Should Americans be making more babies?

Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry argues that they should be. While it's good that teens are having fewer babies, he argues:

It used to be taken for granted that the best indicator of a nation's health was its citizens' desire and capacity to reproduce. And it should still seem self-evident that people's willingness to have children is not only a sign of confidence in the future, but a sign of cultural health. It's a signal that people are willing to commit to the most enduring responsibility on Earth, which is raising a child.

But reproduction is also a sign of national health in a more dollars-and-cents way. The more productive people you have in your society, the healthier your country's economy. It's an idea that was obvious back in the 17th century, when economist Jean Bodin wrote "the only wealth is people."

This is still fairly clear, I think. Despite the menacing moves of authoritarian Russia and communist China toward exercising regional hegemony (or more), both countries are severely limited in their aspirations by their birth rate trends. Russia is already aged and in crisis, China will almost inevitably be in such crisis soon.

That doesn't mean that married couples should have more kids so that we can forestall the Russians and the Chinese, though both of those nations, at present, pose a far greater existential threat to the peace and security of the United States than do Islamist terrorists.

I would argue that our reticence about having more kids in this country is rooted less in concern about the environment, a fear fostered Paul Erhlich's absurdly overwrought book, The Population Bomb, back in the the late-60s and 70s--a fear that many in my generation, fearful of having less, bought into, than it is in materialism and selfishness.

We had two children who I love dearly, but I wish that we'd had more. There's simply nothing like family living and being a dad is, for me, not only one of the biggest challenges in the world, but also one of its greatest pleasures. There's something beautiful and humbling about pouring yourself into your children and watching them grow up to be wonderful in spite of your parenting.

According to Gobry, there are practical reasons why the United States should be concerned about its low birth rate, "59.6 births per 1000 women," the lowest rate in US history:

Today we see the problems wrought by the decline in productive populations all over the industrialized world, where polities are ripping each other to shreds over how to pay for various forms of entitlements, especially for old people. The debates play out in different ways in different countries, but in other ways they are exactly the same. That's because they are ruled by the same ruthless math: The fewer young, productive people you have to pay for entitlements for old, unproductive people, the steeper the bill for the entire society becomes. This basic problem is strangling Europe's economies. And while the United States is among the least bad of the bunch, it is still headed in the wrong direction.

While acknowledging that evidence for the effectiveness of government programs to encourage people to have kids is mixed, Gobry points out "the fact of the matter is that in contemporary America, 40 percent of women have fewer children than they want to."

Gobry suggests several ways government could entice husbands and wives to have more kids. But for me, the most compelling reason for bigger families is spiritual. The Bible teaches that it's more blessed to give than to receive. Apart from the fact that a nation with fewer children leads to scarcity, fewer opportunities, less productivity, and economic and military weakness, couples who have the wherewithal to raise families--and far more do than they think they do, learn the blessedness of giving to themselves to their kids, not indulgently, but with love that includes loving discipline, time, and personal investment. A parent learns that life isn't about what you keep, harbor, husband, or get for yourself, it's about what you give away.

Parents have a sacred and fulfilling two-fold responsibility. First, they are to prepare their own children for adulthood, nurturing them with the two sides of the coin of love: gracious love and gracious discipline. Second, they are to "make disciples," teaching their children to know the God we meet in Jesus Christ so that they can become not only their children, but God's children as well.

Parenting is a daunting thing. But God has also engineered it to be one of the greatest blessings a human being could ever experience. And, for those who seek to follow Christ, parenting can be a tremendous calling in which to learn love, humility, selflessness, and a right relationship with money and possessions, among other things.

OK, husbands and wives of child-bearing age, don't replicate the mistake of my own self-centered Baby Boomer generation, get busy and make babies.*

[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

*By the way, it has always struck me as absurd that people my age can get "senior discounts," something utterly unnecessary for most of us, while young couples with kids and mortgages have to pay full price. It ought to be the other way around, shouldn't it?

Giving (Part 5, Reaching Up, Reaching In, Reaching Out)

[This was shared during midweek Lenten worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church, Centerville, Ohio, earlier today.]

Malachi 3:8-10
Luke 6:38

If a skeptical friend were to ask us as Christians what we think is God’s most basic character trait, we probably would say love. After all, 1 John 4:8 tells us, “Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.” At the very center of God's character then, is love.

“But how,” our friend might ask us, “do we know that about God?”

More than anything, we see that God loves not by His words, but in His giving.

God gave life to us, a gift none of us deserved.

And when the human race fell into the condition of sin, separation from God, that brought death, God wasn’t done giving. Every Christian knows John 3:16: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”

We know about God’s love because God gives.

And when we become Jesus’ disciples--when we let Jesus reign over our lives--we’re called reach out to others in Christ’s name through lives that reflect the generosity God has shown to us.

Giving involves our whole beings: giving our time, commitment, energy, for example.

But giving does involve money too.

Personally, this has been a hard part of my faith in Christ to live out. For lots of reasons, by the time I hit my teens, I was a tightwad.

I could list all sorts of contributing factors, but there’s really a simple explanation for the stinginess that characterized my young adult years: I was an atheist then and didn’t know that my brain and my brawn, the means by which I earned my income, came from God and therefore, everything I had was a gift from God.

But even after I came to faith at age 23, giving was hard for me.

And yet, in response to God’s love in Christ, we are to be generous.

“I appeal to you therefore, brothers,” the apostle Paul writes in Romans 12:1, “by the mercies of God, to present [or give] your bodies [your whole selves] as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.”

We read statements like this and think, “If I give myself and my money away, there will be less for me.”

But when we think that, we underestimate our God.

When it comes to the provision, love, and grace of God, there’s always more where that came from.

We can never outgive God!

In Old Testament times, God’s people were commanded to give the first 10% of their income-a tithe-to support the priests at the temple. But in the whole history of ancient Israel, the people rarely did that. It was true that many of the priests were corrupt. So, they may have thought they had a good excuse for not giving the tithe.

But, the corruption of the prophets didn’t invalidate God’s command that His ancient people give in response to His grace.

In Malachi 3:8-10, God tells His people: “Will a mere mortal rob God? Yet you rob me. But you ask, ‘How are we robbing you?’ In tithes and offerings. You are under a curse—your whole nation—because you are robbing me. Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this,' says the Lord Almighty, 'and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that there will not be room enough to store it.'”

This is the only place in Scripture where God tells His people to test Him. Be generous, part with what you don’t think you can part with, God was saying, and see if I don’t look after you.

God isn’t commending the “prosperity gospel” peddled by some televangelists here. He’s not saying, “GIve me 10% of your income and I’ll make you a millionaire.”

He is saying that giving is a way in which we express thanks to Him for grace and a way in which we express faith in God’s ability to keep caring for eternity.

In fact, our faith and our joy in the Lord tend to grow in proportion to the ways in which give we give of ourselves to the causes of loving God, loving others, and making disciples. In Luke 6:38, Jesus says: “Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.”

Through the years, God has sent me living examples of giving disciples for me to imitate.

At the church I served in Cincinnati, we used to have a message in the worship bulletins: “We ask our guests not to make an offering. It’s our privilege to welcome you today.” That message was wrong for several reasons. (And I was the one who insisted it needed to be included in the bulletin!) One is that it saw the church in institutional terms, as though the offerings we give in worship are all about the care and feeding of the church as an institution.

Much of our offerings do go to support the work that congregations do to fulfill Christ’s great commission of making disciples. But more than anything, we give because as believers in Christ, we need to give. Giving takes our attention off of ourselves and puts it onto God and neighbor. Giving also expresses our trust in God.

It was a woman who began worshiping with us at our church in Cincinnati who taught me that. The first time she worshiped with us, she saw that message--“We ask our guests not to make an offering. It’s our privilege to welcome you today"--and thought, “There is no way you’re going to keep me from making an offering.”

That's because years before, she had left an abusive marriage, was raising a young child on her own, and was working a job that allowed her to barely eke out a living. But she knew that God was sustaining her through her challenges and she decided then that she would join a church and give, even of her money, 10% of her meager income. The New Testament doesn’t designate a required amount for our giving, but what that woman found, as she later told me, was that as she trusted God, “God took care of 100% of my needs on 90% of my income.” That lesson stuck with me.

Our call is to reach up, reach in, and reach out because we follow a God Who saves us by grace through faith in Christ.

When we give, whether to the Church or to mission agencies or to people in need, we give praise, worship, and honor to the God Who shows His love for us in how much He gives to us. We trust Him to take care of all our needs--to provide our daily bread--even as we dare to give. Amen

A good ambition to have...

...is to aim always at doing good for others and not getting caught at it...and not giving the good we do a second thought, as if to say, "What a great person I am."

Our giving should be a reflexive response to what a great God Who loves and saves those who trust in Christ to live as human beings made in God's image, has done for us.

And it should be done as anonymously as possible, so that the beneficiaries of the good we do won't be made to feel they owe us and we won't get puffed up, failing to remember that "every good and perfect gift"--even those gifts for which we've used every ounce of our brain and brawn to earn--comes from God, not from us.

I pray that God will help me to live with such un-self-conscious gratitude and generosity.

The best Christian person I know is also the most generous person I know, who, at the very designation of "best person I know" comes at me with firm denials.

But then, you wouldn't expect a person who routinely lives with gratitude toward God and generosity toward others to be conscious of how exceptional they are.

If they were conscious of their exceptional characters, they couldn't be notable for their gratitude and generosity. In other words, if you think that you're "all that," you're clearly not.

The key, I suppose, is to keep turning to Christ in "daily repentance and renewal," giving Him carte blanche to change us from the inside out and to live in our attitudes, actions, and thoughts. (We need to become, in Martin Luther's phrase, "the Holy Spirit's workshop.") When that happens, the Holy Spirit lives more firmly in us and we fulfill the picture of gratitude and generosity Jesus paints in these words from His sermon on the mount: 

"Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven. So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing..." [Matthew 6:1-3]

How Christmas Gift Giving Started

Shared by TobyMac on Facebook.

Post by TobyMac.

A Story of Giving

May God bless Jacob and Noah.

And commendations to Urban Meyer and the Ohio State football team. But I'm certain that you get much more out of your relationship with this family than you give. Giving does that to us.

Well done, Jeff Heuerman and @OhioStAthletics! http://t.co/S5LhBZQi2b
— Ohio State on BTN (@BTN_Ohio_State) December 14, 2014

Do Tote Bags or Charitable Deductions Encourage Giving?

Here's yesterday's installment of The Daily Stat from the Harvard Business Review:

DECEMBER 27, 2012

Why You Don't Like Donating to Charities That Offer Thank-You Gifts

Research participants were willing to donate 38% less, on average, to public broadcasting if the U.S. nonprofit offered a thank-you gift, in this case a pen, say George E. Newman and Y. Jeremy Shen of Yale University. A promised gift of a tote bag brought intended donations down 17%. A thank-you gift creates ambiguity in the donor's mind about whether the donation is supporting the charity or is a quid-pro-quo, the researchers say.

Source: The counterintuitive effects of thank-you gifts on charitable giving

Frankly, thank you gifts have never enticed me to make a contribution to a not-for-profit organization.

In fact, they act as a reverse incentive on me, making it less likely that I will give.

Rightly or wrongly, I have a visceral reaction that goes something like this: If they can afford to give me something for my contribution, maybe they don't need my money. Maybe, I think, they could save a few bucks and lower their cost of operation by not buying thank you gifts.

Now, I'm sure that at least some of the thank you gifts offered by not-for-profits are donated by corporate sponsors who, in turn, are able to write the donations off on their taxes.

But that raises another issue. Even though taxpayers, individual or corporate, would be crazy not to take advantage of the charitable deduction of our tax laws, I'm not a fan. There are several reasons for this.

First, there's a matter of principle: I think that giving ought to be based on genuine commitment. I give to my church because I believe in the mission off the Church to make disciples for Jesus Christ. I give to other not-for-profits because I believe in what they're doing, not because I get a tax write-off.

Second, I don't think it's right for the taxpayers of the United States to effectively subsidize my charitable contributions or the charities I support. I believe that every taxpayer should expect to put her or his money where their commitments.

Third, and this is in a way my most serious concern, I stew about the possibility of coercion from some governmental entities over charities that have become dependent on the charitable deduction used by their benefactors.

For example, in some European countries, churches are still affiliated with the state. Pastors of the official state churches are, in effect, government employees. As Western culture comes increasingly to reject the very notion of sin, some clergy are being charged with "hate speech" for implying that there are, as I believe is revealed in the Bible, objective standards of right and wrong from God.

We have no official state churches in the United States, thank God. But with shifting mores, what might happen to the giving of congregations whose not-for-profit status is revoked for speaking God's truth in love to a culture that increasingly views truth as a pliant and personal thing? Would those who give to their local church be inclined to give less because they could no longer get a charitable deduction on their income taxes?

Maybe. In any case, I prefer that the possibility of such leveraging over the missions of churches and all other not-for-profit organizations didn't exist.

In 1 Corinthians 9:15, in the New Testament portion of the Bible, the apostle Paul says to a group of first-century Christians: "Each of you must give as you have made up your mind, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver."

Thank yous are nice, though unnecessary for the committed giver. But thank you gifts are utterly superfluous, cheapening the entire transaction.

And, I will keep taking my charitable deduction each year. I'm not nuts. But I wouldn't shed any tears if this provision of our tax laws went away either.

It Does Feel Good to Give

See here.

It IS Better to Give Than to Receive

At least that's what the study cited here says. So does Jesus.

When Asking Becomes Easier...for Some People Anyway

From James Traub's profile of Al Gore, which appeared in yesterday's New York Times:

One of his longtime political supporters watched in amazement as Gore badgered Kevin Wall, the rock promoter, into working with the Alliance for Climate Protection. Here was a man who as a presidential candidate could barely ask anyone for a dollar, much less browbeat them. “It was a total behavioral change,” says this old ally. “It was just shocking.”

Maybe not. I personally have never been comfortable with asking for things for myself. Part of my reticence is no doubt neurotic, a nagging feeling that what I may want is selfish. Another piece of my hesitation about asking for help is also pride, a damning unwillingness to admit that I need others. But a good part of it is that in a spiritually and psychologically healthy way, I really don't want to be selfish.

It's possible that this same complex of desires once hampered Gore's willingness to go to potential backers and ask for money for his campaign. When I myself ran for the Ohio House of Representatives, it felt terribly self-centered to ask people I know and care about to donate money to my campaign. And I know at least one successful politician who has told me privately about how horrified he is by the amount of money required to get elected. "If that money could be given to charity, Mark," he told me once, "it could do a lot of good."

For me to ask for money, material aid, or volunteer help for the church I pastor, for the local Boys and Girls Club on whose board I serve, for CASA for Clermont Kids!, an agency that advocates for foster children, for the Clermont County Board of Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities, or for our area Habitat for Humanity isn't difficult for me at all. It doesn't feel selfish to ask for help for any of these organizations.

And though, as a Christian, I believe that God wants people to ask Him for help and to live in caring relationships with others in which it's possible for us to ask for help from others, I still find it tough to ask people to help me personally.

Maybe Al Gore, the one-time seminary student whose speeches can resemble sermons at revival meetings, deals with a similar complex of emotions and motives. Gore believes that global warming is destroying the planet and that he can influence people to do something about it. If that belief is authentic, it may be a whole lot easier for Al Gore to ask people to make out a check to an environmental group than to the Al Gore campaign.

Of course, we all act out of a complex of motives. Al Gore wouldn't be the first pol to attempt to use a cause to vault himself into contention for the presidency. In 1966, Richard Nixon campaigned, selflessly it seemed, for Republican congresional candidates across the country. When his once-moribund party scored big wins that November, the once-moribund career of Richard Nixon was revived. He went on to win the White House in 1968.

Given people's general disgust with politics, it may be the height of shrewdness for Al Gore to immerse himself in an environmental issue, to be a passionate leader for a cause that is increasingly becoming important to millions of Americans. This has been done before, too. When millionaire mining engineer Herbert Hoover laid aside the acquisition of wealth that had occupied him for something like forty years, he took on the feeding and re-clothing of Europe following World War 1, spearheading a major charitable effort that won him credit both for his philanthropy and his leadership acumen. (This is ironic in light of his largely deer-in-the-headlights reaction to the Great Depression during his White House tenure.) Lauded for his efforts in Europe, Hoover became Secretary of Commerce and, some said, "Under Secretary of Everything Else" during the Harding and Coolidge years. Hoover's involvement with a cause bigger than himself led him to the presidency.

Al Gore may really be thinking about presidential politics as he seeks support in his global warming campaign. Or it may be that he's found a cause he believes in even more than he believes in Al Gore.

Letters to My Non-Churchgoing Friends (#4: The Church Only Wants My Money)

Dear Friend:
Today I want to discuss a fourth reason people give for not being involved in a church. Some say: "The church only wants my money."

I need to tell you something. As a Lutheran, I'm part of a Christian movement which, secondarily anyway, began with disgust over money the Church was "guilting" people into giving, usually money they didn't have to give.

Martin Luther, a German monk, priest and professor, began our movement and what's called 'The Reformation' when he nailed ninety-five theses--or statements for theological debate--on a church door in Wittenberg, Germany on October 31, 1517. The immediate motivator for Luther's action was his digust with a practice of the Roman Church of his day, that of selling pieces of paper known as indulgences. The church claimed that people who bought these documents got time out of a place called purgatory for themselves or their loved ones. (Luther also came to challenge the very idea of a place called purgatory.)

At the root of Luther's challenge of indulgences was the idea that a relationship with God or eternity with God could be bought or sold or earned. Luther insisted, and Lutherans insist today, that God's gifts of everlasting life, reconciliation with God, and forgiveness of sin are really gifts. They're freely granted to people willing to give up their dependence on sin and entrust their lives to Jesus Christ.

Having said this, you should nonetheless know that churches do want your money. They want my money, too. But, I hope they do so for the right reasons, two of which come to mind immediately.

The first is a practical one. Simply put, without money, churches find it harder to fulfill their missions.

But there's a second reason. One movement in the Church calls it, "the need of the giver to give." When we willingly make giving to God's work the first expenditure to come out of our paychecks, we drive a stake into the heart of our common tendency toward selfishness. (This is what the Bible calls crucifying the old self.) We tell God that we're grateful for Christ and that we're putting Him first in our lives.

For years at our congregation, we've made an announcement at the beginning of our worship celebrations, asking first-time visitors not to give any money when the offering baskets are passed around. "It's our privilege to have you with us today," we say. We want visitors to know that we care more about them as people than as owners of wallets.

But not every visitor likes it when we say this. One person who worshiped with us for the first time several years ago had already become an enthusiastic believer in giving the first ten per cent of her income to the work of the church. She eventually became a member of our congregation and told us that when, during her first visit, first-timers were urged not to make an offering, she thought, "There's no way you're going to keep me from giving!" That woman is what the Bible calls a "cheerful" or "hilarious" giver. She understands that the church needs money to do its work and that giving to God's work feels good. Giving has become a huge blessing in her life!

Honestly, giving doesn't come easily to me. And I hate it when churches become obsessed with money, treating people like sources of revenue rather than children of God. But people like that woman remind me of why the church wants our money. And why that's a good thing.

Sincerely,
Mark

[UPDATE: Spencer Troxell, one of my favorite people, responds to the first three installments of this series here. PS: I've never met any Zoroastrians either.]