Be fruitful and multiply – not a commandment

Like you, I read it more as a blessing than a commandment. It makes more sense, and it’s more comforting to read.

Do other churches interpret it this way or is it just a Mormon/LDS thing?

I know JW’s teach that it was a commandment. I can’t speak for any others though.

– A lot of large groups relied on “having children as a commandment” to produce “more children like us” to make it easier to administer to that population and rely less on immigrants (though that happened too – ones that moved voluntarily and ones that were moved involuntarily).

There’s probably some truth to this. About 15 years ago, a Seventy (I don’t remember which one) said in a talk to my stake that the majority of the growth in the church comes from making more of ourselves (my wording, not his). Converts made up a very small percentage of our growth. But, that was over a decade ago. I have no clue what the statistics would look like now. Though, I’d imagine it wouldn’t look too different.

In reading LDS discussions on this idea from other sources, one of the defenses that is put forward for this being a commandment that is still in force today is that God’s Plan of Happiness is to have as many of his children as possible be born into LDS homes where they will have a better chance of learning and living the “gospel” and going on to be exalted.

There also is the uniquely LDS concept associated with polygamy that the degree of your exaltation is directly tied to the righteous posterity that you have linked to you and that these individuals will in some way be part of your “kingdom.” The concept of “adopting” full grown men as sons that happened in the early days of the church is also tied to this concept. This also helps to explain why BY taught that 3 wives was a minimum requirement to get into the CK. This concept is no longer taught (yet also never disavowed to my knowledge) but I do wonder if some of the ghosts and ripples of it remain in our culture.

I’m not sure it’s a commandment either, even though it was reiterated in the most recent GC.

What I have always found interesting is how we seem to pick and choose OT commandments to follow or not follow. Multiply and replenish the earth? That’s a yes. Don’t eat pork or shellfish? Nah. Apologetically it could be said that we don’t do some of it because of the Law of Moses being fulfilled by Jesus, but that doesn’t really explain all of it (multiply and replenish being an example).

I’m very much like Amy! I could really relate to that post.

I from a convert family, 9 children born in the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s.

I think my mom just loved having kids. It was preached and encouraged from Gen. Authorities of the time, but I don’t think they took it as a commandment. We were and active church family.

Of the 9, 4 are still active members. But I know all of us still have a testimony of God and Christ.

Of those that aren’t attending the LDS church, they aren’t going to another church. Which is also interesting.

I have 2 teenage kids, I never felt pressure or was told to have more and if I was I would’ve ignored it. My wife and I both felt when we were ready, God would tell us or make it happen, but we were on birth control for 6 years before we felt it was right. After our 2nd we knew we were done.

My parents now have 30 grandchildren, and 5 great grandchildren.

My grandfather once talked to my dad after I was born (I’m 5th born in ‘79) that there was a concern of overpopulation and he didn’t have the finances to support a large family.

I think genuine concerns for his son.

My Dad responded, if I raise them to be valuable and productive citizens… should we have less good people in the world?

My grandpa didn’t have a rebutle to that.

I was raised in the church with values and standards that blessed my life. My father taught us to be good citizens.

Our children are being taught the same.

I don’t see the problem with it.

I think that many families provide different reflections of church culture within their homes.

In my own family, we would never dream to push anyone to have kids or not.

I am very happy that the modern church of today does not push having large families or stay at home moms quite as forcefully as they have in the past.

I completely agree, 100%

Stuff like this isn’t in scripture. A GA, or relatively modern prophet might give direction, but like the Proclamation to the family clearly states, it depends on your families needs.

That’s when we rely on the spirit to guide us personally. Especially when there are medical reasons involved. Leaders of the church have to teach and direct guidance to the vast majority. When your life situation is an exception, that’s fine. That just means the generalized statement wasn’t meant for you.

Unfortunately there are many who still adhere to policy, guidance and conference talks directed at members 40 years ago and feel it should apply today. But our current GA’s aren’t saying that anymore.

I could never imagine telling or suggesting to someone else how many kids they should have or when to start. 💁😅

Nibbler- I’m glad you caught that and brought it up.

I was actually thinking that as I posted it, but didn’t take time to clarify since it was in 2 different posts.

In my opinion, if what a current GA is teaching or speaking about directly changes policy or the church’s direction on the matter…

Then we’d be accountable to the present information as revelation for our current day, our lives, society and culture.

However, for example, If they just stop talking about 1 year food storage so much, that doesn’t mean the principle is gone or should be ignored.

If a current GA said 6 months food storage is recommended, then that would invalidate previous direction regarding it. That would be instruction for for members during that time up until the policy change.

Then we have a new precedent going forward.

So How can we know if something has changed vs just not being an emphasis anymore?

Luckily we have a “living” handbook and guidelines for church policy. Each month as Bishop I get an email of what changes have been implemented.

The handbook is accessible to everyone.

And as members it’s our right and responsibilty to be aware of what our leaders are teaching and sustain them. Listening to conference 2x a year and re-reading or listening to talks is just as vital as scripture study.

We have current/modern prophets for a reason. Times change, people change, culture changes.

I feel what Heavenly father needs a past generation to have learned was taught appropriately. When the next generation comes, there is a different way to present it to best learn from.

In reading your posts, most of them appear to boil down to educating people on what the official policies of the church are and doing whatever the current leadership says.

It might help to read a few posts on this site to get the lay of the land. Many people land here looking for support because they’ve lost trust in leadership. Quoting the most orthodox take on current policy and saying how important it is to follow the brethren isn’t going to move the needle much for that group.

There’s lots of reasons people struggle to stay LDS. I already mentioned a loss of trust/faith in leadership. Disagreement with current policies is another common factor. It’s not a lack of knowledge of what the policies are, it’s a fundamental disagreement with policy.

I think that it actually goes “beyond policy” and into “values” and “culture”.

There has always been a disconnect between an individual’s value system and the church organization’s value system. The church organization is built on the “our value system is better then yours” as the default. And this may have worked before cars, before TV, before the internet, before social media, before SEC whistleblowers, before abuse scandals, and better for some individuals than others. For some people, it absolutely was the “gospel truth” and brought them out of rock bottom situations.

– Our church states that there is 1 “Covenant Path” with the unintended consequence of “United Culture”. The problem as I see it is that there is in the broadest sense, at least 2 “cultures” experienced differently from men and women. So whatever works for men culturally is assumed to work for women culturally too. The biggest disconnect I see about this is that a woman’s life is lived cyclically (month to month marked changes) for a good 30 years between puberty and menopause – and men culturally have no experimental or linguistic framework for that, nor is that cyclical experience a universal marker/”shared experience”. It is very jarring to focus on “the unchanging/eternal nature of God” and to have your “proof of divinity and child-rearing change every month or so”.

What of the members that already left the church over the issue? Will they come back? Some may, other won’t. Why won’t they? The policy has changed. Fair or unfair, wrong or right, it may be because they’ve lost trust that the leaders speak for god. They felt god’s love was encompassing enough to include full fellowship of black men [and/or other specific group] but their spiritual community and their spiritual leaders held them back and even fought against them, even if just for a season.

Sometimes some individuals may come back if their value system becomes more in alignment with the church organization’s value system. However, it is more likely that they will come back to the community if they feel that their personal value system is in alignment with those in the church community.

“Culture” may have been a distinct group of people of the nationality, same practices, etc. back in the day. Now, is fundamentally about how we live our lives as individuals and the themes in the environment we live, work, eat/drink, play, sleep, pay attention to, and set our values in from a mental/physical/emotional perspective. The church has a lot of ways to pick a side (any side) in the “culture wars” and echo chambers.

Trust in leadership and disagreeing with current policy are just a few of many reasons people struggle with church. There are many more reasons and they’re all unique to the individual. Ministering to people in those situations might require more than carefully delineating the rules for riding the train and reminding people that the train is more than happy to move on without them.

It is the leaders’ train and they can set the rules for riding but it’s a much more complicated and nuanced experience than any iteration of a handbook could ever define.

I would add that the church organization cannot have “the train is more than happy to move on without [insert group/label here]” AND market “[insert group/label here] are welcome here” as their tagline.

– I wrote in a different post here about how I moved on from gathering with the church community in part because I became much more agnostic about the nature of God (and a lot of other topics such as the Atonement, Joseph Smith, Polygamy, Word of Wisdom, “Purity Culture” etc. wound up having similar levels of neutral belief and not mattering for me personally). I moved on and the train apparently does just fine without me.

NOTE: I never had a lot of social currency at church (which is fine). I literally expected the church on a social and doctrinal level to do just fine (maybe be more comfortable for some) without me.

– What has happened time and time again is that community members (family included) alternate between “here is where it says there is space for you here” and “here is a story of someone like you who found space and community here – maybe it’s your turn” and that really hurts sometimes.

I want to belong to a community because creating community is hard work. I was lucky enough to drift into this community (among others) that has really helped me. We have a lot of honest voices here that helped untangle the non-verbal messages and themes.

I fully believed for a long time that with enough elbow grease and grace that “there was space for me” – until the amount of emotional work I was doing as a non-Christian, feminist, intellectual, mother/concerned parent/mother/mentor, neuro-diverse individual wasn’t meeting my needs or the needs of my children at church and my husband wasn’t getting his cultural/community emotional needs met at church (because he was relying on me to be his primary emotional connection in traditional LDS male fashion).