The Necessity of Mother

People who don’t believe that an intelligent being created the world have a problem explaining structure in the universe.

God made the earth rotate around the sun in a precise pattern. We live in a climate zone that, were it to change only slightly, would not be habitable for humans. There is far less tolerance in the pattern of the earth’s orbit than the trajectory of any space shuttle launched from Kennedy Space Center. No astronaut would operate outside the designs or plan of NASA.

So when the Designer of the Universe tells us how He structured the world, we ought to listen.

After telling us that the earth is divided into days and nights, seasons, months and years, He gives some clues about the structure of vegetation (apple seeds always produce apple trees?) and animals (each reproduces after their kind) He tells us about the structure of human families. It’s a quick lesson that covers basic principles in mere sentences but He says, we “are created male and female.” (Gen. 1:27) Jesus said, "at the beginning of creation God 'made them male and female.'” (Mark 10:6)

Family structure was established when God made the world. Motherhood became an essential part of the universe.

Margaret Mead, a cultural anthropologist once proposed the end of marriage and family. Parents, in her opinion, were too unstable and ill prepared to raise children. Parenting should be left to professionals who were educated for the task. The new world would have glorified day-care centers where women would drop off their new born babies for proper training, then leave and never return. Somehow, the idea never caught on.

Of course, Mead had three unsuccessful marriages, at least two homosexual relationships and never manifested any evidence that her education and experience qualified her to advise others on how best to raise children.

Nor is there any evidence that psychologists produce better children than the rest of us. Even Benjamin Spock was an abysmal failure.

The evidence is that the structure God instituted at creation is the best.

In all of creation mothers are the model of self-sacrifice. Even in the animal kingdom, mothers are created to be fiercely protective and devoted to their offspring.

God made the world to include the need for both father and mother. When He brought animals to the Ark, He instructed Noah “You are to bring into the ark two of all living creatures, males and female, to keep them alive with you. (Gen. 6:19) Even the animals God had set aside as a source of food were brought in by pairs, but rather than one pair, God command Noah to bring seven pairs. (Gen. 7:1-3) The consistency, even when the numbers changed, was the pairing of male and female. It’s a pattern.

Later on Jesus demonstrates the importance of a mothers influence when at a wedding reception, his first miracle is performed at the urging of his mother. (John 2:3)

The last command Jesus gave while still alive was for his disciple John to care for his mother when he was gone. (John 19:26) “From that time on, this disciple took her into his home.” (verse 27)

Throughout his epistles Paul sends greetings to various women who hold influence in congregations across Asia. Often they are mothers that reflect the same concern for the congregation that they have demonstrated for their own children.

When Paul reaches for a metaphor for the Kingdom of God he says, “But the Jerusalem that is above is free, and she is our mother.” (Galatians 4:26)

The ideas of people like Margaret Mead will fade into oblivion but the essential nature of motherhood will last throughout eternity.

Until next time,