Why You Should Have Kids... Lots of Them

About this sermon

Yes, parenting is hard, but that’s not all it is. But it seems like a lot of parents have become exclusively fixated on the difficulty and they’ve forgotten the reasons why it’s worth doing, so I wanted to take a moment to try to reemphasize what I think those reasons are from my own experience. Most people believe there’s value in being exposed to a variety of experiences in this life, but by the time you get to be a mature adult, you start to act like you’ve seen it all. You lose your sense of wonder and curiosity. An older friend of mine who grew up in Great Britain was telling me about the fact that historic castles and cathedrals are of no interest to her because she had seen enough of them when she lived there and I was wondering how anyone could take all of that beauty and heritage for granted, but that’s what happens after a while. She was living in a place people will fly to from all over the world and she thinks it’s all just tedious. No matter how amazing our experiences or surroundings can be, once we’ve seen it a few times, it becomes easy to fall into a pattern of taking it for granted. Something about the experience of becoming and adult infuses us with an attitude like know it all. We forget that life can be an adventure of discovery. Having kids allows us to discover the world again for a second time through the experiences of our children. We experience their sense of wonder and curiosity as we teach them and try to nurture those experiences. It’s like you get to go on the adventure of life again for the first time. Experiences like learning to walk and talk, seeing an animal up close for the first time, climbing a tree, learning to read and write , watching Darth Vader tell Luke that he’s his Father for the first time. And if you’re lucky, you get to be a grandparent and do it all again for a third time. Seeing my parents become grandparents has been really interesting and beautiful to watch because they are different with the kids this time around. Their priorities when they interact with or care for the kids is different from my priorities as a parent and they don’t treat them the way they treated us when they were parents. It’s like every time you experience childhood again as a parent and then as a grandparent, you bring a whole new depth of wisdom and joyfulness to it. Maybe this is what Jesus meant when he said that unless we become like little Children, we won’t enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Something about our lives and our nature seems like it’s designed for us to re-experience childhood over and over and that our purpose can be discovered in that experience. I happen to believe that our purpose in life is to love others as we do ourselves. That’s much easier said than done because we happen to be extremely selfish by nature and this is something that we don’t realize until our selfishness is put to the test. When we have children of our own and suddenly have to learn to reorient our priorities in the interest of someone else, we quickly discover how much of a strain it puts on our selfish nature and that can be extremely eye opening and good for us. As I said before, learning to love other people is easier said than done but for whatever reason, call it evolutionary design or divine providence, the natural order of our lives seems to be designed to make this process easier for us if we embrace it. If we are, by nature, selfish, then the best way for us to learn to love someone other than ourselves, is by creating someone who is as much like us as possible. That’s what having children can do for us. It gently invites us into an experience of loving someone who isn’t us but closely resembles us as much as possible. It’s a first step to learning to love someone who isn’t you but who is much easier to love than some random person would be because they look like you, they’re tiny and adorable, and they will have similar afflictions to you which will inspire your sense of compassion and empathy much easier than it would for someone who is afflicted with something you can’t relate to. Lastly, I want to encourage you to have as many kids as you can. There are more reasons for this than I can describe, but one of the most surprising reasons is because it’s easier. The more kids you have, the more they learn to amuse and rely on each other. Please comment with your ideas about the video and if you find it interesting, please share it and subscribe. Twitter: https://twitter.com/briankeepsworth Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/brianholdsworthmedia Business: https://www.holdsworthdesign.com

Topics

• Parenting