LCMS Convention Proceedings St. Louis, Missouri — 1983, Page 129

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ADDRESS: FOCUS ON THE CHRISTIAN FAMILY 131

through the power of technology by which we can not
only prevent the conception of a child but with which we
can destroy a child before birth, a child Luther calls “the
tender fruit” (WLS, #2826, p. 905). Contrary to the
traditional view—and certainly to Luther’s view—
pregnancy and maternity today are not perceived as
blessings or gifts. Many refer to women’s procreative
potentiality as “an infirmity in the abdomen”; a threat
to her freedom and selfhood. Science has become the
woman’s savior, freeing her from her nature and from
the acceptance of her natural limitations.

Some months ago I was invited to address a class of
seventh- and eighth-graders at a progressive private
school. Prior to my arrival I was sent what the students
called “a position paper on sexual rights.” Among other
things it said:

If a couple is involved in procreational sex, that is, they
intend and plan to have a child, then an abortion of that
pregnancy would be wrong.

But if they are involved in recreational sex—as we are
[these seventh- and eighth-graders]—then abortion would
be perfectly right because they just wanted fun and nota
family.

Thus, these 12- and 13-year-olds had effectively
separated what they do from what their bodies do,
ignoring the Scriptural truth that what we do in our
bodies is done by us (1 Cor. 6:18; Human Sexuality,
CTCR, Sept. 1981, p. 7).

So when we look for the woman, we find some for
whom mothering is demeaning and others who view the
female body as a prison, a betrayer, which she must
control through the genius of technology, suggesting in
the process that somehow her body is an enemy—or evil.

And third, as we look for the woman, we find some
among the “new breed parents.” Prior to the 1980 White
House Conference on Families the General Mills Cor-
poration provided for each delegate the results of an
extensive survey which revealed the existence of “new
breed parents,” the term developed to describe those
women (and men) who specifically and deliberately
rejected the idea of sacrificing for their children.

Yet Christian morality has always centered on
woman’s life-giving, life-nourishing, and life-sacrificing
virtues, with Christian women (and men) understand-
ing that the highest act possible for one who is created is
to allow the activity of the Creator to have its full
expression, to be, in Luther’s words, “the workshop of
the Supreme Majesty.”

Luther roots the mothering role of women not in his
sixteenth-century culture or his male chauvinism, but in
the creation itself. “Through the Holy Spirit,” Luther
writes, “Adam called his wife by the excellent name of
Eve, that is, mother. He does not say woman, but
mother, and adds ‘of all the living’ (Gen. 3:20). Here you
have the true distinction of womanhood, to wit, to be the
Source of all living human beings. The words are brief,
yet they are an oration such asneither Demosthenes nor

icero ever composed. But this oration is by the Holy
Spirit, who is most eloquent. ...If this Orator so defines
and praises woman . . .” (WLS, #4703, p. 1457). That
settled it for Luther!

How fortunate for us that it also settled it for the
unwed, teenaged girl named Mary, who was not a “new
breed parent,” but rather a woman who, in submission
and obedience, said simply and sacrificially, “I am the
handmaid of the Lord” (Luke 1:38).

But handmaidens of anybody—the Lord or little
ones—do not compute in a secular society that says, DO
YOUR OWN THING! LOOK OUT FOR NUMBER
ONE!

Our society has communicated a message to women
that mothers do not play a very significant role, further
maintaining that one cannot even be a good mother if
one is not self-fulfilled. It mistakenly believes that
fulfillment comes almost exclusively from the market-
place rather than the family.

A year ago a large audience gathered to hear the very
prominent feminist and scholar, Germaine Greer,
author of the best selling book The Female Eunuch. She
had just returned from India where, commissioned bya
family planning group, she was charged with persuad-
ing women to have fewer children. She began her visit
knowing the world had too many people. There were
certainly too many of “them.” But were there? she soon
began asking herself. In all of the villages sle visited
she never found an unwanted child. Parents, she said,
cherished their children and sacrificed greatly for them,
and they looked upon her as an unfortunate woman
because she had none.

She couldn’t explain her failure to have children
except to say that “in my society there is no idea of
continuum. In my society the individual life is self-
contained.”

To the audience she said, “They hardly knew the use
of the word ‘I.’ It’s ‘we’ every inch of the way.” She was
struck by their selflessness, the sharing and love of the
families. “The entire village had squeezed into half a
room and had left the other half to me,” she said. “When
I looked at these people, I knew perfectly well who there
were too many of in the world. There were too many of

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me.

Part IHI—Focus on Children

If Luther said anything about grandparents, I
couldn’t find it. And if he didn’t, perhaps it was because
he thought that Proverbs 17 had said it all: “Grand-
children are the crown of the aged” (v. 6).

How true! And itis also true that no one hasa greater
appreciation for children—as children—than do grand-
parents. I know, because I am a member of that
endangered species. And God knew that my schedule
didn’t allow me to take off a month for grandmothering
every two years or so when a new baby arrived, so He
sent them all at once: triplets!—all boys, all now two,
and all over everything! Caring for them is like trying to
organize grasshoppers!

The daughter to whom God entrusted them is the
most ideally suited person in the world to referee a three-
ring circus, but there was one week this winter that
would have tested the patience of even... well, let me put
it this way: Of all the challenges placed before Job,