Everything That's On My Mind

Y'know, this would make a great recurring blog entry... "Unfrozen Caveman Pastor." "I'm just a simple caveman... Your postmodern theology confuses and frightens me...."

On a serious note, I think the underlying issue is radical individualism. It used to be that the family was the fundamental unit. A woman who stayed home to raise children and take care of the home was considered to be contributing to the overall success of the family. She was considered to be supporting the career success of her husband and therefore shared in it. Conversely, the husband's work was considered at bottom to be supporting the home life--it wasn't an end to itself--and so he shared in his wife's familial success. One was not considered to be "successful" without the other.

I guess I'd have to read Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique to learn, from a feminist perspective, where this all went wrong. From the Wikipedia article on that book, though, I read that "Such a system causes women to completely lose their identity in that of their family." What is ignored here is that both men and women submerged their individual identities in that of their families--and both, arguably, profited from doing so.

We now live in a different world. Outside employment for most women is an economic necessity, not a choice for personal enrichment. (And many working mothers deal with guilt over not being able to be there for their children as much as they'd like, just as many stay-at-home moms deal with feeling that what they do is not valued by our culture.) Individual economic and career success is all that is valued in modern society, for both men and women. Most of our cultural icons--actors, musicians, politicians--are dreadful failures in their private lives, if we apply biblical standards of marriage (or Godly celibacy) and family relationships. (Remember the difficult time the Republicans had several years ago, when it became politically expedient to elect a Speaker of the House who hadn't had a messy divorce or publically-known affair?)

We have exalted wealth and status above all other values. Much of the sickness of our present society is a direct result. Kudos to Ms. Vargas and anyone else (man or woman) who makes career choices that appear foolish in order to invest time and energy in children and family.

I just want to be clear that it’s the Feminist agenda you’re railing on here, with regard to maintaining a career over being a mother. Your posting mentions a hypothetical situation regarding surrogate parenting, which seems to imply that using a surrogate parent to have children is Biblically wrong. It needs to be made clear here that surrogate parenting itself isn’t wrong, and neither is using a reproductive clinic in order to get pregnant.

Although the Bible doesn’t explicitly state anything with regard to surrogate parenting, there is strong evidence to suggest that God endorses this practice: the fact that He Himself used Mary as a surrogate to bring Jesus into the world. As powerful as God is, He could have brought Jesus into the world using any method He wanted to; but He chose a surrogate mother to give birth to the Savior. And as for payment of the surrogate for their services, don’t think for a minute that God didn’t take care of Mary and Joseph for their role in birthing and raising God’s Son; not only did they receive direct spiritual intervention for their well-being, the angels also ministered to them and directed other people to provide expensive gifts for their financial benefit. He didn’t expect them to do it for God as a ‘love offering’.

Please understand that I do not condone surrogate parenting for every circumstance: for instance, I don’t condone the practice of homosexual couples using a surrogate to carry a child for them, nor do I condone the use of reproductive clinics (or sperm donors) for the same situation. However, for those married couple (I’m talking man and woman here) who for whatever reason are either unable to conceive or are unable to carry a baby to term, using a surrogate mother in conjunction with reproductive clinics is a perfectly viable- and Biblical- option.

In fact, my wife and I were surrogate parents just recently for a childless couple in our city. They were unable to carry children themselves even with the help of in-vitro fertilization; using a surrogate mother was their last option. And yes, we received a fee for our role in the pregnancy; but that was nothing compared to the joy of seeing this couple finally realize their desire to have children of their own. And it was very much their own flesh and blood- their very own genetic material; the only difference was that they weren’t the ones who carried their children (they had twins, as it turned out).