Woe to Those Who Are with Child, or Woe to the Little of Faith?
God commanded a prophet to have no children, while telling his countrymen in captivity to bear sons and daughters. What does this contradiction tell us today?
In the Book of the Prophet Jeremiah, God addresses the prophet with a rather stern command: «You shall not take a wife, nor shall you have sons or daughters in this place» (Jer. 16:2). Jerusalem was facing siege and ruin. According to God's design, Jeremiah's solitary life was to become a sign of the coming disaster.
Time will pass, the city will fall, and thousands of Jews will be forcibly led away to Babylon. And the same Jeremiah will write to the captives a letter of an entirely different content: «Build houses and dwell in them; take wives and beget sons and daughters; and multiply there, and do not decrease» (Jer. 29:5–6).
This paradox lays bare a pressing question, as families in a country at war ask themselves: should we have a child now? Is it worth taking this step, given all the risks? And would it not be a lack of faith to decide to wait with childbearing until better times?
A letter written to a foreign land
Jeremiah's letter to Babylon describes how the captives lived in a hostile country, with no place for prayer and no hope of a swift return home. Their broken souls cried out: why should we build houses if we are here only temporarily? Why bear children in a foreign land?
And the prophet answers: build, plant gardens, give your daughters in marriage. And even more – «pray to the Lord for it» (Jer. 29:7), that is, for the city to which you have been exiled.
The central thought of this letter is the following: life must not be put on hold under any circumstances. A people that stops bearing children while waiting for the calamity to end may simply not live to see that moment.
But we should not forget about the special consecration to God of His chosen ones. No one has revoked Jeremiah's command not to marry. The prophet had his own ministry, and his celibacy was part of that ministry. God determines for each person the measure of his labor.
A basket of reeds
The Book of Exodus begins with the account of how Pharaoh commanded the midwives to kill the Hebrew boys at birth. Two flatly refused: Scripture says that they «feared God» (Ex. 1:17). Then Pharaoh ordered the infants to be thrown into the river. Of the courageous midwives it is said a little further on that God, for their faithfulness, «provided households for them» (Ex. 1:21).
At that same time a boy was born into one Hebrew family. His mother hid him for three months. When it became impossible to conceal the child, she coated a basket of reeds with pitch, placed her son in it, and left it by the riverbank. Thus began the life of the prophet and God-seer Moses.
Moses' parents did not pretend that there was no danger. They hid the child, took risks, and devised ways to save him. But fear did not master them, and their faith only grew stronger.
Woe to those who are with child – a sentence or compassion?
There are, however, other words in Holy Scripture to which some believers refer in difficult times. Christ, foretelling the destruction of Jerusalem, says: «But woe to those who are pregnant and to those who are nursing babies in those days» (Lk. 21:23). Is this not a prohibition against giving birth when explosions thunder all around?
St. John Chrysostom understood these words differently. Those who are with child, he explained, «being burdened by pregnancy, because of weakness, will not be able to flee easily», while those who are nursing, «being bound by the bonds of compassion for their children, will not be able to save with themselves those at the breast».
In these words of Christ, one hears His compassion for mothers who will have to flee a burning city with infants in their arms. Fear of death does not always mean little faith. God understands this and pities suffering people. Yet the Lord has never abolished childbearing itself.
The Apostle Paul, speaking of the "present distress" of his time, advised the Corinthians to weigh many things before entering into marriage. But he immediately added: "But and if thou marry, thou hast not sinned" (1 Cor. 7:28). In this way, he made it clear that caution in founding a family is permissible. But declaring it a sin to decide to found a family, even in times of crisis, is not.
Two Mothers in a Carthaginian Prison
The beginning of the third century, Carthage. Two young women are held in prison for confessing Christ. Twenty-two-year-old widow Perpetua is nursing her infant son. Her father begs her to renounce the faith for the sake of the child. Beside her is her servant Felicity, eight months pregnant.
Felicity gives birth to a girl right in the prison. When a jailer mocked her labor pains and asked what would become of her in the arena, she answered that now she herself was suffering, but then Another would suffer for her.
In the history of the Church, children were never a luxury of peacetime. The unknown author of the Epistle to Diognetus wrote in the second century about persecuted Christians: "They marry, as do all; they beget children; but they do not cast away their offspring." Persecutions were no obstacle to full family life.
The Elder's Counsel
Once, Venerable Paisios the Athonite was asked about a young couple who, in difficult times, were afraid to start a family. His answer was this: "That is the wrong way to pose the question. If they trust in Christ, they have nothing to fear. And the years of persecution? Were they easy? Yet did Christians in those times not marry and create families? How many saints there are in our Church who accepted martyrdom together with their children and spouses!"
The Elder was convinced that natural fear must not become a barrier to family relationships.
We Must Not Judge Another's Choice
Where, then, does the boundary lie between sound discernment and little faith? There is no single right answer to this question. God said one thing to Jeremiah, and another to the captives in Babylon. Moses' parents risked their son's life, while Christ had pity on pregnant women who would have to flee.
Little faith begins when fear starts making decisions in our stead. When no one remembers God at all. When "now is not the time" turns into the verdict "never."
Discernment, on the other hand, is when husband and wife together, praying and consulting with their spiritual father, honestly look at the circumstances of their life, beyond the risks of war. They look at the mother's state of health. At whether the spouses have a roof over their heads. At whether they will have the strength to raise a child. And, in the end, they decide – to have a child now or to wait.
Neither of these decisions is in itself sinful. What can become a sin is something else: judgment. A mother of many children has no right to look down on a family that has decided to postpone having children. And one who has decided to wait has no right to consider the parents of four children reckless. Every family answers before God for its own choice.
Jeremiah's Babylonian letter taught the Jews to live, pray, and love in the place to which God had brought them. In wartime, the life of every family unfolds in its own way. God, however, sees the intentions of both, and leaves no one without His care.
