talking about 18, 19, 2,000 years, 1800, 1900, 2,000 years of believing that fertilization was.
Conception, and then really just in the last few decades, a very novel and recent change in that position, and a quiet change that wasn't communicated for most people.
So they would just say, Yeah, like this does not, it inhibits conception, it does not risk aborting life after conception.
But then you look at the fine print, they will move the goalpost to where conception actually happens no longer fertilization, but implantation.
And that's how they were able to make the argument.
People will say, well, you know, Aquinas talked about a period of several days or weeks, even.
The point was, they didn't know how quickly fertilization happened.
But their belief was, even Aquinas, as soon as the child has been formed, they didn't understand all the biology of the sperm and the egg necessarily, but the theological and philosophical position was as soon as that life has been united from the parents, at that moment, from then on, It is a baby.
They didn't understand the stages of implantation, how many days later.
So there are people who will say, well, Aquinas, he said that the child is not actually a child until three weeks later.
It's only because they didn't understand how quickly fertilization happens.
Right.
Yep.
Yep.
So for today, we want to keep the episode a little bit shorter.
We've got some other projects that we're going to be working on.
Prudence Versus Idolatry in Childbearing00:05:50
But I want to give opportunity for both Wes and especially you, Michael, because you outlined today's episode.
Are there any final thoughts as we land the plane?
Only this, as Christians, we need to do.
Joel, you preached a sermon years ago on Psalm 137 that children are a heritage from the Lord, arrows in the quiver.
And you said something good.
It was balanced.
You said, you should have as many children as you can sharp it.
You should produce sharp arrows.
So don't be unrealistic.
We do live in difficult economic times.
But you also said, You can probably have one or two more sharp arrows than you think you can in your own reasoning and wisdom.
And so push yourself a little bit and let the Lord be gracious.
Right, yeah.
I was trying to help people understand that there is reason and prudence does come into play, but if we're honest, so does idolatry.
And that's when we want to watch out for.
So, as modern Westerners, I would err on the side of having more children than you think you can have.
One, because the Bible literally talks about a full quiver being a blessing from the Lord.
So, the Bible errs on that side.
But then, secondly, because we're Western moderns, modern Westernists, It's, we just, we're swimming in the idolatry, the idolatry of convenience, the idolatry of, you know, having two incomes.
And we just don't even, I don't even think we realize.
And I would just think about, you know, think about it with any other blessing.
So the Bible clearly says children are not a burden.
That doesn't mean it's hard or that it's not hard because it is.
Raising children is hard.
But the Bible definitively, objectively calls children a blessing, a heritage and a blessing from God.
The Lord.
And so, with the best blessings in life, the best blessings are good, but they're not easy, right?
So, it's good, not bad, blessing, not burden, but difficult, not easy, right?
There's lots of things that are a blessing, but they require management and careful stewardship and vigilance and diligence.
A billion dollars.
Wisdom and prudence.
Exactly.
So, compare it to anything else.
And that was what I was building up to.
Compare it to any other blessing, right?
So, like, money is a blessing, but lots of money is.
With many people, can bring about ruin.
You know, all the statistics of people who win the lottery and end up, you know, just as poor or poorer than they were before they won the lottery, because the type of person who's playing the lottery tends not to be, you know, a financially wise, you know, careful, you know, manager, steward, you know, steward of finances.
So money is a blessing.
It's the love of money, right?
The idolatry of money, greed that is the root of all kinds of sin, all kinds of evil.
But money itself is not inherently bad.
In fact, it is a blessing, the Lord giving resources to you.
But there is a side of being unwise and where money can ruin a foolish man.
So, all that's true.
At the same time, though, when you're thinking about children and thinking, well, we don't want to have too many, just realize, just realize, you know, so I try not to be overly legalistic about this.
I think that it's foolish to put a number on it.
Like, everyone must have this many children.
There are extenuating circumstances.
There are exceptions.
There's all these different things.
And I don't want to play the role of the Holy Spirit in somebody's life with these kinds of things.
But I do think it's important to recognize when you think about children, you should think about children as a blessing.
And so put that in the category of any other blessing that comes from the Lord.
And money is a great example.
So if your boss is bringing you back to his office and he's saying, you know what, I want to double your salary.
In that scenario, would you sit down across from his desk?
I say, you know what?
I want to mitigate this blessing.
This is too much.
Could we just settle for a 12% raise?
But when it comes to children, so my point is yes, too much money could ruin someone if they're foolish, especially.
But by and large, more often than not, we don't go out of our way actively, carefully, diligently mitigating.
I want to make sure if there's anything that I'm doing in life, I want to work 24 7 to make sure that I don't make too much money.
There's just not a lot of people thinking in that way.
And good, because that's pretty stupid.
If a lot of people are thinking like that, I'd probably be concerned.
But we do think that way with children.
So, there's very few blessings in life that we're actively, daily trying to mitigate.
But when it comes to children, who the Bible calls a blessing and a heritage from the Lord, we are regularly, constantly thinking in a framework of how can I mitigate this blessing?
Don't want too much blessing.
I'd like just a little bit of blessing, you know, or, you know, I don't want to be blessed every two years.
I'd like to be blessed every five years, you know.
And that's not how we think about pretty much any other blessing except for children.
And so, if that be the case, and I think it is for most of us, if we're willing to admit it, then I think we should recognize.
That's what we like to call prudence and wisdom often is fear and idolatry.
And we should be aware of that.
So there is a prudence category.
But a lot of what we, because we're moderns, 20th century liberals, a lot of what we like to call wisdom, what we're labeling as wisdom, if we're honest, wisdom has become a euphemism for fear.
And prudence has become a label for idolatry.
And we should be aware of that.
Real quick, the Joyful Wife asked the name of that sermon.
If you go to the Right Response YouTube page, there was a three part series on Psalm 127.
So you can look up Psalm 127.
Wisdom And Fear In Family Planning00:00:57
Right.
I think it's only five verses, but I ended up preaching it three times.
Just cooking.
But that particular sermon was part three of the series, and it was called Children Are Arrows.
Yeah.
Sometimes, you know, I'll do a three-parter because it's like there's so much in the text.
And then sometimes you do a three-parter because you're like, I'm going to preach the same sermon.
And by the third time I preach, it's going to be fire.
Yeah.
Sometimes it's just like you need, you know, three strikes, you're out.
And, you know, sometimes you need three tries in the pulpit, you know, to get a text right.
And so it was a good.
Just a quick month, you know, to really shake it off and get it right.
That third try, that was a banger.
Yep.
Yep.
All right, well, let's go ahead and land the plane.
Thank you guys for tuning in.
We appreciate it.
Nathan, there was, I think, one super chat.
If it's something short, I'll get to it real quick just to honor him.
This is from the Salty Sailor.
He gave us five bucks.
Thanks, Salty Sailor.
We appreciate it.
He said, learned a lot today, as always.
Thank you, brothers.
Thank you, Salty Sailor.
And everybody else out there, you stay salty as well.