Thus says the LORD:
“A voice is heard in Ramah, lamentation and bitter weeping.
Rachel is weeping for her children; she refuses to be comforted for her children,
because they are no more.”Thus says the LORD:
“Keep your voice from weeping, and your eyes from tears,
for there is a reward for your work, declares the LORD,
and they shall come back from the land of the enemy.
There is hope for your future, declares the LORD,
and your children shall come back to their own country.
(Jeremiah 31:15-17 ESV)
Children are a sign of blessing and hope for the future. It is through children that men leave their legacy and by bringing forth children one shows hope that there is a future for your children. A society with hope for the future will usher forth many children.
On the other hand, failing to reproduce is a sign of despair. A society not reproducing itself has given up on itself. A society failing to reproduce is a society lost in hopelessness.
Our society has given up on itself.
They might not say it outside of private conversations or obliquely in public opinion polls, but everyone knows the West is dying. They despair for they know there is no hope for our civilization; winter is coming.
This is why they don’t reproduce, why we don’t reproduce.
We are stuck in the polar twilight, knowing the polar night is descending, but we do not wish to our children to have to endure the harsh, cold winter night. Instead, we enjoy the revelry of twilight, eating and drinking, for tomorrow we die.
****
The saddest part of this twilight is the state of the church.
Christians have been given the first blessing and first command, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
We have been given a promise of a new life, yet we have given into the world’s despair.
This struck me recently at a church I occasionally visit. The priest was speaking on Psalm 137. During the sermon, he stated that ‘biblically, babies always mean hope‘.
This church is one of the few growing, young churches I know of. It’s congregation is composed of a couple hundred is mainly young adults. Despite the youth of the congregation, there are few young children. The church is perfectly poised to carry out the first command if only it would accept the first blessing. I still have some hope for it, but only some.
I talk with Christians. I asked my father if he had to do it over again, if he would get married or stay single.* He said he might marry but he wouldn’t have children in this age as our world is going to soon enter times of trouble.
I talk with other Christian men my age, some agree that children are a sign of hope, yet still are limiting the number of children they have. I talk with Christian women my age, children are a low priority for most. Their careers, teaching, music, writing, are more important to them at this point.
I talk with other Christians my age of the Kali Yuga, of our decline, none seem to actually reject the notion, some even embrace it. We talk of the dying church; everybody knows the church is dying, none dispute it. Yet, I talk of how the church could reinvigorate itself and retake our civilization if only Christians embraced the first blessing, yet there is always something more important.
I doubt any would say they despair, but the sinking nihilism of progressivism has taken hold.
The despair is not emotional, it is existential.
I despair for the church emotionally, yet there is existential hope.
The church has survived dark times before and can do so again.
Civilization has always re-arisen from the ashes.
****
Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the LORD on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.
…
When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will visit you, and I will fulfill to you my promise and bring you back to this place. For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you. You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you, declares the LORD, and I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and all the places where I have driven you, declares the LORD, and I will bring you back to the place from which I sent you into exile.
(Jeremiah 29:4-7, 10-14 ESV)
This then is the reactionary project: show hope, have children.
Traditional communities in Idaho are okay, recreating gangs and tribes is excellent, but these are sideshows.
Winter is coming, the darkness descends. The collapse is inevitable. We need to write of the reasons for the decline and illuminate it as it occurs, so that future generations can learn from our mistakes, rebuild, and hopefully stave off a future decline.
We also need to reproduce so there is a future and raise our children right so they can look forward to a brighter future.
We need to have hope, endure, and out-wait the night.
****
Finally, you don’t have anything more important to do than reproduce.
Only a fraction of a percent of the population has something more useful to impart to the future than children. Unless, in this hyperbolic world, your work is regularly described as “ground-breaking”, “world-changing”, and/or “revolutionary”, it’s probably not anywhere near as important as another well-raised child or two would be.
Are you Norman Borlaug?
All the jobs, all the economic activity, everything we build is made for people. Without people they are worthless. Are teachers of any value if there’s no one to teach? Is writing of any value if there’s no one to read? Is a bridge of any value if there’s no one to drive over it?
We build things, we create, we save, so that future generations can benefit from them. All worthwhile economic activity is for future generations. What isn’t for the future is empty consumerism.
The choice for the vast majority of people is reproduction or consumerism. For the exceptional, such as the aforementioned Borlaug, important improvements for future generations.
If demographics is destiny; children are the weapons of ideological war.
Evangelicals often complain of how the US is no longer a Christian country. Well, they make up a quarter of the country; if every evangelical followed the first command, had five children, and trained them up in the way they should go, the US would be a Christian country within two generations. If evangelicals in their 20s and 30s were fruitful, they could all live to see the re-Christianization of the US. They would win the culture war within my lifetime.
Will anything you do: your career, finding yourself, your hobbies, etc. have more impact than that? Probably not. If you are a Christian and you aren’t a missionary, evangelist, or priest, your children are the most important thing you can do for the furtherance of the Kingdom.
If you think something you do is more important than reproduction, in all likelihood your priorities are wrong. You are probably thinking in selfish, narcissistic terms, where “important” is defined as what you think feels good for now rather than what’s good for the future.
Also, even if you think it feels good now, it probably won’t in the long run.
****
* I asked a number of my married friends this as well. The general response was; being married is different but not necessarily better, you gain some, but sacrifice some. Although none regretted it.
>If you think something you do is more important than reproduction, in all likelihood your priorities are wrong.
Or you’re just biologically infertile and thus reproduction is not an option.
Whenever someone says something like “I would not bring children into an evil / troubled world” I am suspicious.
You missed a Scripture …
Seems a lot more applicable. The number of children are in direct correlation to the amount of evil in the world that the parents see. It’s not hopelessness so much as reality. The answer to this isn’t to ignore the world and go out and have children. The answer has always been to repent of the wicked things people are doing. Chief on this one is the perverted wicked thing that people are doing and passing off as marriage, even worse passing it off as something “God-given”.
(rest of my comment, having trouble with your comment box.)
The answer to this is, always, and ever was repentance.
If the “West is saved” it will not be by Christain Whites. They are leading force of destruction.
If saved, it will probably be by Whites who were raised in the church but turned their back on it because of the church’s hostility toward our race and peoples. People who are rooted in foundational truths of God but have left the propaganda behind
And outside of the Church, the seculars don’t bring any, or many, children into the world because they want to continue the party without the bother of children.
I was at the grocery store yesterday with our three children (may God bless us with more). A guy in his early 30s, I’d guess, smiled at me and the kids and said he’d be a father for the first time in a few weeks. I congratulated him and told him children are wonderful, a real blessing. He said he couldn’t imagine having three, one was enough, and maybe he and his wife would have another in a few years. He said, and I’m paraphrasing, that he wanted to make sure he had plenty of money and time to do things for himself too, and not have to waste all of his free time because of too many kids. He then went on to openly wonder to me whether or not I have a life at all because I have “so many” children.
THIS is the attitude people are adopting. It’s wrapped up in despair but the despair is not mentioned as the reason or the motivation to limit family size. Rather, they cover the desperation at the state of the world by squeezing one last sip of beer out of an empty keg, and that sip is for themselves alone. It’s selfish, and sometimes I think they are better off not passing on their genes, or behaviors, or ideas.
“Unless, in this hyperbolic world, your work is regularly described as ground-breaking, world-changing, and/or revolutionary, it’s probably not anywhere near as important as another well-raised child or two would be.”
I’d dispute that. I would suggest that Reaction implicitly states that it is most critical that those whose work is (insert superlative here) reproduce, and substantially so. The greater the man or woman, the greater the responsibility to reproduce.
Good essay. Thank you.
Why would the church not be dying? A great end-times revival was never prophesied. It will get worse and worse in the scriptures I read. The few will be persecuted and hated, not grow and prosper. Seems like what the bible said is coming true.
I understand not wanting to bring children into this world, but raising them away from the world, while still living in it, and training them up right is all you can do. Billions have stuck by the “when he is old he will not depart from it” promise but that does not guarantee that they will not make the wrong decisions. I know many Godly families who have some Godly children, and some no-so-Godly children. It is the adult children’s choice in the end – and if the wicked one comes and snatches away what was seeded in their hearts, then that is what the bible has said can happen.
YOU do YOUR best and let them make the decisions when they are grown.
I think that anyone saying that they’re not going to have kids is giving into weakness and sin. Sloth doesn’t only mean physically as the world means it, but spiritually as well. We fall into the sin of sloth when we have no joy in our works, in our lives, in our marriages, our jobs, and our God.
We are called to give all of these things to God. To do them to the best of our ability, with faith, hope, and love. Those are the three theological virtues to which every Christian is called to act with and to seek to grow in.
Additionally, Christ explicitly says not to try and predict the second coming. That he will come like a theif in the night.
So, not only do those people act in one of the seven deadly sins while eschewing the virtues; they’re also going against a explicit command.
Seems like anyone that doesn’t do their best to be fruitful and multiply is abandoning their duty and trying to rationalize their disobedience and lack of faith
You are both so right and so wrong.
1stly, a Christian does have a religious duty to have children and raise them properly.
However this doesn’t really take into account the fact that many fertile age people in the West have no way to feed house or clothe children even at the minimal level. How do we deal with modern city life and 25% youth unemployment and up to 50% underemployment as seen in many European cities? Asking people to raise their babies in slums for the “good of society” is in short foul.
2nd People do have something better to do than have children. Live their own life, the one that was given them.
3rd How much is enough.? There are probably thrice the number of just European descended persons alive now than the entire human population at the time of Christ and at least in our homelands (Europe) nary an acre more land. There comes a point in which there is more than enough fruit and we need no more farmers
If women wanted children and families, it would be occurring. Women always decide this.
Instead, they want to maximize their pleasures, and be able to sample the attention of as many men as they can, while holding out hope that the most perfect man of all will materialize at the end.
This is like spending all evening at the buffet, but assuming that they will serve you the choicest cut of meat when the evening is drawing to a close.
I will not reward such a woman with my life energy or life’s savings. I’ll either give it to family or spend it on myself. Maybe I’ll give it to the Church, under the right circumstances.
Also, I refuse to endure the heartbreak and outrage of handing my children over to the state’s leftist indoctrination apparatus, as they smugly work to undermine everything good and holy.
Know who will be the engine of the Church’s re-emergence if/when it ever happens?
It will not be my children, it will be the children and great grandchildren of the miserable atheistic sleazebags that run our society. God will give them the ultimate indignity of having their works undone by the hands of their own offspring, while simultaneously denying them the pleasure of harming mine.
That is, assuming that humanity does not first destroy itself. In Roissyian fashion, I will be poolside during the proceedings.
But, but, but… What about all those poor people in the Church – you know, the GOOD ones??
When the family hierarchy is once again set upright, with the father as the head, then the wife, then the children, I will reconsider.
As long as the vast majority in the church continues in their foolishness where they place children at the top, and the children become master of the mother, and the mother becomes master of the father, I’m out.
No amount of prayer or church attendance or childbirths will correct this inversion of authority and the outright rebellion that accompanies it.
The Church does not have a children problem. It has a rebellion problem.
Until the Church gets its act together, the only thing they can expect from me is a tsunami of rebuke.
Chad-
Hook me up with a Christian woman who has not been sampling d–k since she was 18 and we’ll talk.
sfcton-
Whites are DONE. If anything, I think there could be a revival in the black community.
By the time we start wrapping things up, I believe black evangelists and missionaries will be saving the white people. Seriously.
I know this isn’t what you wanted to hear, but if I had to do it all over again I would not have had children. It pains me to see the dreadful world they are being left. I guess that is why sex (reproducing) is such a powerful instinct. It has to overcome the rational mind that says “What, are you nuts?”.
Jack
Why should I do anything for someone that does nothing to solve their own problems, who shows that they outright refuse to pick up their cross?
You are exactly the same type I wrote about.
Either follow Christ or don’t, but don’t whine to me about why you feel justified in your rebellion
Jack, negros are not going to survive on their own. They have, for lack of a better term inherited functional nations in africa, and prosperous, functioning cities in the usa and turned them all into sh!t holes.
sfcton-
I expect an eventual revival in the black community. They are in much better shape than whites, because they have only ignored their Christian spiritual foundation. The whites have actively pulled it up by the roots.
I expect revival in the black communities. Don’t forget, whites were once quite barbarous as well.
I’m rebelling by not marrying a slut?
Yes jack, because that is exactly what I said.
Try reading comprehension. Grasp understanding. And if you have issue with what I’ve said then show me where, in scripture, I’m wrong
@ dq: Generalizations do not have to account for every special case.
@ b74: Can only fit so many into a post. Jeremiah was what inspired the post. Repentance is always good.
@ sfcton: I don’t even know if I think the West can be saved, but man must hope and do his best.
@ cranberry: Yup. It’s despair wrapped in hedonism.
@ ir: The best should reproduce, but some might not be able to if there mission is one of the rare somethings greater.
@ En-Sigma: I do not know if it’s end times and I do not speculate if it is. Empires can rise and fall without the world ending. I can understand giving into despair, but many unhealthy and disorderly things are understandable, it’s not something to do.
@ Chad: Exactly.
@ ABP: #1 Even the poorest in the West has more than 90%+ of people in history. They’re not going to starve and not going to be homeless; at the absolute worst, they’ll end up on welfare. In the West it’s not children vs. survival, it’s children vs. luxury.
#2 is simply selfish, hedonistic, despair.
As to #3, the West isn’t even reproducing itself, let alone growing. There’s plenty of land and space in Canada and the US. There’s even land and space in Europe, if the agricultural subsidy and immigration systems are anything to go by. There will be enough fruitfulness only when Christ returns.
@ jack: If people who know the truth aren’t willing to fight for it, even in self-sacrifice, how could it possibly be anything else but the evil and corrupt winning?
@ Robert: Hope is not always rational in a worldly way.
Excellent post as always, Free Northerner.
“If every evangelical followed the first command, had five children, and trained them up in the way they should go, the US would be a Christian country within two generations.” I believe the only problem with this quote is that even with proper, Christian child rearing, the Cathedral still is able to pervert the minds of the youth via the internet, television, common core and peer pressure, and the like. That is why it is even more necessary for all good Christians who despise the state of moral decay their country has fallen into not only to reproduce and raise healthy and principled children, but to live their lives as examples of Christian goodliness, live like the Saints, and shun much of the ills of the modern world that can allow any amount of corruption to occur.
Christianity and Traditionalism can and do go hand in hand. Without both of them working together in a symphony of Church and State, the West will not rise again.
Really? I’m supposed to marry a formerly promiscuous woman just to meet your interpretation of what man is commanded to do?
Jack, you have no sense of sarcasm as a response to your deliberately obtuse rationalizations and strawmen on how every woman is a slut.
Read scripture, and find a wife that matches what a wife should be. They exist.
Stop being a little girl whining about how hard it is or how sad it is for you for society persecuting you.
Find Faith. Build a foundation on Hope. Act with Charity.
Pick up your cross.
Follow Christ.
I’ve been carry my cross a long time. And at my age, there is scant supply of even remotely-chaste women.
With regard to accusations of estrogenic reaction, I can see you are in touch with your feminine side, since you went right for the “shaming language” tactic, which is a drearily shopworn cliche of the feminists. Could you manage something a little more original, please?
Besides, I’ve been shamed-up by the best of them, and you’re found lacking in that department.
I think you are one of those doctrinally-constipated people who have a problem when other Christians of strong faith don’t see things the way you do.
Here’s a test of spiritual maturity: If other people having differing doctrinal positions than you causes you to notice a sense of burning irritation, a recurring wrath, and painful religeroids, you may want to apply the soothing cream of Preparation S. S for ‘selah’ – pause and calmly consider.
If the Lord appears to me out of a cloud and tells me to marry, I will. In the meantime, I see myself as pretty much only defying you, which a cursory search of scripture does not seem to indicate is a transgression.
I will, of course, have to find some way to heal from the stinging welt of accusation that you leveled at me. I will recover, of course, from your
Hammer of JudgmentMallet of TruthGavel of Annoyance.If you call the truth and calls to follow scripture shameful, that’s on you. I’m not calling you to enter the house of an adulteress or a wanton woman; simply to follow Christ’s commandments.
I see you haven’t even tried to argue there’s any biblical foundation for your beliefs. As such, I find it endlessly humorous that you accuse me of being the one having different doctrine when you yourself show no doctrine. Tell me, do you lack a burning drive for women such as Paul describes? If so, great! Join the priesthood or swear a life of Chastity that you can be a shining example of holiness to others.
Otherwise there are no scriptural exceptions to the commandment to find a wife, be fruitful, and multiply. If I am mistaken, I’d be happy to read any scripture.
I care not to change your mind. I don’t waste words on fools. If anyone will convince you, it will never be me. It will be God. I’m just a random asshole on the internet, why would you listen to me?
Instead, I merely desire to shine a light upon such dark, sinful rationalizations to show anyone else reading that you have no foundation in God for such beliefs. I do so in hope that they can avoid losing the Hope that God desires to rise up within them with such strength that will drive them to actions of Love that will bring them closer to Him.
Endlessly humorous? You don’t seem to be laughing.
Anyway, I have no need to justify anything to you. I don’t care if you think I am the greatest heretic that ever lived.
And by the way, asking me if I “lack a burning drive”? Just not the kind of thing you ask another guy, brah. Creepin’ a bit. Especially when you ask it in such a “clerical” fashion if you get my drift. But thanks for your concern.
#8====>notyourproblem
Even Norman Borlaug managed to have raise 3 kids, even as he saved a billion people from starvation. There is no excuse for childlessness for the average civilized man.
I see you putting the cart before the horse here. The idea is the reach grandchildren, and if they are going to be valuable, you want K selected grandchildren. You need to build an infrastructure to support this. Mormons should be regarded as the prototype. Unfortunately Mormon leadership like the larger churches is on the leftward treadmill and hopelessly entangled with the financial system. You need to imitate them, improve on them.
Honor belongs only to men, purity belongs only to women. Trying to keep boys pure isn’t the concern of society, don’t make their sacred honor depend on their purity or your sons will learn how to lie. Women have no need of honor, they belong to their father until their father finds them a suitable husband. Letting women choose their mates is how we got here. Give men authority (mormons give men enormous spiritual authority, find a way to copy them) and women will submit naturally. Breeding is only good if its in the context of a patriarchal system. Build the system. Those communities you poo pooed, that’s how you start a system, you have to grow it from scratch.
I’m a strong agnostic who sees breeding becoming outdated due to the superiority of engineered life, but if the singularity does’t pan out or gets interrupted there needs to be a hedge. Mormons come close but aren’t it, you are a better candidate but aren’t prepared yet. Get a system in place so you can guard against r selection. Learn from the Mormons, don’t make their mistakes. Given the coming collapse there needs to be a foundation separate from the diseased world for civilization to start from anew. Hopefully without regressing too far technologically. Do it right and I may join you, even raise a brood of God fearing kids.
A reminder, the West is no longer Christian for the most part, its mostly residual social capital that is left that sect won’t be the revivals focal point. Perhaps this was an historical inevitability since the foreign faith was forced on many of them at swordpoint. Itmight even prove to be a good thing
Now in truth Non Whites are growing more Christian but they won’t sustain what is not theirs. They might however create a new Christendom. How that will play out I have no idea.