Unfortunately, many married couples are childless their entire lives, or their first child appears many years later. But here's the paradox: many women get pregnant out of wedlock. It would seem like an irony of fate? No. There are nuances here that man does not know, but God knows. And he gives people only what is useful to them.
Let's discuss the topic of why God does not give children, give examples of childless couples, and briefly consider the sermons of the holy fathers and priests.
God does not give children to everyone, because some have a different purpose.
There is, for example, a certain woman, Maria Petrovna. She goes to church, reads the Bible, takes care of herself, and is married. No one will say a bad word about her. She will always help her neighbor, tell her what you don’t ask. And she herself doesn’t meddle in other people’s affairs, so as not to bother people.
Well, he’s a good person, right? And she has no children. Is it fair? The mother would have been wonderful. But our problem is that we measure everything by human categories. God has his own plans.
Let's leave Marya Petrovna alone for a moment and imagine her distant ancestor, a kind of prehistoric man, as he is depicted in biology textbooks. The poor fellow sits and thinks about how to crack a nut.
Not everyone is born to leave offspring. Nobel laureate Bernard Shaw did not have children, but there is at least someone who can say that the life of this outstanding man was in vain due to childlessness. Photo: upload.wikimedia.org
And suddenly, once, a microscope magically appears at the feet of this great-great-great-grandfather. The thing is heavy, which means it’s suitable for cracking nuts. Is everything right? In all respects it is an ideal nut cracker, even with a handle. But this is from a prehistoric point of view.
But his task is different. Will this person understand stories about bacteria, magnifying glasses, etc.? No, not his level of knowledge, and it’s not worth trying.
And now let's return to Maria Petrovna. She is not accidental in this world either. Like a microscope, it has its own task. But those around us, like prehistoric man, are conditioned beings; they do not look deeply into divine providence, just as our ancestors knew nothing about magnifying devices.
If a person does not have children, God can give him a very important role in this world.
In other words, not all of us are born to have children, although from a human point of view everyone should be a parent.
Many great personalities, preachers, artists, writers, etc. had no descendants:
- Jesus Christ;
- Siddhartha Gautama;
- Michelangelo Buonarroti;
- Nicolaus Copernicus;
- Marcel Proust;
- Bernard Show;
- Friedrich Nietzsche.
Each had their own reason for not having children, but there was probably another, deeper reason - divine providence. Of course, this does not mean that Maria Petrovna from our example, being childless, is doomed to world fame. But contribution to our world is not measured by a person's fame, but by the benefit we bring to someone else.
In other words, if Maria Petrovna directs her kindness and best qualities to creating a shelter for homeless animals, helping lonely pensioners, creativity or something else, she is able to bring much greater benefits than if she focused all her outstanding qualities on two or three children .
Friedrich Nietzsche believed that in order for anyone to have a child, they themselves need to become a worthy person. Photo: upload.wikimedia.org
This is a different level of consciousness. This is what Michelangelo, for example, said, who, by the way, created many masterpieces on Christian themes:
“Art is jealous and demands the whole person. I have a wife to whom everything belongs, and my children are my creations.”
Therefore, childlessness is not a sentence, but an indication from God that a person has some other, certainly important, purpose for this world.
Do everything only with the help and blessing of God
“Put on the whole armor of God” (Eph. 6:11), the Apostle Paul tells us. Hope and wait patiently, pray and fast (but only after taking the blessing of the priest). And, of course, you can take a child from an orphanage. “And whoever receives one such child in My name receives Me” (Matthew 18:5), the Lord tells us. But artificial insemination is not worth doing, because it is contrary to nature. The Lord gave us another, natural way of conceiving and having children, the one that is best suited for us.
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The Old Testament speaks negatively about childlessness, but we live according to the New Testament, where this is not the case
In the Bible you can find far from the most pleasant episodes associated with children. If a person who is worried about why the Lord does not give children looks into the Old Testament, a feeling of inferiority may arise.
Let's take an example:
“And Rachel saw that she was not bearing Jacob any children, and Rachel was jealous of her sister, and she said to Jacob, “Give me children; otherwise, I will die.” Jacob was angry with Rachel and said to [her], “Am I God, who did not give you the fruit of the womb?” She said: Here is my maid Bilhah; come in to her; Let her give birth on my knees, so that I too may have children by her. And she gave Bilhah her maid to him to wife; and Jacob went in to her."
(Gen. 30:1–4)
We see a terrifying picture. Spouses who have spent many years living together begin to quarrel and accuse each other of infertility. And for the sake of the dubious joy of procreation, Jacob agrees to cheat on his own wife and have children from a strange woman whom he does not even love.
For 2000 years we have been living according to the New Testament, but for some reason we quote the Old Testament about infertility.
We often reproach young people for intimate relationships without love and marriage, but here you go - the other side of the coin: there is marriage, but no love. Is such an action really pleasing to God? Of course not. Is it worth reminding that Rachel’s childbirth ended up costing her life?
All this shows us not the fulfillment of the will of the Almighty, but the terrible foundations of some Semites of the Old Testament times, when childbirth was raised to an absolute, and this absolute went beyond all reasonable limits. But we live in a different era. Archpriest Alexy (Uminsky) says:
“Although Christ came to Earth 2000 years ago, and the Gospel was given to us, in its internal content, humanity still looks at the world quite like the Old Testament. Even pagan. Which is essentially about the same thing.
After all, both in the pagan family and in the Old Testament, childlessness, that is, interruption of the family, was perceived as a consequence of some kind of personal spiritual imperfection. This cannot happen in Christianity.”
Alexey Anatolyevich Uminsky
archpriest
The Old Testament characters Jacob and Rachel doted on each other until it turned out that they had problems with childbearing. Photo: artchive.ru
We live according to the commandments of Christ, and those historical evidence of the mistakes of biblical characters that are recorded for us in the Bible should not confuse people and be a role model. Christ loves children, but never says that the purpose of a person’s life or starting a family is to give birth. Divine love does not depend on this.
Father Alexy adds:
“Sometimes we cannot accommodate God’s Providence for us, we cannot understand it. But if a person has determined the main thing in his relationship to God, if he has realized that He is Love for him, then this person will be able to accept all sorrow from His hand, including childlessness. Like some kind of cross, like some kind of fulfillment of oneself in a different way, in a different way, finding the outpouring of one’s marital love on something else or on someone else.”
Alexey Anatolyevich Uminsky
archpriest
You can’t be guided by emotions alone, you need prudence and prudence
– Of course, the absence of children in the family is a reason to begin to spend your Christian life more seriously and soberly and to pray purely for the gift of children. Here you need to show a lot of patience, and it happens that the Lord rewards this patience and constancy in doing good, so that children are born into the family even after three, five or more years of “infertility.” This is great joy and great mercy! And parents who conceived and gave birth to a child in such difficult circumstances truly know the high price and meaning of fatherhood and motherhood. If only they didn’t “settle on their laurels” and turn their valuable child into some kind of idol, a statue around which the whole world revolves. This should not happen, and this can even be called a crime against God, because the Lord does not give a child in order to raise him to be an egoist who is used to thinking that he is the navel of the earth and something completely special compared to “everyone else.” " That’s why it would be good if there were many children in the family...
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There is no point in praying for God to give a child, although the Almighty can answer
There is a popular misconception among modern Christians that prayer is a way to ask the Almighty for something. It’s as if God is sitting somewhere and has no idea what is good for a person and what is bad. And then suddenly there was a hint in prayer: “God, give me children,” and a solution was immediately found.
No. It doesn't happen that way. God does everything in this world for a reason, and therefore does not need hints on how and what to change. Prayer is a way to express gratitude, to communicate with the Lord, but not to order something from Him, like Santa Claus.
Prayer is not a way to ask, but a means of communicating with God.
If God thinks we need something, He will provide every means to achieve it. That is, He does not give courage to a coward, but creates difficult circumstances in which this courage can be cultivated. But he does this only according to His will.
If a believer does not know why God does not give children to him, then how can he be sure that these children are generally useful to him? Perhaps the circumstances would have led to some disastrous result. Father Vladimir (Golovin) in the video below recommends never asking God for anything, but trusting him.
Is there any point in begging God for something that He does not give for our benefit? (Protege Vladimir Golovin)
Pilgrimage to holy places
Make a pilgrimage to some Holy places, bow before the holy saints, ask for help from them. From many parts of the world, women of different ages regularly visit places such as:
- Western Wall in Israel.
- Holy Trinity Seraphim-Diveevo Convent.
- Tibet in China.
- Temple of Karnak in Egypt.
- Pokrovsky Monastery in Moscow and many other Holy places.
They travel a long distance to pray there and perform rituals. Most of the visitors to such places ended up becoming happy parents, so don’t lose hope, visit them too.
Be patient, because for God to give you a baby, you need to really want it and deserve it. When the suffering ends, the Lord will send you a daughter or son. These tips will definitely help you and you will definitely experience happy motherhood!
God can give children in response to sincere prayer, but it is better not to ask Him
It happens that God, out of great love for us, yields to persistent and sincere prayer. In a similar way, a parent can buy a harmful product for a child, simply because the son or daughters are very tearfully asking for it. We know it will hurt, but in the end, sometimes the child's yearnings outweigh.
But don't try to force it. Christian authorities agree that even if God relents and allows everything to happen according to the will of man, these events will still have a sad outcome.
This is the case when the Almighty allows us to experience a mistake from our own experience and understand that we should not tell God how and what to do.
During artificial insemination, embryos are always destroyed - that is, they are killed
Now let’s ask ourselves: what happens if all the embryos transplanted into the uterus begin to develop? After all, several of them are introduced at once, so that there is a greater likelihood of them taking root, because not all of them take root... What happens when several take root? “Excess” embryos are reduced, that is, removed surgically - abortions are performed. So during IVF, fertilized embryos, which are already babies with a soul, are destroyed. And it turns out that a person going for IVF is going for an abortion. There is such a crafty trick: some medical centers offer “IVF for believers.” It is proposed not to transfer several embryos and then remove some of them, but to perform gentle superovulation, obtain a small number of embryos and transfer them. But this does not change the essence of the matter.
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God cannot help but give children for sins
Some people are interested in what sins God does not give children for. But it doesn't work that way. Reward for a righteous life and punishment for an unrighteous one, according to Christian doctrine, will take place after the Last Judgment. And all life-time circumstances are determined only by a person’s lifestyle.
It is the lifestyle of a person or his parents that leads to infertility, not sins.
Let's say, why doesn't God give a child to a drunkard? It’s clear why: health problems arose from alcoholism; it was man who deprived himself of children, not God. Or it happens that a person was born initially with problems of the reproductive system.
Here it is worth asking the parents who, through their lifestyle, influenced the child’s heredity. And lifetime punishments and rewards for sins are already in Eastern religious traditions, but not Christianity.
The main thing for a Christian is a righteous life
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“We are not told that in the case of a childless union, we must necessarily “do something.” As a natural consequence of the carnal intimacy of spouses, children bring into their lives worries and joys, plans and disappointments, sacrificial service and the consolations of mutual love. However, the main task of our life - the acquisition of eternal salvation - does not significantly depend on the presence or absence of children, which means, with all human dispositions towards their birth, the main feeling should remain trust in God's Providence, in whose jurisdiction all our earthly things, independent of us, remain circumstances. – Many holy people were not born immediately and from elderly parents. In this case, they begged God and were literally praying children; at the same time, the passion of youth was not transmitted to those born from elderly parents.
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“God gave a child, He will also give for a child” and other folk wisdom teaches to trust the Lord
Popular wisdom teaches us to trust God in any situation. For example:
- “God gave a child, He will also give for a child . If you decide to give birth, then there are definitely resources and opportunities in the world to raise your child with dignity.
- “Without children there will be grief, but with children it will be twice as bad . Children mean a lot of worries, problems and worries. If you are not destined to give birth, then this makes sense: a person lives freer and calmer. For some reason, the Lord needs him in some other role, but not as a parent.
- “Without children it’s sad, with children it’s troublesome . The same.
- “All beavers are kind to their own beavers . A person's life changes greatly with the birth of a child. Not always for the better. In some ways, people can become tougher and more selfish.
- “Children are joy, children are also sorrow . Children are not only happiness, as they often say. They are also a huge responsibility, worries, and difficulties. You need to be prepared for them.
- “To give birth to children is not to break branches . A child is a difficult stage in a person’s life. It should not be taken lightly.
- “Little children won’t let you eat, big kids won’t let you live . Children always bring worries. Don't expect everything to stop when they grow up. Every age brings its own difficulties.
How does the Orthodox Church relate to IVF?
A person going for IVF is essentially going for an abortion.
IVF technology is completely godless. A person takes on the function of the Lord God, interferes with what should mysteriously happen in the mother’s body. Another question: why should fertilized embryos develop in an incubator for several days? Here's why. To find out if there are any pathologies, mainly genetic. And there is an order signed by the Minister of Health, according to which, if there is a danger of developing pathologies, the embryo should not be transplanted. Such an embryo is killed. Not to mention the fact that with IVF there are many more miscarriages and many more missed pregnancies. And many more premature babies are born. Unfortunately, there are very few statistical studies on the health of children born through IVF. Why? Because this is a business, a corporate conspiracy. There is data, but it is not disclosed. But something is becoming known. Thus, Academician Altukhov, a famous geneticist and Orthodox Christian, testifies: almost 20% of IVF children have mental pathologies. Another problem: in nature, when an egg enters the mother’s uterus, it is greeted by a million sperm, but only one is attached - the “strongest,” so to speak. But IVF can be done even with a very weak husband’s seed. And if the seed material is not of very good quality, what kind of children will they be? So the Orthodox way is this: pray, wait. And if the Lord does not send a child, do as they have done for centuries in Rus' and other countries - take in an orphan or from an orphanage.
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