Be Fruitful (or What's God Got to Do With It?)

After we had already made the CF decision the "Be Fruitful and Multiply" thing really threw me. I got very defensive, thinking that maybe our choice would be seen as in direct defiance of "God's will", mainly because people would sometimes point out that being childless by choice was in direct defiance of God's will. Infertility, of course made it hard of us to multiply, so if it was God's will the we multiply, perhaps he should have pulled a few strings with our reproductive systems, but, truth be told, we are choosing to be childfree, infertility just gave the opportunity to make the decision more than once- and ultimately to reverse our original decision. Anyway, I feel a little defensive about churches and the church folk and how they feel about our choice, and that keeps me out of church almost completely (well, that and the fact that churches usually give me the creeps and I love being lazy on Sundays with my husband, sleeping in, reading the paper). And I wondered quite a bit about what God intended by this verse that kept getting tossed our way, and how he could urge us to have kids while so many of us have spent years just frustrated to death in an effort to do just that. I don't know if I really feel very religious, or that I believe in every word in the Bible. But I think there is wisdom in there. And I do have a spiritual life that involves some higher power or something. I think what bothered me about the scripture (I am speaking here of Genesis 9:1: Then God blessed Noah and his sons, saying to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the earth.") is that if my choice to not have children truly was against God's will, it divided me from that God. And that bothered me some. My faith is pretty loose, I don't really buy a lot of the Christian stuff and I do feel that my decision has "God's" stamp of approval and that God doesn't intend for us all to follow the exact same path- but living where I do I would have loved to have a nice answer straight from The Book whenever some self-righteous Christian started berating us for turning our back on the will of God... And then I got it!

I was in church a few weeks ago, a fairly rare thing for me. The sermon included something I had never heard before, but it had to do with fruit, so I immediately perked up, as this topic had been on my mind for quite some time. It was about the Fruits of the Spirit- we were in a Methodist church, so I looked to my Methodist husband with the "What the heck is he talking about?" look, but he gave me the "I have no idea!" look back. Anyway, I found out from the sermon that there are 9 Fruits of the Spirit: Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, Faithfulness, Gentleness, Self-Control. The service was a confirmation service, and the confirmants were told to "Go forth and spread the fruit of the spirit", in essence, they were being told to be fruitful in a way we all could -and should- be fruitful. I left the service feeling that one of the barriers to my relationship with the Higher Power was gone (and that I had my answer should any smart-ass believers come judging)- Being Fruitful can mean many things. Even the 'fill the earth' - or the more often quoted "multiply" - could mean many things. I see it for my life as multiplying the faith-- not necessarily Christianity, but the fruits-- the love, the joy, the peace... *


So I now have an answer for myself and anyone else who cares to ask: I can be fruitful in the fruit of the spirit. I can multiply by being kind and letting my kindness help others feel kind. I just don't believe we are all meant to produce children and I don't believe that is what the verse intends. So if I'm faced with someone who questions our decision in relation to our faith, I have an answer now. I am fruitful. (OK, so even when considering only the fruits of the spirit, of fruit-producing beings I'm not much of a producer, what with my grumpiness and foul language etc, ...)

I guess if I were more of a Christian, this would have been an issue in our decision to become CF, but it wasn't. We never thought about it until the decision had been made, and we made the decision because it felt good, it was what we wanted, it was what made us happy. And I felt that we were being encouraged by God or HP. It was only later when people started quoting scripture that I thought twice, and then it was mainly "What kind of jerk would lead us to a path only so he could condemn us for taking it? That sucks!"



*Little tangent here: I think that some of these judgmental Christians would benefit greatly from meditating on the different ways to be fruitful- and maybe consider that judgment and shame can do more harm than good when trying to spread the faith-- if indeed we are intended to multiply for God, they may consider that multiplying by having children but dividing by alienating others from God might put them below quota in the afterlife...