Are kids the center of life, the curse of life or something else?

I wonder what is your perspective on kids? 

As I was playing with my girls today I was thinking about how surprising it is to me that for the most part our culture seems to fall neatly into two pretty extreme camps when it comes to kids. 

1. Kids are the Center

This is the classic suburbanite perspective in which a family doesn't just love their kids but obsesses over them constantly. The kids set the priorities, run the schedules and determine the budget. These families can be blamed as the main reason Chuck E. Cheese is still able to keep their doors open despite selling cardboard that vaguely resembles something similar to a pizza. When kids are the center they transform life's ultimate purpose from glorifying God and enjoying him forever to raising honor students. Often the suburban church doesn't address this subtle idolatry for fear that families will pack up in leave for the church down the street but the truth remains the truth and "family-friendly" has often been an excuse for "family-idolatry." It should go without saying that I love my girls to the moon and back and would gladly take a bullet for them but they don't fulfill me nor do they give my life meaning. What's heart breaking to me is that those families that put the kids as the center of their lives usually end up crushing those kiddos with outrageous expectations and demands. Your kids cannot bear the weight of your worship.

2. Kids Are A Curse  

In this view, which seems to be growing in popularity especially among the beard-growing, flannel-wearing millennials of our day, kids are astronomically expensive, overly time-consuming, and completely destroy one's individual freedoms. Stand-up comedian Aziz Ansari sums up this perspective well when he shares a conversation he had with a friend that just announced the birth of their new baby. Aziz: "I’m so sorry that happened to you. You're going to have to take care of that thing forever! I’ll talk to you later because I’m going to go do literally whatever I want because all MY options are still MY options." To summarize, kids just rob us of our personal freedom. This perspective seems to be gaining lots of credibility in the mainstream with TIME magazine featuring "The Child Free Life." The growing trend seem to be waiting until the late thirties and even into the forties to begin a family or forgoing the family altogether.  

Psalms 127:3 "Behold, children are a gift of the Lord" 

The strange thing about these extremes is that they're both true in many ways but lack the balance of a biblical, god-centered perspective. Kids should never be the center of your life but when you have kids they do radically change your budget and your schedule. They're also incredibly time-consuming, difficult and require a great deal of selfless serving from willing parents. But the whole truth is that kids aren't meant to be the center nor are they a curse. Both extremes are reductionistic and overly simplistic. Kids are not God and they’re not gross. We should not make kids any more or any less than what they are. They’re a great gift from God to enjoy and manage well for a short season. They are not the end or the beginning of our lives but a season, an opportunity and a gift to manage well as we glorify God and enjoy him forever.          

Captain Ellie and calling out orders to her first lieutenant Izzy in the Pink Army