Episode Transcript
[00:00:06] Speaker A: Welcome to the Truth Exchange Podcast. This is a weekly program with Dr. Jeffrey J. Ventrella where he answers questions from subscribers around the globe, answering questions about worldview, cultural apologetics and other miscellaneous items. I'm your host, Joshua Gilo, and this is another edition of the Director's Bag.
[00:00:31] Speaker B: Okay, well, let's jump into it then.
[00:00:33] Speaker C: All right.
[00:00:34] Speaker B: We had a number of questions and comments on the last dicta for our listeners. You can go back and Look. There's a three part series that Dr. Ventrella has written on law following culture. And in the last dicta, Jeff, you laid out how one movement fed into other movements. And one of those issues that you brought up was the pill.
And so we had a number of questions, everything ranging from the pill liberating women to be able to work that the pill helps with some women's, the chemical balancing in their body, as well as the issue that the pill functions as an abortive. And one writer, Shaylen from Kansas City, Missouri, asked how should Christians think about contraceptives? There are big push today by some for big families and I've known some who have chosen never to have children within the confines of their marriage. And then there's the trad wife movement, which has been popular with some of my friends. But I think it's a bit unrealistic for my husband and I to undertake. We both work and at times we're barely able to make ends meet. Thanks for your content. It's refreshing, challenging, and I'm thankful that you guys take time to answer questions.
[00:01:57] Speaker C: That's an encouraging and insightful inquiry. Glad she took time to ask us about that because some of these issues are a bit complicated and that sort of thing. And yet even within those complicated issues there are some clear lines. So how do we think about this? And I liked how she phrased the question, we do need to think about these issues and not just bounce from one extreme or another. And she identified some of those extremes, kind of the full quiver. Have as many children as, you know, biologically possible on the one end. The other end you've got this kind of nascent movement now that's saying, oh, we're, you know, because of environmental reasons or whatever. That's usually what they say. There's a number of Christians that are by choice childless. And so this is reminds me of James Madison in the Federalist Papers writing in a different context. I think it's Federalist 37 where he says basically we've got to be careful of, you know, being jumping onto these emotive kinds of positions because it keeps us from reflecting upon what is truly good or what is truly bad, what is truly effective. And I think that's kind of what we're seeing here. So how do we think about this? Let's first talk about what's known as the Pill. The Pill was funded. The research for it was funded by Planned Parenthood, Margaret Sanger, a noted eugenicist, as well as the sexual revolutionary Hugh Hefner, who founded the Playboy Empire. And the idea, of course, is to separate the sexual act from procreation from children, which of course lessens responsibility. And it produced a number of unintended consequences. So what should we think about this? Well, there are some bright lines. One is that any attempt to do that which acts as an abortifacient, that is to say that takes human life, would be proscribed by the word of God. And so there are pills which will prevent the implantation of a human embryo and that would be taking an innocent life. Not all work with respect to that mechanism, but a number of them do, depending upon that. So then the question is, can we engage in a prudential view that says, you know what, if my wife has been told to a reasonable degree of medical certainty that should she have another pregnancy, she has gestational hypertension, gestational diabetes and has a very high risk birth, then that couple may, in prayer and in godly counsel, make a decision with respect to taking away that fertility for that time. We know that in God's providence that fertility does end in situations with just the way we age. So it's not as if you're doing something that is utterly inherently sinful. But, but, and you know, truth of change does not take a position on non abortivation uses of contraception. But we will talk about the cultural impact of those kinds of decisions. And the idea, I do think it is a sinful notion to make a decision in advance to say we will never have children. I think that children are a blessing from the Lord. And consequently, what other blessings do we say? No, God, you don't know what's right, I don't want your blessings. It's kind of like, well, prayer is a blessing, but I only pray, you know, twice a year. Well, or the Lord's table. Well, the Lord's table is a blessing. We're only going to do it twice a year, Right? Well, I think that's part of still the frequency. I hope that is clearer than I think I'm thinking about. But the idea is we want to be very careful we want to honor conscience, but we also have the. The law of God.
[00:06:12] Speaker B: And I've seen some people in the tradwife movement where they say, well, prior to the pill, you know, it was just unfettered and lots of children. That's the natural thing to do. Therefore, it's kind of that retrievalism that you've talked about before.
[00:06:28] Speaker C: Yeah. Would you. For our listeners, some may not be familiar with that terminology. What is the trad wife movement?
[00:06:36] Speaker B: Yeah, so the trad wife movement is a movement within some millennials, some of the Gen Z, Gen Alpha, where it's young girls who they have pretty much are resisting some of the cultural norms of today and encouraging the girls to go, once they finish high school, go to college, be a career person, become wealthy, buy a house, get a dog, and then maybe get married. And then maybe, if you're up for it, have children. So the trad wife says, don't go to college at all.
Get married and have as many children possible. And kind of almost have this Mrs. Cleaver kind of esque or Lucille Ball, you know, the 1950s sitcom kind of look. So they've gone back to wearing 1950s traditional wear and so on.
[00:07:38] Speaker C: Form of, again, a form of retrievalism. It's a popular form. It's a form of absolutizing a particular historical moment, which is not a biblical norm. And by the way, Lucille Ball had, I believe, multiple abortions so that she could corkscre a trad wife. But in her personal life, it was hardly from that. You know, there's a. There was a book a number of years ago where it was called, I think, Open Embrace. And this was a Husband and wife's Journey to say, you know what? We evangelicals have really missed the boat here. We really need to just be open to having children. Let the Lord decide. And so they went off to essentially cast off any form of. Any form of rationality there and have as many children as possible. They ended up divorcing after their fourth child because they had. They put all their chips on a particular conduct and didn't take into account all these other factors that bear into that. My view would be, you know, get married and have as many children as possible, but not. Not in a second sense. When I say as many as possible, I mean have lots of children because I think they are blessings, but it's not as many as possible. I'm going to correct myself there, so we won't be taken out of context. My point being is it's not like I'm going to have one child every three and a half years and so forth. And by the way, you women out there, everything you get in being educated and whatnot, you bring to your family.
And so being informed, being educated is only a benefit to supporting your husband, walking with him in the cultural mandate, and also with respect to mothering your children. And so this idea that, well, you know, denim jumpers and long uncut hair and really godly, and of course, none of that has anything to do with being a biblical godly woman.
[00:09:36] Speaker B: Yeah. You know, the other thing, Jeff, I was thinking about is having children earlier forces men and women. But primarily I'm thinking of men to grow up in a way that they wouldn't have to have had grown up later on. And so it teaches them that they need to be selfless. They need to care, not only now for the spouse and the spouse, not only the wife or the husband, but that they're now caring for the new blessing from the Lord. And it reshapes the way that they view church, how they view work, how they view family life, and so on. And so having children sooner than later, it encourages a type of development that doesn't take place normally without it. If that makes sense.
[00:10:31] Speaker C: That makes 100% sense. As John Frame would say, there's a knowledge of and a knowledge how. And being in a family with little ones that are utterly dependent really is a school petri dish for teaching the parents knowledge how. And it creates greater opportunities for communication, greater character development and virtue development and all the rest of it. I think it's just very important. I think also having, you know, if God opens the womb, so to speak, and you have children that are close in age, they become great friends. I know that when we, at the time we moved from Idaho to Arizona, we only had four children, but they were about two years apart. Well, they didn't know anybody in Arizona and they became great sibling wrens and very, very beneficial with respect to that. And so I just think we have to be aware of the Scylla and the Charybdis on both ends of those errors.
[00:11:34] Speaker A: This concludes the recording of the Director's Bag. For more resources from Truth Exchange, please visit us online at www.truthexchange.com. you can follow us on X as well as Facebook for more updates and content related to Truth Exchange. Be sure to join us next week for more questions from the Director's Bag. I'm your host, Joshua Gilo, and this is the Truth Exchange podcast.
