At a Glance
Ideas can build up and create or tear down and dehumanize individuals and nations. Truth leads to flourishing, while lies lead to bondage and, ultimately, death. Today we look at the trend of rapidly declining fertility rates in places like China, South Korea, Russia, Europe and North America.
What are the consequences of this decline personally, economically and culturally? What ideas are behind it and driving it? How do these ideas differ from the biblical worldview, where God’s first command to mankind is “be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth.” What are the lies that you and I have unintentionally absorbed that run counter to God’s first command and are holding us back from living the kind of life he desires for us?
What You'll Hear
Chapter 1: What is Happening with China’s Population? (1:22)
- China is currently facing a huge demographic crisis following its implementation of the One Child Policy in 1979.
- While China repealed the policy and replaced it with the Two Child Policy in 2016 and the Three Child Policy in 2021, China’s population is set to shrink by half in the next 77 years because of this policy.
- While the policy made China’s demographic crisis particularly bad, the fall in fertility rate has not just been in China, but in much of the West and in other industrialized Asian countries such as Japan or Taiwan.
- While demographics deal in numbers, it is important to remember that ultimately we are talking about individual human lives.
Chapter 2: The Biblical View of Human Life (14:31)
- Under the Communist/Marxist/Darwinistic worldview, human beings are drains and animals, and should be controlled and sacrificed if it fits the needs of the nation.
- Under the biblical worldview, we are precious image-bearers in the image of God.
- Like God, humans have the ability to make and create value where there was none before.
- By limiting the amount of humans on the planet, we are limiting the amount of innovation and ingenuity that can be applied to a problem, because there are less people.
- Beyond that, humans have a capacity to love that no other creature on the planet has.
Chapter 3: Concluding Thoughts (52:47)
- Relationships are more valuable than money or stuff, and we should treasure people as immeasurably valuable.
- We should seek to cultivate in others the ability to be creative and live out their God-given purpose.
Using the link above, you can read the transcript, listen along, and adjust the speed of the podcast while you listen.
"Humans have a capacity to innovate, improving the world and making it better."
Luke Allen (27:29)
Go Deeper
The Coming Demographic Collapse of China and China Will Lose a Billion People by 2100
These two articles are the inspiration for the ideas that we discuss today. Both are published by Gordon G. Chang, the author of The Great U.S.-China Tech War and Losing South Korea, booklets released by Encounter Books.
His previous books are Nuclear Showdown: North Korea Takes On the World and The Coming Collapse of China, both from Random House. Chang lived and worked in China and Hong Kong for almost two decades, most recently in Shanghai, as Counsel to the American law firm Paul Weiss and earlier in Hong Kong as Partner in the international law firm Baker & McKenzie.
The Forest in the Seed
The transformation of impoverished communities requires resources, yet our worldview determines our vision for what resources we have and which are most important.
The Bible reveals God as the source of all resources. He is “Jehova Jireh,” the God who provides for His creation. But do we have eyes to see this vast array of resources? Do our development activities help others discover their God-given resources or hinder them? The Forest in the Seed is a Biblical exploration of the important topic of resources.
As The Family Goes, So Goes The Nation
Healthy families produce healthy nations. Healthy families are those united by a solid spiritual foundation in Christ. Today, the prevailing culture has redefined marriage and family, and its habits of thought and practice dominate, even in the Church. Christian parents need a biblical vision of wholeness and joy in marriage and family life and a practical plan for applying the wisdom and power of God’s Word to their lives.
As the Family Goes, So Goes the Nation is a primer of principles and practices that illuminates God’s pathway for righteous marriages, parenting, and family life. God’s way is the way of beauty, truth, and goodness, the way of celebration, blessing, and healing love in our homes and in our nations. God established the family as the bedrock of society to reveal the kingdom of Christ here on earth. Discover HIS way and and walk in it!
The Darrow Miller and Friends Blog
Too often we live in the small boxes of our own minds, minds shaped by our culture. These boxes limit our vision for the life God intended. We were created by God to live in the wide circle of His creation in relationship with the Trinitarian community. We were made for worship.
Unfortunately, individuals and cultures rebel against the Creator and His primary creation, i.e. reality. When that happens, we continue to worship, but instead of worshiping God, we worship the things God made.
As the Apostle Paul boldly proclaims, “They changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man, birds, four-footed beasts, and creeping things.” (Romans 1:23ff) We turn from the worship of the glorious Creator to the worship of man – pagan humanism, or the worship of nature – pagan animism.
At Darrow Miller and Friends, we use words to try to shift paradigms. We want to help people escape the puny boxes that enslave minds (Paul calls them “strongholds” in 2Cor 10:4) into the broad and glorious world of reality (like the chick escaping the egg). We seek to create a window on an “alternative universe,” that universe where we were hardwired to live and thrive.
The Myth of Overpopulation by Prager University
There are now eight billion people living on the planet. Is there enough room for all of us? Are we going to run out of food and other resources?
Marian Tupy, Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute and co-author of Superabundance, examines whether or not these fears are valid. His answer may surprise you.
We are, in fact, not living in an era of overpopulation, but an era of super-abundance. Rather then being a drain on resources, people contribute to creating more resources, so that the more people and knowledge we have, the more abundance and productiveness we have.
Quotes
The Darwinian view sees human beings as animals, I always come back to that, because we evolved from animals. And so when you want to know what it means to be a human being, you look to the animal kingdom. That’s very different from the biblical view, which looks to God, because we’re made in God’s image, this is really different. -Scott Allen (16:59)
This is so different from the modern secular understanding of what is a human. They say humans are a mouth in the stomach. And we’re saying no, humans are mouth in the stomach. That’s correct. But we’re also a mind in our soul. -Luke Allen (26:43)
When it comes really simply down to it, humans have this capacity to innovate, that improves the world and makes it better. -Luke Allen (27:29)
Why did God create?.. He wanted to share that love, there was a creation, a birthing process, that created in the image of Father, Son and Spirit, He created mankind. And that is the picture of husband and wife coming together: That out of their love, created in their image, is children. And then by generation by generation, our love is expanded, and our love increases and includes more people. -Tim Williams (33:28)
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
Superabundance: Population Growth, Innovation, and Human Flourishing on an Infinitely Bountiful Planet
After analyzing the prices of hundreds of commodities, goods, and services spanning two centuries, Marian Tupy and Gale Pooley found that resources became more abundant as the population grew. That was especially true when they looked at “time prices,” which represent the length of time that people must work to buy something. Why? More people produce more ideas, which lead to more inventions. People then test those inventions in the marketplace to separate the useful from the useless. At the end of that process of discovery, people are left with innovations that overcome shortages, spur economic growth, and raise standards of living.
A Heart For Freedom
More than twenty years ago, Chai Ling led the protesters at Tiananmen Square and became China’s most-wanted female fugitive. Today, she’s finally telling her astonishing story.
Though haunted by memories of the horrifying massacre at Tiananmen and her underground escape from China in a cargo box, Ling threw herself into pursuing the American dream. She completed Ivy League degrees, found love, and became a highly successful entrepreneur. Yet her longing for true freedom, purpose, and peace remained unfulfilled. Years after Tiananmen, she was still searching to find meaning in all the violence, fear, and tragedy she’d endured. A Heart for Freedom is her tale of passion, political turmoil, and spiritual awakening, and the inspirational true story of a woman who has dedicated everything to giving people in China their chance at a future.
All Girls Allowed
Emboldened by the Great Commandment to love God and love our neighbor as we love ourselves (Matthew 22:37-39), and the Great Commission to make disciples of all nations (Matthew 28:19-20), All Girls Allowed exists to restore life, value, and dignity by educating and empowering women and girls and engaging partners to realize global impact.
The vision of All Girls Allowed is “In Jesus’ Name, Simply Love Her.” As we love “the least of these,” those who are most marginalized, we serve Jesus. As we serve women and girls, we help all realize their full potential as individuals who are valued and made in the image of God.
Thank you for your ministry! Your podcasts are always very informative and biblically grounded. From my experience of living in Africa for about 15 years, people are having fewer children because the UN comes in and tells them they are poor because they have too many children and then Marie Stoops or Planned Parenthood arrives a couple years later providing their ‘services’.
The only other thing I would mention since you often talk about the importance of words, is that in this discussion, perhaps it may have been better to use the term ‘conception-control’ when talking about Christian family planning. The ‘pill’ is birth control because it is often times doing just that, not allowing the proper growth of a fertilized egg, hence controlling the birth of a child. However, conception control is preventing the egg from ever getting fertilized n the first place.
Thank you again for bringing these important topics to us from a biblical worldview!
Lisa, thank you for taking the time to share your comment, feedback, and experience! It is good to hear from someone with long-term experience in Africa about how this is making an impact and how people are thinking about it. Conception-control is a helpful way to talk about natural Christian family planning and helps shine the light on the different approach and different value. Thanks again! We would love to hear more from you! May we continue to help people know the wonderful value of life!