indra_fanatic
Well-Known Member
jtbdad said:
Furthermore, let me add that such impoverished citizens often have much larger families than those who are financially stable. The reasons are manyfold--not only do larger family sizes often limit the amount of time and money available for higher education and job training for these parents, but lower levels of education to begin make it much more likely for the parents to not be able to properly understand or use contraception.
There really is no rocket science needed to interpret the verses saying how children (or marriage) are blessings. The people addressed in Scripture clearly desired to be married and to have large families, so obviously they were blessings for them. Also remember that Middle Eastern culture, then and now, has always placed great emphasis on lineages and geneaologies--in fact, in NT times, some extreme Pharisees argued that those who never married (for whatever reason) were to be considered as dead men for the lack of heirs. Yet Paul, Jesus, John the Baptist, etc. clearly chose to neither marry nor have children, and they were obviously called to this life. Arguing that secretly God meant to say "commandment" and that every single mainstream translation of Scripture has erred won't get us anywhere, unless it can be proven that everyone has somehow gotten the original Hebrew wrong.
JunkYard, I think that JTBDad is right... it did seem somewhat like you were egging him on via such phrases as "wearing feelings on the sleeve", "you are protesting too much", etc. I'd really like this to stay a theological debate and not turn into a series of personal challenges.
Upvote
0
