Are children born morally good or bad?
Informal thoughts from Leviticus 12
Leviticus 12 is all about what a brand new mother had to do to complete the purification process after delivering a baby boy or a baby girl. 2 If a woman conceives and bears a male child, then she shall be unclean for seven days. This meant being quarantined at home, and unable to go to the sanctuary for worship services, and unable to chat with her friends or do any socializing.
Circumcising a new baby boy was also on the docket. 3 And on the eighth day the flesh of his foreskin shall be circumcised. Because Joseph and Mary were righteous and devout, we can be sure that Jesus was circumcised on the 8th day of his young life, which was the sign that he had been made a part of the Abrahamic covenant.
And there was more to come. 4 She shall not touch anything holy, nor come into the sanctuary, until the days of her purifying are completed. If she had given birth to a boy, then her purification required an additional 33 days. This meant being quarantined at home, unable to go to the sanctuary for worship services, unable to chat with her friends, and unable to do any socializing.
It also gave her plenty of time to recover from being pregnant and giving birth. And she needed time to recover. Bill Cosby said one time that his wife told him that if you want to know what childbirth is like, take your lower lip and pull it over your head. It takes time to get over something like that.
6 And when the days of her purifying are completed, whether for a son or for a daughter, she shall bring to the priest at the entrance of the tent of meeting a lamb a year old for a burnt offering, and a pigeon or a turtledove for a sin offering, 7 and he shall offer it before the Lord and make atonement for her. Then she shall be clean from the flow of her blood.
8 And if she cannot afford a lamb, then she shall take two turtledoves or two pigeons, one for a burnt offering and the other for a sin offering. This is an indication that Joseph and Mary were a lower-income family – they could not afford the lamb for an offering. This means Christ was not born into wealth and privilege – his parents were parents of modest means. He was destined to be the king of the world, and yet God entrusted him to two working-class parents to raise.
So if you are parents in the low to middle-income bracket, don’t worry about it. There’s a whole bunch of things that are more important to raising a child to maturity than giving him a lot of stuff.
But here’s an important question. Why would a woman, a mother who had just given birth, have to be purified? Why did she need to offer a sin offering at all?
When we see a brand new mother, with her beautiful newborn son or daughter, that’s an image that’s about as pure and as pristine and beautiful as it gets – so why did she need to offer a sin offering? Had she done something terrible?
No, she hasn’t done anything bad at all. Rather, the requirement is an acknowledgment that a new mother imparts to her newborn child her own fallen nature. She has brought a child into the world who comes into the world as a sinner, as a fallen human being, as someone who is born with a moral defect, born with an inbuilt inclination to sin.
So mixed in with all the joy and celebration and happiness of bringing a baby into the world is the sobering reality that this child is being brought into the world as a sinner by nature, a sinner by birth, born with an Adamic nature she inherited from her mother and father.
Jesus was the only baby in history who escaped this legacy, protected from the fall by his divine nature. But Mary was still a sinner, and brought other sinful children into the world.
We all want to believe that children are innocent and pure. But we know they’re not. That’s what the “terrible twos” are all about. Here they are barely getting started in life and already they are demonstrating troublesome behavioral problems like rage and anger before they can even talk.
That tendency to be willful, stubborn, destructive, and mean – they get that by being born that way. They don’t have to learn that from somebody, it’s in their nature. It’s part of the standard operating equipment they bring with them into the world. They are born needing a Savior.
Parents can tell you all you need to know about the moral makeup of a child, and what his natural, inborn tendencies are. Ask a mom: do you have to teach your children to be bad? No, they figure that out all by themselves. An honest parent will tell you I have to teach my children to be good. Being good does not come naturally to children – they have to be trained and disciplined if they are going to grow up to be good.
So this purification process for the mother of a newborn is an acknowledgment of that reality. But the good news is that God has the power to clean all that up – that’s what the gospel is all about. And the priest shall make atonement for her, and she shall be clean.