Love your children. Love them first by wanting them. The very employment of birth control is a statement against the gifts of God, and it plants the foot firmly along the road for love to grow cold. It is the very foundation of choice against love. If God gives you five, ten, fifteen, or twenty, then praise Him! He’s given you quite a legacy. While birth control and abortion are certainly not to be considered as moral equivalents, it must never be forgotten that the argument that foisted the former, cemented the path for the latter. (Steve Schlissel, Christian Culture in a Multicultural Age, page 44)

(Steve Schlissel plays with Providence Mather Phillips.)

In a selfish and materialistic age that prefers individualistic gratification more than a covenantal passion for children, I am truly, truly grateful for those men and women of diverse theological backgrounds in the Evangelical world who are casting a vision to the Christian community for being fruitful and multiplying in great abundance. These present day heroes recognize the implications of this historically unprecedented and culturally significant practice of planned barren-hood for the conscience of the Church. They are not afraid to warn the people of God of the spiritually devastating blight on the people of God caused by perverting the natural function of the womb in the name of convenience.

Of course there is a price to pay for such type of preaching. Some men will respond by making the humanistic assertion that such patriarchal teaching leads to misogynistic practice of men treating their wives as “baby machines.” The loud ones will shout “legalist, Pharisee” at men like Steve Schlissel who dare to wisely apply God’s Word to the present crisis. Others will go so far as to try to censure those who preach an uncompromising message of life. Bill Gothard once told me that he had been blackballed from several communities by pastors who specifically indicated that they would only open the doors for him if he would agree to remain silent on the issue of birth control. (I shared my personal gratitude to him for the documented tens of thousands of children alive today, who otherwise would never have been conceived, but for their parent’s humble response to the uncompromising message of life Bill Gothard has so boldly proclaimed over the years.)

The opposition to the message of life from conscience-seared clergy is so strong, that the man who fervently preaches an uncompromising vision of life, is more intolerable than the neo-orthodox who undermines the historic doctrines of the faith. Men who will endure all forms of doctrinal compromise in the name of ecumenicity, seem to make it their life mission to excoriate at every possible opportunity the preacher who reminds the Church that the acceptance of birth control in the Protestant community is a historically novel accommodation to modernist theology, utterly without biblical warrant, and fated to bring the Church into judgment for its rejection of the sovereign God’s biblically revealed vision for bringing forth godly seed in great abundance.

Thankfully, the testimony of a rapidly growing new generation of children-loving families who trust Jehovah to be Lord of the womb (primarily emerging from the Christ-centered patriarchal and family revival within America’s home school movement), is evidence that God is preserving His remnant and building His people.

Nothing thrills me more than the dozens and dozens (perhaps hundreds, by now) of reports Vision Forum has received over the years, of families who physically and/or mentally made a decision to reverse their commitment to planned barren-hood, and embrace the gift of children. It has become rare for me to return to a state home school conference without having at least one mom or dad opens their wallets to show the picture of their precious child who “would not be here, but for the message they heard from Vision Forum, two years prior.” Hallelujah! Thank you Father!

Steve Schlissel is one of the few fellow preachers I know who has had the guts to preach with fervor against the widespread acceptance of the modern birth control ethic within the Church. (Most preachers could not preach this way because they are leading the charge in practicing, and encouraging young couples to practice, planned barren-hood.) Consider the following observation:

We demand less nudity on television. Let’s insist on a maximum of two nude scenes per half hour. Has anyone ever thought of using the on/off switch. If T.V. offends you, shut it off. But Christians won’t admit their T.V. addicted. “No, turning off the T.V. is just too radical. Let’s compromise!” We want to end abortion, yet at the same time we hold to the propriety of birth control. Eventually, we find that the problem can be found at the root, and the problem is that we’re sharing the root with unbelievers. To justify ourselves we soothe our guilty consciences, we demand to see a couple of Christian tokens on the cultural landscape. Hallelujah. Everybody loves Jesus. Now let’s go home and wallow in the mud like total humanist pigs! (Steve Schlissel, Christian Culture in A Multi-Cultural Age, page 104)

Christian Culture in a Multi-Cultural Age, which has a noteworthy introduction from our friend George Grant and can be ordered on-line from Vision Forum.

Dinner at Sardis
I finished Steve’s delightful book Christian Culture in a Multi-Cultural Age on my flight to New York last week. We discussed the book over a lovely meal at Sardis in New York City. Eating at Sardis is a multi-generational activity in the Phillips household. My father would often take me here for dinner during our visits together to New York in years past.

As we talked about Christian Culture in a Multi-Cultural Age over dinner, I was deeply touched by Steve’s tender compassion for the plight of the Christian family seeking holiness in an age where rampant paganism and libertine values define the Church itself.

Two years ago I had an opportunity to visit Urban Nations, the remarkable outreach of Messiah’s Congregation, over which Steve is a shepherd. It was extraordinarily gratifying to discover that one of the Urban Nation’s classrooms for bringing the Gospel to immigrants through their unique Bible centered language programs, had been dedicated to my father, Howard Phillips, and prominently featured a dedication on the wall to him. (Just as it takes courage to preach against the evil of the birth control mentality, so too it takes courage to take a stand for principled political activism. Steve, has always been willing to do both.)

Our love for each other is an example of the fact that genuine Christians with variations and flavors to their theology not only can co-exist without rancor, but can enjoy a deep personal friendship based on love, mutual respect and honor. (I once asked Steve for permission to publish a public response in opposition to an article he had written — a request he happily granted!).

Two Converted Jews and the Fiddler
It is good to be mishpokhe. After dinner, Steve, his bride, Beall and I, and Josh and Sarah Wean, saw a performance of Fiddler on the Roof. The theology of Fiddler has much to be desired, but the poignant depiction of Jewish family life in the midst of far reaching socio-political change in the broader world around them, is moving to the point of tears. The story is especially meaningful to me because my ancestors (on my father’s side) were among those Russian Jews to flee the dehumanizing pogroms of the last generation of Czars.

Both Steve and I are married to lovely goyim girls who have learned to happily tolerate the Jewish food, Jewish talk (lay-Yiddish) and Jewish-nostalgia-shtick-thing which is the destiny of every little boy who can claim Judaic ancestry, or who once had a Bubbe in his life.

Fiddler was also an opportunity to begin my Jewish-nostalgia-shtick-thing indoctrination program for my two month old son, Providence Mather Phillips. Providence had never heard such singing, dancing and whooping before (except for every other day around his brothers and sisters in the Phillips home). The presence of a two month old at Fiddler sent all the Yentas and Bubbes and Uncle Mordacai’s around us into an uproar, not knowing whether to coo in delight, or kvetch that we had a lot of chutzpah schlepping our way into a play with a baby who might let out a wheeze or a gurgle during the sacrosanct “Sunrise/Sunset” scene, thus rendering them a bunch poor schlemazels. In the final analysis, we could just hear the meshugeneh coming from the chorus of kbitzers declaring: “What? No nosh to keep the kinder quiet?..Such a child!.. And to think, his first Fiddler.”

Real Food
Another blessing of the New York trip was that I was able to eat the type of real food that my Gigi (my grandmother) use to make for me: Lox and bagels, kreplach, knishes, matzo ball soup, latkes with applesauce and sour cream, and garlic pickles, to name a few. Five pounds later, I emerged from New York content, sated and ready for some serious exercise. The only opportunity for a real Jewish meal in Texas comes every Saturday when I cook fried matzo and sometimes offer gefilte fish and horseradish for my children (Beall runs for her life when I pull out the gefilte fish.)

(Oh, my dearest son Providence, what grand adventures we shall have together!)