The Value of a Son

One year ago I taught the book of Ruth on my trip to China and learned about one of the great tragedies of eastern culture; the inability of not being able to produce a son. In our study we found Naomi at the top of the world by being married and having two sons. She was honored as a successful woman because her sons insured the continuation of the family name and heirs to the family estate. Along the path way of life her husband dies, her sons marry and soon die leaving her with two daughters in law in place of a husband and two sons. In a few short years Naomi finds herself falling from the top of the world to its bottom where she was considered a failure in life; a social reject.

As I taught Ruth from an eastern cultural view, I gained the attention of the women in my classes, but I didn’t fully understand why until just recently. I was introduced to a book, by my younger sister, titled “Good Women of China” by Xue Xinran, a British-Chinese journalist who currently resides in England, and was shocked by her report. In China, especially in rural areas, having a son was as important as it was in Naomi’s day. With no limit on the number of children you could give birth to, you kept trying until you got a son if there was enough food to eat. This was fine until the one child policy was made law, but when that happened woman found themselves in a very serious situation. They were expected to produce a son on the first birth or there would be serious consequences. She could end up being rejected from the family with her daughter or the daughter would be killed in ways you don’t want to think about and she would try again. In some cases the daughter would be taken someplace and left to die or be found by someone else. If the little girl was lucky she would be taken to an orphanage when found and possibly be adopted by a foreign family. In the cities where there was more wealth and access to ultrasound was available, little girls were aborted.

Before you point a finger to China or India or some other eastern country, think about the west. Here we use abortion as a means of birth control. In both cases the child is being killed for different reasons and at different ages. In either case murder has been committed and the consequences will be experienced in this life in emotional stress, usually of the mother, and/or in the next life as the result of sin that has not been forgiven. Consider what it would be like to be a woman who just gave birth to a beautiful little girl and see it killed without you ever holding it, or possibly you killing it yourself. The wages of sin in death (Romans 6:23) and for some, death comes at a very early age.