Hey everyone, God bless you, and thanks a lot for tuning in. My reflection today I've entitled Dinks. This acronym comes from a movement, a very popular movement today, of couples who refuse to have children. We're dinks. We can go to bed at 9:00 p.m. and still complain about being tired. We're dinks. We have a pet that we treat like our child. We're dinks. We get to be the fun aunt and uncle. We're dinks. We buy plane tickets instead of presents. We're dinks. We spend money on things that we want, like boats. Dual income, no kids, D.I.N.K. Dual income, no kids. Yesterday, there was a fascinating article on this phenomenon in the Wall Street Journal, and I read it, and I thought to myself, I have read so much in the last few years about dinks that I should say something to encourage the dinks who are watching or are tempted to be dinks, some of our followers who are tempted to be dinks.

let me say if I can a few words if you'll open your minds and your hearts to me uh for a moment. 44% according to a 2021 Pew research survey 44% of people between the ages of 18 and 49 report that they fully expect to have zero children zero children. There are many reasons uh that children are being rejected today I want to address some of those in a second but this Vision this vision of uh couples being together but refusing children this is a really really awful of course at its heart is a wrong valuation about the preciousness of a child and the preciousness of parenting. The idea that couples can be happy and perhaps even happier as long as they refuse the responsibility of conceiving and raising children this is this is what lies at the base of this movement. It's uh an expression of outrageous selfishness that even if couples of in this or that culture had these ideas in the past they certainly wouldn't be championing them and defending them in the Public Square.

because uh even pagans, not just Christians, not just religious people, uh, but even even even pagans know that without children, there is no future, and that families are for children, husbands and wives are for children. In fact, in the wedding service of the church, we read two magnificent Psalms, Psalm 126 and 127, about the glory of children being a reward, the fruit of the womb being a great gift, uh, from God to the couple, something that will inspire their day and their night. They'll look around their table, and there they'll see their children like uh multiplying olive shoots, just producing beauty and love and joy. This is what uh family life is about. This is the fruit of marriage. St. Paul would be mesmerized by the concept that couples should not have children so that they can save their energy and save their money. This is the boast of many of these dinks, is that they have two incomes and no kids, meaning that they can save their incomes. Oh yeah, they bought a condo. Oh, instead

of rented renting an apartment. Oh yeah, they have a 401k. We just might ask them for what. For what. St. Paul says it's the responsibility not of children to store up for their parents, but of parents for their children. He says in 2 Corinthians, this is just basic. This is basic. We work in order to provide for our children, and that is a great happiness. It's not just a moral commitment, it's a moral commitment that expresses love and helps bring our children into adulthood. Because we labor for the glory of God and for the upbuilding of our neighbor, not so that we can have a house ourselves with no one in it except ourselves. In the article and in videos referenced there, dinks celebrate their lifestyle, their anti-children lifestyle, through several avenues. I'll mention four of them. One is they celebrate their dogs as though somehow a dog can be a replacement for children. I think these dinks, we should answer them with another acronym, daff. Dogs are fake.

children DFC dogs are wonderful. They're wonderful to put into the family mix. I've always had a dog or dogs growing up and very much enjoy dogs, but they are not children, not even close, not in any world can a dog substitute for a child. The dinks also fear the caregiving that is demanded of people in parenting. At least they're showing that they recognize that parenting is a great challenge, but to put off that challenge out of fear is a terrible mistake and a terrible loss. If we don't do great things that are before us because we're afraid of the sacrifice that it will take from us, then we won't actually have the happiness, the satisfaction of accomplishing anything of significance. Everything of significance is greatly challenging and takes great investment, and one of the greatest investments that any couple can make is the investment in conceiving and bearing and raising children to the glory of God. In this article, what the couple said that they would have to work less and take care of their children, they were

worried they're not. They're going to have to work less in order to raise their children. What a strange concept of work. This, of course, has flowed out of the feminist movement from the '60s, where work came to mean work outside the home, as though domestic work, the management of a home or your estate, is all not work. We would argue just the opposite. The most important work is what goes on in the church, the work of worship, the work of service and ministry. The second most important work is the domestic sphere, where the image of God is born and raised, and families are cultivated for the glory of God. The exterior work, the work in the world, the work for the public, is very important, but it supports the work of the church and the work of the domestics in the domestic sphere, not vice versa. The glory is not the state; the glory is the church and the family, and the state is designed to shelter, nourish, and protect the church and the family. The work of the

church is supreme. The work of worship of the true God, the work of the family, is of eternal value, cultivating love and virtues in the home. So, dinks should abandon this concept, I think, of defining work, the only significant work, as the work that is done in their flower shop or at Starbucks or in the office on the computer, as that significant because it gets a paycheck. If that's the case, then, of course, our Lord Jesus Christ and his most pure mother, for that matter, have no significance, which is, of course, obviously ridiculous. Our Lord is the most significant person in the world, and the mother of God is the greatest woman who has ever lived. The mother of God never had a job outside the home, or did she not work? Number three, the dinks think that the state of the world is too crazy to bring children into it. I would say, well, they're right about how crazy the state of the world is, but one of the great contributing factors to the insanity of the world are the dinks and their predecessors, as people have abandoned

the their Fidelity to marriage the Bedrock of society as they have embraced the godlessness of the sexual Revolution and have torn their marriages apart with divorce and abandoned children such that today the average American family and Western person only has like 1.5 children on average if we factor in all these all the Western countries we are completely and have been abandoning that which makes Society strong and reasonable and the idea that if we speed up that process by having no children whatsoever that's going to help that's insane that's insane the greatest contribution that a couple can make to the sanity of the world is to have children care for them love them raise them to love God and to serve others make a beautiful Home full of love and light and you will the darkness of this world and fourth they celebrate the easy things like the fact that the house always remains clean why does someone have a house and empty rooms what's the purpose of that if you have no children and you have no

family, a man and a woman without a family. They don't need much, they don't need much, small apartment. What's the rest for? For show, as an investment, but an investment for what? What are you going to do, even the money? What are you going to do with all money? Just constantly slake your lusts and pleasures until you can't anymore, and then die in misery? No, this reminds me of when I was a young man, and I was working at a bank. I was a teller at a bank. I learned so much from that period, and there was an elderly woman, a very wealthy elderly woman, who would come in the bank several times a week. We, and she would come to my teller window because she wanted me to look up her account, her checking account, and to tell her the balance. The balance was always around $2.5 to $3 million, but she had to hear it. She had to know that that money was there. It was somehow key to her ability to be at peace. She did nothing with it. It just

sat there. I remember thinking at the time, poor woman. She lives by herself. Her security is knowing that the money is in the bank, and she has to come see it all the time. What is the money for? She just lived and then died, and the money was taken by her estate and sent who knows where. It's the same with an empty house. What's the purpose of that? What's the purpose of that? Congratulations if you get a house, but the purpose of the house is to fill it, fill the house with the voices of children, fill the houses with the voices of learning and of love and of discovery. And then when you don't need it anymore, pass it on, sell it, scale down. Real estate is justified by its usage. Otherwise, it's just a big noose around the neck. The dinks, they claim that life is fantastic, life is fantastic without children. Sure, it is until it isn't. I wrote down sometimes when it's not very fantastic without children, when your spouse feels overwhelmed because all of your needs

are focused on that one person, and you have no children to serve, no children to admire. It's just the two of you every day, all day in your life. That's a recipe for divorce. That's a recipe for divorce. Life is fantastic without children until you're less woke. Married friends tell you about the incredible joy that they're having with their children, having children and raising children, and you don't have any. Life is fantastic without children until your spouse dies, and it's just you left, and you have no one to console you, no one to fill the gap. Life is fantastic without children unless you're sick, or God forbid your spouse is sick at the same time, and nobody can care for you. When your job becomes boring, and you wonder why you're doing it. When you're old, and you can't do the things that you used to be able to do, and no one's can help you. Where you're in the hospital, and no one comes to visit you. When it's your birthday or name day, or you're celebrating the

Nativity or PCA, and you have no family to celebrate with. Life is fantastic without children until you die alone in a nursing home with no children holding your hands, no one praying for you, no one by your bedside. Life is fantastic without children when your name disappears forever and you have zero legacy. And I'd say mostly the lie that life is fantastic without children is especially acute, especially obvious when we don't become who God asks us to become, because all of the process of self-denial and of escaping self-love, the great passion by learning to serve your children, to take care of your children, to love your children, all that the Lord teaches us because he knows that the cauldron of parenthood is the pressure cooker needed to make us beautiful, to make our hearts soft, that he can with his own hands mold that heart into something magnificent. Children and the raising of children is how we learn as we seek to teach our children. It's how we become more loving, to love others instead of ourselves, is how we learn to overlook

offenses and to forgive wrongs and to seek forgiveness. It's how we learn to pray through difficulties. It's how we learn to obtain humility and become people of faith. As God takes us through all the challenges of parenting, he prepares us for inheriting the kingdom of God. This is the great challenge that's missed. This is the great glory that is missed when you have no children intentionally and you seek that. You know, I think DINK's dual income no kids, she really should be reinterpreted delighting in new kids. This is a better DINK. Delight in new kids. Go, go be with you. Patristic Nectar Publications is pleased to announce a new conference entitled The Sacred Arts, Preaching the Gospel Without Words, with lectures given by Father Maximos Conas and Jonathan Pou. From Friday, March 29th to Sunday, March 31st, conference topics will include the origin of sacred art, how iconography preaches the gospel, how to read an icon, how architecture preaches the gospel, how music preaches the gospel.

and a sermon by Father Maximos. We hope you will join us for opportunities to pray, meet our speakers, attend a young adult social hour, and network with like-minded individuals. A $60 registration fee includes an in-person seat, access to a live stream which can be viewed from anywhere, and the conference recordings. To register and find more information, please visit conference.patristicnectar.org.

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