The lack of problem with the childfree life

Maybe I shouldn't be taking the bait at all, but this post by Kathleen Nielsen at the Gospel Coalition is so bad that I'm doing it anyway.

Ms. Nielsen is deeply concerned that people are choosing not to have children, and she offers three reasons why this choice is very, very selfish:

• children are a gift from God, so everybody should have them
• we need the mercy of God, so we should have children so there can be more Christians
• there won't be any having-of-children in heaven, so we need to have children now so we can share the Gospel with them

It may strike you, as it struck me, that these arguments are not very sensible. I can give someone a bicycle as a gift, but that does not mean I should give someone ten bicycles, or that I should give a bicycle to someone who has expressed a disinterest in bicycling. That would just make me a jerk.

The second two points are not even coherent enough to address. The world is not running out of people. If we really want to give children "labor and care," as Ms. Nielsen suggests-- and as I agree-- then we should start with the ones who are already here, like the 29,000 children under five who die each day from mostly preventable causes, like a lack of clean water or a disease for which these is a vaccine. There are plenty of people in this world already who are in need of the selfless love to which Christians are called. We do not need to make new people in order to find someone in need of love and mercy.

On a more sinister note, Ms. Nielsen writes like she has been appointed to judge the inner thoughts of human beings and decide who is "God's people" and who is not. This is not a role that any human can fill. We're supposed to leave that to God. When she writes

 The most basic problem is that the childfree life does not take God into account—God the Creator and giver of all gifts, including the gift of life.

she is pretending to know the relationship between God and another human being based solely on that person's attitude towards having children. It doesn't work like that. Without being psychic, you cannot determine to what extent someone takes God into account in their lives. And again, when she writes

Children are God's merciful means of growing his redeemed people, generation after generation, in all the nations of the world. They are infinitely worthy of labor and care—not only of the women who bear them but of all God's people, not one of whom lives childfree.

she is either misunderstanding what it means to be childfree, or implying that anyone who, by choice, is not a parent, is not Christian. Of course childfree people still contribute to the lives of the children around them. Many people cite this as a reason for being childfree, that they believe they can make more of a positive impact on the world by devoting their energies to something besides child-rearing. I am not any less childfree if I tutor elementary school kids, volunteer to babysit for a single parent, or dote on my little cousins and shower them with love and affection.

The other possible interpretation, that someone who is childfree is therefore not a Christian, is worse. That determination is not up to her. You cannot say that someone isn't Christian because they've chosen not to become a parent. The Bible does not say, anywhere, "By your nuclear family you shall be saved." Really. I promise.