The truth about Christians and Infertility

“Just take another wife. You can love this one, but that one can give you kids.”

Sounds like something right out of the Old Testament doesn’t it? But this conversation happened just a few short years ago. My wife and I were serving as missionaries and this muslim friend was trying to tell me how I could “help” my wife as we dealt with infertility.

How does a Christian woman deal with infertility? Only one who has walked though this valley knows the depths to which that path takes you. And at a quick glance, the Bible itself seems to send a very negative message. Wasn’t Michel, David’s wife, cursed with infertility? And what about that weird scripture where Paul says a woman is saved through child bearing?

Then there are the well-intentioned but extremely fertile friends. You know, the one’s who can’t stop getting pregnant?

 They hide it from you because they don’t want to hurt you, and end up doing just that. Do they invite you to a baby shower or not? They don’t want to exclude you but don’t want to hurt you.

Tahnya and I wrestled. We wept. We tried medical methods. We went broke trying stuff. At the end of the day, God had a unique journey for us. It involved adoption. It involved waiting for many years. Part of that journey involved for us both a true return to what the Bible says about the nature of a woman.

One day, in dealing with another one of the pressure filled situations for my wife, a scripture seemed to scream at me out of the pages of Genesis.

“God created them male and female. And he said “it is good.”

Before the fall, Adam and Eve were perfect, all theologians agree. Did you catch that? God said woman was good. Years before any record of children.In God’s eyes, Eve was perfect, part of God’s unspoiled creation, before she even had kids!

According to the opening pages of the scriptures, upon which every believer says they base their lives, is the foundational understanding that a woman is created in the image of God. That image, though marred in both men and women, remains. The daughters of Eve are as much image bearers as the Sons of Adam and children have nothing to do with that.

So if you are struggling with infertility, I’m sorry. I don’t wish that pain on anyone. My wife’s journey took her into the valley of despair and depression. Unconsciously, Christians allow our reading of the scriptures to add condemnation and guilt when it shouldn’t be.

You were created in the image of God. You were created with a purpose and a destiny. You have an identity offered to you through relationship with Christ. Regardless of your status in regards to motherhood 

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