In Genesis 30, Rachel says to Jacob, “give me children, or I shall die” (v. 1). Jacob, understandably, objects to this demand, for he lacks the power to do anything special about it. Rachel quickly finds a way around the problem by giving Jacob her servant for a wife, so that she can be a “mother.” Rachel is not the only mother in the Old Testament whose childlessness is a source of grief. Sarah also desires a son, and also tries to circumvent her inability by offering her servant. Later, Hannah will feel the sting of childlessness as her husband’s other wife mocks her barrenness. In the Gospels, Elizabeth similarly longs for a child and rejoices when she is granted one in her old age. This impulse is more prominent in women, but it is not limited to them. Abraham both goes along with Sarah’s plan and plans to make his servant his heir. Zechariah also seems to desire children, to the point that he is disillusioned enough about it to mock the angel’s promise. Desire for children can be intense and painful when it is frustrated.
The Bible carefully governs human sexuality while also blessing it in marriage and making it fruitful through the bearing and raising of children. There are great dangers connected to our sexuality, but also great goods, including the good of procreation. Childlessness is even sometimes mentioned as evidence of God’s judgment (e.g., Genesis 20:18). The norm in human life is procreative fruitfulness. Yet it is rare to consider how the desire for children could lead someone into foolishness and sin, even though the examples of Sarah, Abraham, Rachel, and Zechariah demonstrate this possibility, and the example of Hannah demonstrates a praiseworthy alternative.
So let us ask some crucial questions on this point: Is the desire for children wrong in itself? No. Can the desire for children lead someone to do something wrong? Yes. A desire for children may be pursued wrongly; any finite, created good may be pursued wrongly.
How could the desire for children be wrong, or how could it cause someone to do something wrong? Several answers are possible, including some easy cases. When the desire for children leads someone to transgress God’s direct commands, then it is wrong. Sexual activity outside marriage, for instance, is not justified by the children it may produce. Medical technologies for assisting reproduction can also violate other biblical rules. In vitro fertilization (IVF) that discards or destroys “excess” embryos violates the sixth commandment. The Southern Baptist Convention adopted a resolution on exactly this point in 2024, and other Christian churches have similar objections. The moral reasoning on these cases is simple. Though we may need to learn to recognize when something is a type of action forbidden by God, once we have done so, what is right and wrong becomes clear. Much harder are cases in which we must use wisdom and judgment, where the right answer is not a matter of simple obedience or disobedience, and where faithful believers may come to different conclusions.
Contemporary Western society makes these discussions even harder, because our wealth and technology enable many possibilities for satisfying our desires. Technology promises solutions to our problems, and in many cases it abundantly delivers them. Medical technology in particular saves lives and reduces suffering. These are good things. Yet technology can also empower our sinfulness. It can overcome natural limitations to satisfying our bad desires. It can train our hearts to prefer easy, quick solutions that demand little effort from us and whose costs can be hidden from our immediate attention. More insidiously, it can train our hearts and minds to believe that anything that does not clearly break one of God’s commands is good for us. (Compare Paul: “All things are lawful, but not all things are helpful.”)
We come to believe that when we can do something we may do it. Any achievable goal is assumed to be good. In such a culture, childlessness is medically difficult, but it is not ethically difficult. It does not require the would-be parents to grow in virtue, only in wealth. The idea that either the desire for something good or the means for satisfying it could be bad for us barely registers. This bias is no less true of the medical industry than of any other. Yet it is wrong. Both our desires themselves and the technology to realize those desires can be bad for us.
Within the church, this error can take a special form. We generally acknowledge that some people are called to forms of life that are not typical. They might be called to pastoral ministry. They might be called to foreign missions or to singleness. They might be called to childlessness. And various other possible callings are contemplated and debated. Each calling is unique—this is what makes it a calling. God may and does demand of individuals what he does not require of everyone.
But how do we know what God has called us to do? A very common answer in the contemporary church says that we should consider what kinds of things we desire or enjoy. Analyses of spiritual gifts and techniques for discerning callings emphasize the fit between the task and what we enjoy doing.
While this strategy for discerning calling is not completely misguided, it nonetheless fails to capture the whole of the biblical witness. In fact, in the biblical accounts of specific callings, what is notable is the lack of concern for what the called person wants. Moses did not want his job (Exodus 4). Both Saul and David at least initially hesitated to accept their kingships. Jeremiah had serious objections (Jeremiah 1). Bezalel, empowered by God to supervise the art of the tabernacle, is not said to have desired this task (Exodus 31). Mary is not asked whether she would like to be the mother of the Messiah; indeed, she is warned that it will be a source of pain for her (Luke 2:35). Lazarus likely would have preferred to not die, and his sisters certainly did not want him to die, even if Jesus would marvelously raise him from the dead (John 11). Paul is sent to the Gentiles, not against his will, but not because he felt a special desire. Rather, his desire was for his own people (Romans 10).
The implication is this: Desire is an unreliable guide to one’s calling. That one desires to do something does not mean that one has been called to it, or that it will be good for that person. It is possible, and perhaps not especially unusual, to be called to something that will be personally painful or difficult. Often our callings are for the sake of others. Paul’s instructions about singleness and marriage (1 Corinthians 7) indicate that the value of singleness is greater opportunity to serve the church. The other callings mentioned above have a similar character. While it is true that living obediently to one’s own calling offers the greatest possible flourishing, it is not the case that our callings will always satisfy our desires.
This reasoning has implications for some common ways of speaking about marriage and children. Single people may say something like, “I don’t feel called to singleness,” which upon further investigation amounts to, “I don’t want to be single.” Similarly, childless couples may say something like, “I feel called to be a mother/father,” where again the translation is something like “I want to have children.” The Bible is clear that neither of these desires is wrong in itself. Finding a spouse is praised in Proverbs, and God clearly blesses both marriage itself and its fruit of children.
Nevertheless, it is possible to desire an ordinary domestic life wrongly. It is less likely, perhaps, to desire marriage and children too much, but it is very easy to desire both in the wrong way. The fact that someone desires these goods does not necessarily guarantee that God intends him or her to enjoy them. It is certainly no guarantee that God’s design for them will be easy. A couple who says that their childlessness is a difficult burden may be entirely correct, and yet this fact has little direct bearing on what they should do about it. The wise person knows that faithfulness is not always easy.
Put more directly, one might ask the couple who is considering assisted reproduction whether they might have been called to childlessness, or to some other non-standard domestic arrangement. Can they accept that God may say no to their request for children? Can they accept that God may ask them to give up something unambiguously good for the sake of greater service to him? Can they accept that their struggle may be good not for them, but rather serve as a testimony of God’s grace? Can they accept that God calls them to give up something deeply embedded in their own embodiment so that they practice godly faithfulness before others? In short, will they not just trust God, but live in a way that demonstrates that trust?
Consider, for example, what Hannah did when she could not conceive. She found that her only recourse was earnest prayer to God, accompanied by a promise to surrender her firstborn to his service. That God approves of her plan is evident from his granting of her request and by the ways in which Mary the mother of Jesus echoes Hannah’s prayer in her own prayer of praise (cf. Luke 1). Hannah’s only helper in her struggle was Eli the priest, who could do nothing for her but affirm her desire. Yet a contemporary Hannah would have many more options. Her “priest” may take the form of a physician with an army of technicians and a clinic full of diagnostic and laboratory equipment. He would fix the problem, or at least do his best to ensure that her desire for a child is met. He would not need to direct her attention to God; he has his own methods.
But would this process have been good for Hannah? Would it have made her a model of faithful motherhood that could instruct others? Not likely. Her lack of a child would be understood through the technological frame in which her body is raw material to be shaped and used to satisfy her desires. Failure to have children is just a lack of resources or an inability to apply appropriate techniques. The idea that her childlessness could be good for her, much less good for others, would be almost literally unimaginable.
God sometimes does give us technological means to alleviate our suffering, and we may be grateful for these gifts. We may be grateful for medical interventions that can correct physiological problems that cause infertility. Nevertheless, many forms of assisted reproduction do not attempt to correct the physiological problems; they only circumvent them. Different kinds of medical interventions are not ethically the same, even if they aim at the same goal. We can use even our medical technology, which is a gift from God, in ways that direct our attention away from our dependence on God, or even in ways that direct others’ attention away from dependence on God.
Sometimes we can desire true goods, and we can have the personal virtues to enjoy them well, and yet it is for the sake of some greater purpose for ourselves or others that we do not have them. This is God’s prerogative, in family life no less than anywhere else.
