“Shimei had sixteen sons and six daughters; but his brothers did not have many children, nor did all their clan multiply like the men of Judah.”  (ESV)

Children are a blessing from God.  This is something the secular culture that is growing more and more prominent in the West (but also in many places in Asia including China and Japan) does not understand.  A few decades ago an environmental activist named Paul Ehrlich wrote a book called The Population Bomb in which he argued that the world was on a path toward rampant overpopulation which would lead to mass starvation as the environment could not produce enough food to feed everyone.  The only solution was for world leaders to take drastic steps to decrease the world’s population and prevent its rapid growth in the future. 

Today, the book is widely panned because it was pretty much wrong in everything it said.  But, it’s impact has been enormous.  Many world leaders then took its advice and began constructing policies aimed at restricting or more broadly discouraging family growth.  China’s infamous one-child policy is the most notorious of these.

As it has turned out, however, technological advances in agricultural science have made it such that the world produces more than enough food to feed every single person in it.  Where there is starvation in the world today it is consistently because of political instability and poor leadership, not a lack of food.

And yet, in part because of their embrace of policies pursued because of Ehrlich’s false predictions (policies whose embrace has been hastened by the advance of a secular worldview that sees children as a burden preventing self-fulfillment), many nations in the world have populations that are growing below replacement levels, that is, they are shrinking.  In other words, if things remain as they are, absent immigration, these nations will gradually disappear.  The problem has been recognized by some leaders and steps are being taken to try to encourage things in the other direction such as a recent public service ad campaign in Denmark encouraging citizens to “Do it for Denmark.”

For Christians, though, we know that children are a blessing and a gift.  While some couples cannot have children themselves for one reason or another (and these couples should be the object of our compassion and care), we should be eager to expand our families even if that expansion happens by adoption (which is a great and noble ministry).  In fact, one of the best answers to the growing secularization of our culture is for Christians to have as many children as they can handle and then raise those children very intentionally in the faith.  Then, in a few years, there will be more Christians than secular people because we’ve been having kids and they haven’t.

That’s what happened here with the tribe of Simeon.  While Shimei had lots of kids, the rest of his family didn’t.  The result was that their tribe was smaller and less powerful than the tribe of Judah.  Accordingly, Simeon did not play nearly the role in the history of Israel as Judah did.  Let us honor God’s command to be fruitful and multiply and enjoy the blessings that come with it.