Wendy and I saw Sherlock Holmes. An interesting theme wove throughout: fear clouds our thinking, fear allows evil to triumph, and fear justifies the most hideous behaviors. Of course, Sherlock overcomes his fears (wincing just a little) and solves the mystery in the end. The diabolical plot of the bad guys almost succeeded, solely because of how fearful people could become.
We constantly come up against fear when speaking with couples and their decision to have children, or not to have them. Though God is pounding on their hearts to have another child–or even their first one–they come up with all sorts of reasons not to. All of the reasons are based in fear: fear of poverty, fear of the unknown, fear of change, fear of vulnerability and even love.
Parenthood is one of the greatest adventures in life, and couples rob themselves of the experience because of fear. The fear sometimes appears rational, as couples (typically the liberal, yuppie types) cite some college professor’s dissertation on why not to have children. They appear to cling to “reason.” Dig a little deeper, and their reasons are still based on fear. Overpopulation, harm to the environment, economic instability–all doom-and-gloom intellectual dispositions. These couples actually believe they are doing the world a favor by not having children, or at least having just one or two.
With a little bit of research and thought, we find these “reasons” to be extremely unreasonable. They’re laughable, really. While some look at our life with 15 children as “crazy,” it is difficult for us to look the DINK (double-income, no-kid) advocate in the eye without busting out laughing at their ridiculous ideas. Here are a few.
- The world is overpopulated already.
- Human beings harm the environment.
- The economy cannot bear a growing population.
These are the popular mindsets, and our educational system constantly drills these fears into our society. This is one of the biggest reasons we choose to home school. I taught as a public school teacher from 1993 to 2000, and I saw little more than worldview indoctrination in many classrooms. It appears that little has changed since then. A relative (bless her heart) bought my children all sorts of popular magazines for our children. The old classics, like Ranger Rick, could barely turn a page without ranting about the evils of CO2 or global warming. The magazines would come in the mail and very quickly get discarded into the trash.
Fear, fear, fear. No wonder parents don’t want to bring children into this falling, crumbling world? Even professing Christians fall for this nonsense. I’ve been in Bible studies with God-fearing men whose knees shake at the prospect of having children. “Why?” I ask them, and they answer some fear-based gibberish about the end of the world coming soon. More fear, and from the very people who should be fearless!
There are signs this ignorant tide is turning. Yesterday’s issue of Blue Book Report, the online news site that posts daily articles on the debate topic of environmental policy, posted an article about Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski’s attempt to block the EPA’s regulation of CO2. It is insane to think that an unelected executive department of government is attempting to regulate the very gas human beings exhale. In America, no less. What gives them such unlimited power? Fear of climate change, global warming, environmental damage. Never mind the scientific challenges to such fuzzy claims, just think of Al Gore’s claims of world devastation (be afraid!) and you will see the reasoning behind such political power.
Hollywood’s traditional Sherlock Holmes, the one with pipe in mouth and intellectual correction of Watson, looked to science as the solution for everything. This isn’t entirely true with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s creation. Fear is the reason for crime’s success, for the prevalence of frenzy and falsehood, in the true Sherlock Holmes. In the recent rendition, Hollywood gets it right this time.
“The temptation to form premature theories upon insufficient data is the bane of our profession.”
~ Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Valley of Fear
About Chris & Wendy Jeub
