Ship of Fools: Children of Men

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Posted by Schroedinger's cat (# 64) on :

I have just finished reading PD James book of this name, and it struck me that the core issue in the book presents an interesting theological challenge.

So, if there were no more children born in the world, what impact does this have on our faith? If we have no further generations to pass the message on to, does that change our approach?

In the book, this has produced a substantial collapse of faith, which is one approach. But another would be a desire to share with everyone - now a finite task, and there is no need to preserve for the future.

Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on :

If no-one could have children anymore, my first question wouldn't be "what effect will this have on the spreading of the faith?"

Posted by A Sojourner (# 17776) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Schroedinger's cat:
I have just finished reading PD James book of this name, and it struck me that the core issue in the book presents an interesting theological challenge.

So, if there were no more children born in the world, what impact does this have on our faith? If we have no further generations to pass the message on to, does that change our approach?

In the book, this has produced a substantial collapse of faith, which is one approach. But another would be a desire to share with everyone - now a finite task, and there is no need to preserve for the future.

As far as I remember in the book there was mention of how their had been at first a religious "revival" and that there had been the rise of many revivalist meetings. It was just as the world aged and decayed, and as society adapted to that ever closer point of extinction all forms of excitement declined. Butnot faith as can be seen in the beautiful scenes when they take Communion when they are on the run!

Posted by SvitlanaV2 (# 16967) on :

The Shakers famously avoided having children - but they relied on raising orphans or others in difficulty to keep their numbers up. So they still needed other people to be fruitful and multiply.

In the end, though, it was impossible for them to find enough outsiders to attract to their faith, and studies show that sooner or later, most religious groups rely heavily on the transmission of faith from parents to children.

Regarding the situation in the OP, if the infertility occurred as a result of some kind of global catastrophe, you could end up with a world so traumatised that people turned to God to beg for assistance. OTOH, if the childlessness happened by design, e.g. because new science meant everyone could live forever and kids were an undesirable burden, then I can't see how Christianity would benefit. Self-sacrifice would have little if any meaning in such a world.

Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on :

quote:
SvitlanaV2: OTOH, if the childlessness happened by design, e.g. because new science meant everyone could live forever and kids were an undesirable burden, then I can't see how Christianity would benefit. Self-sacrifice would have little if any meaning in such a world.

I don't see this. I'm imagining here a world where people don't die of diseases or old age, but can still be killed. Surely in such a world, self-sacrifice to save someone else's life would be a big deal, because you'd give a big number of years up with it.

Posted by SvitlanaV2 (# 16967) on :

Ah, well my first scenario might be more relevant, then.

I haven't read the novel, but in my mind a world in which everyone stopped having children, would surely be taken by many as a sign of the world coming to an end. In previous times when people thought the end was coming, e.g. during the Black Death, I think some people did lose their faith, while others became desperate extremists. I don't know what proportion were closer to the former rather than the latter position.

[ 13. April 2016, 21:10: Message edited by: SvitlanaV2 ]

Posted by stonespring (# 15530) on :

A more general question is whether the "End of the World" - by which I mean an event that results in the end of human life - has to resemble in any way the End Times described in the Gospels, let alone the End Times described in the Book of Revelation or in the Old Testament. Could Christ's Second Coming occur after all human life has ended and people have been resurrected for the judgment or does the Bible make absolutely clear that there will be people living on Earth (who have never died or been resurrected themselves) when Christ comes again?

[ 13. April 2016, 22:18: Message edited by: stonespring ]

Posted by Alan Cresswell (# 31) on :

I don't think anything in the Bible says anything clearly about the End Times at all. Because, I don't think the End Times (as we would understand that, at least) was of any interest to the authors of the New Testament. They had enough to concern themselves with living each day to worry about the future (what there is in the NT would suggest that they weren't thinking about the distant future at all). Yes, an expectation that Christ would return to fully realise the Kingdom, and that those who had suffered and died for the faith would be vindicated. But, not knowing the day or hour, just getting on with being faithful servants of the Kingdom.

We would do well to emulate their example, or we risk being left behind the advance of other faith systems.

Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :

But didn't Paul say that when Christ returned the dead would rise first and then we who are still alive would also rise to meet him in the air?

This suggests to me that there will still be people living and breathing when Christ returns.

Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on :

Maybe the last two, as a nice inversion of the Creation story?

Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :

quote:
Originally posted by LeRoc:
Maybe the last two, as a nice inversion of the Creation story?

Or two gay guys just to piss off the fundamentalists?

Posted by Alan Cresswell (# 31) on :

quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
But didn't Paul say that when Christ returned the dead would rise first and then we who are still alive would also rise to meet him in the air?

This suggests to me that there will still be people living and breathing when Christ returns.

It's also entirely possible that he had no concept of the extinction of the human race. And, it is implied that among those alive at the return of Christ there would be an active and faithful Christian community. The message to a persecuted Church: "they're not going to be able to get all of us".

Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on :

quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:

quote:
Originally posted by LeRoc:
Maybe the last two, as a nice inversion of the Creation story?
Or two gay guys just to piss off the fundamentalists?

And then Jesus comes back and has a nice cup of tea with them. You could write a novel about that.

Posted by Schroedinger's cat (# 64) on :

quote:
Originally posted by LeRoc:
If no-one could have children anymore, my first question wouldn't be "what effect will this have on the spreading of the faith?"

It's not my first question, but it is an interesting one, and one that James addresses throughout the book.

[And while I am at it - not aimed at you LeRoc specifically - what is this thing about "not the first question I would ask"? Surely this is a discussion board for all sorts of obtuse questions that arise out of reading or experiences? If it happens to be an issue I want some thoughts on, that might be a question of interest, surely that is enough?]

Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on :

quote:
Schroedinger's cat: what is this thing about "not the first question I would ask"?

Well, suppose the scenario is that there are no more children because no-one can have children anymore. In that case, my first concern would be the fact that no-one can have children anymore!!! To me, this would trump all other concerns. Even asking things like "what would this mean to the spreading of faith?" seems inhumane to me.

Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on :

The theme has also been explored, at least to some extent, in Childhood's End

Arthur C Clark's interesting reworking of the Last Days and the Last Man involved a transformed and evolved humanity (the last generation of children) "rising" to be united with a universal "Overmind" - at the cost of the planet earth itself. He also saw all traditional religious beliefs vanishing in the light of information from a device enabling the past to be viewed.

I do not rule out the possibility of human beings causing irreversible damage to our planet and our species by lousy stewarding of the planet. I think the promise is that fertility, seed-time and harvest, will continue as long as earth remains. That's a caveat! So I guess my answer to the OP is "it won't happen unless, collectively, humanity makes it happen. Which could happen!" If it did, repentance would seem a lot more appropriate than despair.

[ 14. April 2016, 10:12: Message edited by: Barnabas62 ]

Posted by Schroedinger's cat (# 64) on :

The thing is, I have considered the important factor about there being no more children and all of that. But I was also interested in the challenge that such an event might have from a theological perspective.

The point is, as made somewhat in the book, is that this is not a single moment catastrophe - an asteroid hitting or suchlike. It is an event that will play out over some 60 years. So there is plenty of time to go from "Oh dear, no more children" right through to "So what does my faith have to say to this?". The point being that the interaction between any event and ones faith is significant.

Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on :

quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
But didn't Paul say that when Christ returned the dead would rise first and then we who are still alive would also rise to meet him in the air?

This suggests to me that there will still be people living and breathing when Christ returns.

This is precisely why I would be anticipating Christ's coming, in the hypothetical case that everybody stopped having kids forever.

But it's also a reason I can't imagine that scenario happening in reality. It would make Christ's coming that much more predictable, and we're told it won't be.

Posted by Brenda Clough (# 18061) on :

Another novel with a similar theme is The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood. In which, due to environmental degradation and/or nuclear catastrophes, human fertility has drastically dipped. Babies are now rare and valued, and women who are fertile are assets, essentially slaves to be controlled by men.

Posted by SvitlanaV2 (# 16967) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Schroedinger's cat:

The point is, as made somewhat in the book, is that this is not a single moment catastrophe - an asteroid hitting or suchlike. It is an event that will play out over some 60 years. So there is plenty of time to go from "Oh dear, no more children" right through to "So what does my faith have to say to this?". The point being that the interaction between any event and ones faith is significant.

Sixty years is not a long time. It's barely a generation.

If the focus is on some North European country where the birthrate is already very low, perhaps Italy or Germany, then I suppose the level of concern wouldn't be very great, and the response might be more abstract than anything else. I don't think the inhabitants in such countries would 'turn to faith' as a result. It's already normal for couples not to have children there.

The economic problems that would eventually arise might cause significant anxiety, though. I mean, without children who'd do the work? Where would the pensions come from? Who'd look after the elderly? At the moment, immigration helps to solve these problems, but without that, our governments, and at some point our communities, would become increasingly anxious.

The churches themselves might be unable to offer strong support in such a situation, because many of their members are already older than the national average, so the effect on them would kick in sooner than in other parts of society. (I'm sure there would be rather more bishops invited to pontificate on TV, though!)

Would organised religion benefit? In unchurched communities the beneficiary might be more freelance, hybrid forms of faith.

As for more traditional, and more religious societies, where fertility is more important, I think the response there would be very different.

Posted by anne (# 73) on :

Well we'd save a fortune on the Sunday School/ Messy Church budget for starters. A couple of other possibilities occur to me.

It might be really interesting to see the churches play out the issues of gay marriage and other conversation around human sexuality without the issues of fertility and child rearing. How does teaching about sex and marriage change once all sex is definitely not about reproduction?

What happens to the last born generation? Are the youngest people (even if they are 50 or 60 years old) treasured and prized by the community or resented as a reminder of lost possibilities? Does the church follow this secular lead?

Are there bible stories which become more relevant? Do biblical scholars return to all of those seven and eight hundred year old patriarchs with a fresh eye to see what they contain for this new situation?

Anne

Posted by Brenda Clough (# 18061) on :

It seems to me the crucial question in this scenario is why. Why no children?
If it is an outside calamity (I dunno, asteroids, AIDS, cosmic rays, aliens) then can something be done to fix it? There is a huge military/medical research complex, all ready to hand to leap into the fray. Can we imagine them sitting back and doing nothing? No. We have all seen these movies, and do not need to discuss this.
A more entrancing possibility is (as in
Clarke's Childhood's End) a psychological barrier. People no longer feel like reproducing. This then subdivides into two headers: either they don't feel like having sex, OR they have sex but always use birth control.
I find it difficult to believe that you could pry the sex drive out of people, short of chemical/surgical castration. It is very deeply indeed ingrained in us; even people who do not have sex channel the drive into other areas. More likely is the consistent use of birth control. We have already been able to throttle the birth rate down a lot; it would not take much more to get it below the replacement rate worldwide.
It is at this point that the church might step in with a fix. (A sermon title immediately flits into my mind, 'Screw for Jesus', but we're not going to go there...)

Posted by Belle Ringer (# 13379) on :

quote:
Originally posted by LeRoc:
I'm imagining here a world where people don't die of diseases or old age, but can still be killed. Surely in such a world, self-sacrifice to save someone else's life would be a big deal, because you'd give a big number of years up with it.

On that precise point, I expressed to a friend my puzzlement at young men running off fight at the Alamo when they were not themselves local, as if finding a fight to be in and likely die in was fun. His response was like yours, when all around you people your age die - from childbirth if female, from farming wounds if male, you expect to die young so why not join a fight? When you expect to live a long time, the cost of dying young is high, you are giving up 50 years instead of just a few.

Is that answer right? Are we today far more cautious than people 150 years ago?

Are people such as ISIS fighters expecting to die young anyway so might as well blow yourself up now?

If we all lived to very old age, would we be less willing to risk dying to protect a family member from a thug? Or die instead of deny Christ if a dictator demanded?

Which may or may not be part of the OP question, not sure.

Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on :

There are different scenario's of course, but my suspicion is that in a world without children, society will break down.

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