In the sermon 'The Inconvenience of Children' by Robert Bosley, the speaker challenges the prevailing societal view of children as burdens and instead advocates for a Christian perspective that sees them as blessings and a heritage from God. He suggests that Christian families should be larger than non-Christian families, reflecting the belief that children are gifts. However, he notes that this does not mean having as many children as possible, acknowledging medical and personal circumstances. The sermon emphasizes the active role children should have in the family, likening them to 'weapons in the hand of a warrior,' standing with their fathers in societal and cultural challenges. Bosley stresses the importance of parents raising their children to be Christians, fostering a love for the Lord, and equipping them to engage with and counteract non-Christian cultural influences.
The mindset that we have towards children needs to change. We can't just have our society's view of children. That children are really a burden, that They're a necessary but inconvenient part of life. And even a lot of people today would dispute the necessary part. The Christian's mindset towards children needs to be different.
We need to see them as a heritage. They are a gift from God to you. So rejoice in having those children. I don't think this necessarily means we need to have as many children as we possibly can, but there is something to be said that Christian families should probably, as and again this obviously medical issues and all sorts of things that can cause this to be different. We're talking about the normal course of life, the normative situation for most people.
I think your average Christian family should probably expect to be bigger than your unbelieving neighbor's family. It's kind of a shame to us that when, like for instance, my family, we have six kids, my wife goes to the grocery store with six kids and the first question is we get, oh, are you Mormons? Oh, are you Roman Catholics? No, and no. The first response should be, oh, are you Christians?
Or we want to get really specific, oh, are you reformed? We need to have this mindset of children are a blessing and that should be reflected in our families, which will lead to an increased family size. And also this psalm gets into really how you raise the children. They're to be weapons in the hand of a warrior. They are side by side with their father in the city gates.
And the idea isn't just that they're passive, the children aren't just spectators to what their father's doing. They're with him, they're his character witnesses, they're with him in the argument, they're fighting side by side with their father. And so this gets to how we raise our children. We need to not just have a bunch of children and then turn them over to the government to be educated, or turn them over to the pagans to be turned into good Romans. We need to raise our children as best as we're able under the sovereignty of God.
Raise them to be Christians, and to raise them to love the Lord and to live for Him so they can fight alongside of us in the face of a pagan culture.