i've heard sermons regarding depletion of natural resources and being poor stewards of the earth. i'd link you to them, but i'm certain you won't listen.
Actually it does help solve something. The local church helping a poor family out is a good thing and I applaud them for that. Many Hispanic churches in South Central used to provide the same. These CATHOLIC churches helped out a lot of poor imigrant families The politics of birth control, religion, abortion, global warming, Iraq, ad nauseum can be saved for another day.
Day Care is so hard to find...It's expensive, but for 3 kids, its even more so...Luckily, I have a great girl that just graduated HS to watch my kids...It's over $200/week...we are also doing a VBS, but its maybe $50 for all three... Day Care really sucks for people that can't afford it...Hell, I can afford it, but its still expensive
It isn't all the church's fault. American society and the U.S. courts/government have steadily pushed the church/God out of the American community. I'm sure though there are plenty in churches across the land that consider mission work solely the duty of some couple living over in Africa that sends the occasional letter to the supporting congregation back home.
I think the government should actively sponsor programs for child care and the treatment of the mentally ill living on the streets. I also think the funding for feeding the homeless is not enough. Though it sounds unfair to use public finding for these prograsm, in the long run there are beneficial societal effects for everyone.
At least a widespread campaign against having children that can not be afforded, and multiple children discouraged, and no more tax breaks. In fact there should be more taxes since they use more resources. Childless people should get the tax breaks. It should be encouraged as much as possible. If we can do it for smoking/drugs/littering we can do it for reproduction.
It seems to me that quality child care is very labor intensive and needs people of the right temperment. Believing that it could universally be done both well and cheaply would, I believe, be much more difficult than suggested in some of these posts. Furthermore, I also think that if neither parent is willing to take the responsibility of rasing their kids, it is not unnatural to expect that they should have to pay to avoid this responsibility. I don't want to seem as though I am against both parents working which often turns into an anti-women's lib rant. But the responsability of raising a child should belong to the parents. If they have children and both choose to pursue additional weath and achievement for themselves, then they should pay the costs of their actions. I don't like the idea of a world where both parents are expected to work 9-5 and children are foisted off to be raised by the state. If you can't afford to raise children properly, then don't have them.
I don't believe any court can push God away from our community. And in fact, Christianity (or at least what I call Christianity) has flourished most, from a historical perspective, in places where it's been counter-cultural. I see the problem as being not that church/God has been pushed out by the culture...but rather that it's become consumed by the culture in our country so much that it often doesn't resemble the faith that I understand from the Bible. As for mission work...what I have seen is that it gets reduced to a trip to a faraway land by a youth group and the occasional check written in support of the couple over in Africa. But there are exceptions to that, to be sure. Churches that embrace the community that surround them. The church I attend sees mission in 3 ways...service to one another...service to the surrounding community...service to the world. It's very focused and pointed on that as being an expression of God's love for the world. The one I get most excited about is service to the community...because I can very clearly see it make a difference in the lives of other people.
I agree with this in principle. But I'm not sure it's entirely realistic. Sometimes children come about even when we didn't plan for them.
There are two issues: 1) teaching / governing / mandating responsible behavious 2) dealing with the kids who are already here The second issue is an immediate need -- we can't simply say that we shouldn't care for the children that are here because their parents were irresponsible. Dealing with the kids who are here does not fix the cause of the problem -- but they are people with a need that we are responsible for addressing.
Economic Realities are forcing more and more two Parent working households and 1. Alot of people have kids they can afford until like makes a difficult turn 2. and in cases that they have kids they cannot afford . . what then? . . . hang them in the Closet . . alone with yourself? Rocket River
Based soley on births and deaths, America has negative population growth. The developing world is where they have too many kids. You are asking them to target the wrong audience. Ideally, every woman worldwide would limit herself to a single child. In the course of a few generations, most of the ecological problems we face (pollution, depletion of natural resources, starvation, etc.) would be solved simply by reduction of demand. This is almost impossible to accomplish though. As the world becomes more and more developed though, the total population should stagnate and eventually decline.
My wife and I have two, and she's a non-practicing Catholic, while I'm agnostic. The way I figure it, we needed to get ourselves continued in the gene pool. Based on how our two are doing, it was a great decision. And we only had two, which makes us even-steven on population growth, right? All is groovy in Replicant Land. (boy, the software problems we had to deal with... you have no idea!) D&D. Making the World a Better Place for Replicants!
