It Takes a Congregation

First Things ^ | David Goldman

[Pride_of_the_Bluegrass]

Contrary to what we hear incessantly, marriage is not a right; it is an estate, a condition. There are conditions of life that have nothing to do with rights. One doesn’t have a right to go through puberty. One either does or doesn’t. What is the condition of being married, and what makes it possible to attain it? Franz Rosenzweig’s anthropology—in which religion is a response to man’s sentience of death, and the sentience of death is not only an individual but also an communal characteristic—may help answer that question. Humankind fights mortality in two ways. The first is to raise children who will remember us, and the second is to seek eternal life through divine grace. The estate of marriage involves both.

“Why do men chase women?” asks Rose Castorini in Moonstruck. “Because they want to live forever.” The data suggest that we marry and have children for just that reason. When we cease to hope in eternal life, we no longer marry and no longer have children. That is the terrible lesson that the triumph of secularism has taught us. In industrial countries where atheism triumphed in the form of communism, fertility rates have fallen to levels barely half of replacement. The fertility of Eastern Europe in 2005 was only 1.25 children per woman, according to the United Nations Population Prospects. Japan stood at 1.3. In secular Western Europe it was 1.6. In industrial countries where most people profess some form of religious faith, however, fertility remains at replacement levels or above. America’s fertility in 2005 stood at 2.1, and Israel’s at 2.9.

[DugwayDuke]

“The data suggest that we marry and have children for just that reason. When we cease to hope in eternal life, we no longer marry and no longer have children.”

So anyone who doesn’t want to have children doesn’t want to live forever? I find that a bit hard to believe. It would seem that the achievement of eternal life would have the opposite effect.

[Pride_of_the_Bluegrass]

eternal life is not an achievement it is a goal.

[HangnJudge]

What happens in reverse?

What happens to a couple who,
by no choice of their own,
can not have children of their own?

How does this effect their view of immortality?

[Vor Lady]

Ping for later.

[Pride_of_the_Bluegrass]

That’s sort of like asking how the concept of morality is effected by an early cancer diagnosis. Our humanity is what it is, and we have the choice of what we follow. If excuses is what you need to flee from god then you will use any of them to justify the course of your life.

The argument that David is making is that the proof is in the pudding, demographics of course being that pudding.

[HangnJudge]

If excuses is what you need to flee from god
then you will use any of them to justify the course of your life.

This I understand
If One's relationship with Christ can be destroyed
by the vagaries of life
then it is likely the relationship never existed

I can tell you from personal experience
that having the possibility of
Immortality through procreation removed
Is very “Freeing” with regard to
How one's service in Christ can be manifested

In addition, there is less attachment to this world
Which can be a very powerful thing
Opening up possibilities in spiritual warfare

[Pride_of_the_Bluegrass]

I live about 15 miles from a Shaker community, which is now a site where people walk through to learn about the Shakers. They have to do this because the Shakers don’t exist any longer, they vanished from the face of the earth.
The pursuit of extinction is not the goal of mankind. The covenant they made seems to be more about basket making than the perpetuation of the community of god’s people.

[HiTech RedNeck]

The idea at hand seems to be that of a parallel between the concept of an individual everlasting life and that of a community’s long lasting life.

Selfishness imperils both.

[HiTech RedNeck]

Those who through no ongoing wrongdoing of their own cannot procreate, are not held to such a responsibility. But even those people can speak up, pray, and work in defense of good family morals among those who are so endowed.