I wholeheartedly disagree with Mr. Sandlin that we must embrace substandard (and even blasphemous) characteristics in order to win our culture. It is a pity indeed if we have no more to offer the world but a dish of their own rotted pottage! When Jesus Christ wooed me, He offered me a whole new recipe for living?one that has nourished my soul with everything I need for life and godliness. He delivered me from the world?s empty ways! Why would we offer anything less?

I am appalled at the utter contempt for the Word of God that Mr. Sandlin expressed in his derogatory remarks toward the blessed gift of precious children through godly motherhood and servant, patriarch leadership. In October we were the privileged recipients of our eleventh child and I can assure you that my husband and I never once thought of him, or any of our children, as anything less than the undeserved goodness of our God. Mr. Sandlin has surely never experienced the indescribable joy of the birth of his eleventh child! In all 22 years of our marriage I have never felt like “a slave of my husband?s lust or a mere instrument for the production of children”. What a depraved way to look at something so biblically beautiful and ordained as receiving children out of godly marriage. Did it ever occur to Sandlin that I, as a Christian woman, the wife of a patriarch, could intelligently respond to the loving guidance of Scripture, to choose to receive as many children as God would give me? No, Mr. Sandlin, I joyfully enter the marriage bed with my mind fully engaged, knowing full well that from it we may be blessed with the sweet fruit of our union. In so labeling me a mindless ?baby machine?, Sandlin does much to expose his true prejudice against women since apparently he thinks it would be better if I exchanged my womanhood and ability to produce babies to become like a ?wombless? man. Apparently he equates freedom from childbearing as liberation in Christ. How wrong he is! What does Mr. Sandlin do with Scriptures like, ?But women will be sanctified through childbearing — if they continue in faith, love and holiness with propriety.? 1Timothy 2:15 ? Having many children has not limited my horizon at all, but instead broadened it! I have the privilege to nurture and educate eleven children to love God and the sweetness of His ways. Our nine sons are growing into fine young men preparing to face the world as ambassadors for Christ not to join the world as minions to its ways! And our daughters are gracious yet competent to put their hands and minds to serve the Lord with gladness. PS 16:6 ?The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; surely I have a delightful inheritance.?

Mr. Sandlin, on the other hand, should sober up and be shaking in his avant-garde boots as he reads from Isaiah 5:20,

“Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.”

May Mr. Sandlin understand that the way to grace is by loving the truth.

I am truly enjoying and being uplifted by the beautiful responses of mothers to Sandlin. That is one way God is bringing good out of evil.

I love every one of my 7 earthly blessings. I love my life of mothering. I would feel cheated doing anything else. There is such beauty in living life in God’s will rather than striving against it. I am sorry for moms who have to work. I am sorry for those who have chosen to limit their blessings. Many older women have said to me that they wished they would have had more children. Many women have said to me that they wished they could stay home with their children. It is natural for women to love babies, to care for children, to teach children, to love their homes.

Frankly, I am insulted that someone would call a person such as myself a “baby machine”. I am a mother MOTHER 7 times over, a mother. But it wouldn’t matter if I had only one blessing. My identity after being a child of God, a helpmate to my dear husband, is mother. I love the word. I love to hear my beautiful 8 yo daughter call me mother. You should see the heads turn in public. I love to hear my babies say mamamamama in their first babbles. I love to hear my toddlers calll Mommmmmy. I love to hear my big kid with his voice changing say Mom.

After reading the comments Mr. Sandlin made about the Christian family and reading the responses of your blog readers, I felt that I had to voice my outrage at this attack on our Christian homes. One of the things that concerns me most about Mr. Sandlin’s comments is that there are so few men that joyfully receive as many children as God will send to them. To accuse these men, who have the faith and guts to have a large family, of “treating their wives as baby machines,” is going to further discourage men from embracing the vision for families that God has so clearly laid out in his word. I am disgusted that Christian ministers would feel the necessity to add further stumbling blocks in the way of a man who is trying to raise a godly seed (Mal. 2:15). I am a 19 year old young lady who prays daily for a husband that will have my same love and passion for children and for a Christian home. Christian leaders should be challenging young men to go against the tide of our sensual, ungodly culture and boldly live out the Bible’s plan for Christian patriarchy in their families. I hope and pray that today’s men will not be led astray by the false teachings of current leaders, but that, instead, their minds will be renewed by the washing of the water of the word (Rom. 12:2). To God be the glory!