An Open Letter to My Unborn Child

Written on or around April 21st, 2023

You’re only six weeks old, and your father is already about to lecture you. I hope you are ready to have artists for parents, and a dad that will wax lyrically about everything from nuclear history to science fiction to theology. You’ve got a pretty different pair of people raising you, but I’ll tell you more about them in another letter. I hope your eyes and ears are developing well in there. You’re going to arrive in the arms of a mother that’s been waiting for you for a long time, and a dad that’s nervous, excited, and terrified for the life you’re going to live. I suppose every parent feels this way to some degree, and maybe I’m being overly sentimental and even a little melancholy, but as a first time parent I think I’m entitled to a little theater. So here it goes.

I’ll dispense with the cliches right away. I hope you’ll be happy and healthy, and I know you’ll be loved and taken care of in every conceivable way, because you already are. Knowing there is a totally helpless being that relies completely on me is not as daunting as I expected it to be. I am resolved to do absolutely anything to provide for you, and even though your mother and I are not rich, we are hard workers that will not allow you to suffer for lack of necessities. No, what is really horrifying for me is knowing the world you will be born into; a world of horrible relativity in which truth is taboo; a culture that is at once devoid of morality and yet puritanical in its censure of non-conformists. A society that is blanketed in a miasma of opaque, disgustingly gray unsurety in which one cannot even see the earth to find their footing. My worry for you, is that, despite my desperate attempts to show you the truth of a life lived for God, family, and community, the world will whisk you away into the utter hell of a life lived only for yourself.

A cheery thought for a new father, eh?

At six weeks, I only know that your little heart is developing in a body the size of a blueberry. You’re so very small and yet your mother and I already love you more than you’ll ever imagine, until you have your own children, I suppose. How hard it is to know that, in this world, you are only considered an “embryo”, not even human, and not worthy of protection against the evil wiles of selfishness. You live in Texas, praise God, and just recently, your state declared the primacy of your life against the abysmal holocaust that is abortion. But, as I write this, I am considering the glut of “friends” I have that will shudder at my words, and spout ready-made lies about the right that mothers have to kill their “embryos”. You are not just an embryo, and to your mother and I, you are everything, and yet I must release you into a world that, even as I pour out my heart over you, wishes to devalue and end you before you can even see the man that writes this letter.

You’re still developing in there, and the biggest question on mine and your mother’s minds is “will you be named David or will you be named Mazy?” I am terrified that you could be a girl. Not because I’d be disappointed, not even slightly, but only because I feel so ill equipped to help you! Your father is the youngest of four boys and an Eagle Scout. My entire upbringing seems to have positioned me to guide young men, but rest assured, if your name is Mazy, I will love and protect you with every fiber of my being, with a healthy portion of help and guidance from your mother. But you will be delivered into a world that would scorn your parents for anticipating your sex, demanding that we respect your right to choose your “gender expression”. Who can tell if this hellish idiocy will persist until you’re able to read this? But for the moment, children are beset by sycophantic, demoniac predators that desire to drown you in doubt and selfish automutilation. Perhaps this sounds fantastical to you; I certainly hope that, if it does, it is because we have left this lunacy in the past. Again, I am haunted in my thoughts by the visage of so-called friends that would gasp in horror at these words, hurling insults about my privilege and “hate”. Rest assured, you are either a boy or a girl, and you will be celebrated and reassured by your parents in either case. There is truth in God’s creation, in biology, and it is not dependent on selfish wiles and the satanic machinations of the predators that lurk for you. I will guard you against them with my life.

I know your mom hopes your name is Mazy, and if it isn’t, don’t hold it against her. What would I tell you about womanhood if you are Mazy? I could tell you about your mother, and how diligent, talented, and loving she is. A strong lady with convictions and principle enough to deny the modernity of polluted feminism while maintaining the actuality of a woman as God created. You would do well to follow her teaching and model her character. I would also tell you of your strong grandmothers, great grandmothers, aunts, and cousins. You have a large family with wise, strong women that exemplify what a woman can and should be. But, I would also tell you to beware the culture that would condemn you for your femininity; that would measure your worth by your ability to outdo men, and to make monetary gain in defiance of the matronly bent you will feel. This world will tell you that your feminine beauty is not important, and can and should be matched by mentally ill men that claim the womanhood you were blessed with. The devils will tell you that, even as this beauty is relative and unimportant, you should use it to swindle wealth from sick men, cutting up pieces of your body as a figurative sacrifice to your own selfishness and greed. You will step into a world that simultaneously hates your femininity, and seeks to exploit it for monetary gain. It will hurt you, it will try to drive you to hate the body God gave you, and the predators will seek to feast on your very flesh and render you into a butchered shell of the woman you could be. Against this too, I will protect you with my life, and I will raise you to womanhood and reassure you in the person you are in Christ.

If you are my son, I can tell you of the many strong and godly men that wait to guide you. I am blessed with a wise father that helped shape me into a man, providing a framework for what I will pass to you. You will have to bear a heritage of strong leadership, tempered by creative openness and an opining, philosophical tradition. I can hardly wait to introduce you to patio discussions with your grandfather and uncles. I hope to show you how strong you can be, how your virility, and even your aggression, are not flaws to be abolished, but rather tools to be tempered and valued. I hope to show you how to treat women through my love of your mother, and I know that she will not let you forget such lessons. You will live in a family that will encourage your leadership and celebrate your manhood, not suppress it. But the world you will enter wants to shame you for your very being. It wants to crush your vitality and hold you back for the sake of so-called equity, and most certainly, for vengeance. This culture despises men of principle, it seeks to use your hard-wired instincts to control you, and it will encourage you to give in to your desires for comfort and sexual fulfillment, even as it chastises you for having such desires. The simpering churls will scream at you to submit to the new status quo, forsaking your God given drive, for acquiescent silence. They will lob meaningless insults at you, assigning you the sins of evil men no matter what you do. If you are my son, I will remind you of your duty to God to be strong, patient, protective, and stalwart. I will show you that men need not fear the world that hates them.

You will, in all likelihood, be born in Texas, USA. Your national heritage is individualistic, self-reliant, and fiercely patriotic, sometimes to a fault, in all three cases. Your parents, despite some waning love lately, are proud Americans that believe in the general ideals of the Constitution, and I’m sure you’ll know all about that by the time you read this. Beyond your national heritage, I will also tell you of your ethnic and cultural heritage, that being Anglo-Germanic with a hint of Native American. Not to beat around the bush, my child, you will be white. A white American is no enviable title these days, and the world in which you live will delight in reminding you of your “race” even as it condemns recognition of your heritage. Your ancestors have been warriors, farmers, and immigrants; God-fearing people that you would not be wrong in admiring, any more or less than we are meant to admire fallen men. Yet, you will be told that you are less valuable due to your very skin color. For reasons you have no control over, you will be told to be quiet, you may be told to submit, and you might even be persecuted. These lies are spewed from the fetid mouths of vengeful weaklings that desire for nothing but spiteful revenge. I will teach you that no man is worth less for the sacrifice of Christ, and you will learn to judge your fellows by the content of their hearts, portrayed by their words and actions, rather than any temporal attributes outside of anyone’s control.

By the grace of God, you will be born and baptized into the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, a christian. All of these things I mentioned as of yet are nothing compared to the blessings you will receive on the day you are baptized. Your value as a man or woman will be a gift from God by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, and that is something nobody can take from you, no matter what. You will learn the joy of a life lived for God, in stark contrast to the hollow life lived for yourself. The challenges of right doctrine may even vex you in their mysteries and rigidity, but your mother and father will be there to guide you in whatever way you need. But you live in a world that increasingly despises the christian, seeking to either end your faith or twist it into a self-centered mockery of what Christ ordained it to be. You will be assaulted by insults from pathetic, atheistic, self-obsessed automatons that will attack your intelligence and claim self-righteous genius while denying the very existence of truth. You will be called hateful and evil for your love of God’s word and adherence to good doctrine, all by people that have as little mercy as they do good sense. You may even be physically attacked for your faith, and you will have to trust that the promises of God are worth more than earthly comfort, and even safety. I will do all I can to prepare you for that, and to protect you from such evil for as long as I am able.

At the end of this letter, I find myself feeling better about the mysterious adventure you promise. It is true that there is nothing new under the sun, and that every parent has likely felt the same way I did at the beginning of this. And now, I feel little else than great love for you, and eagerness to show you a world that is as exciting and fulfilling as it is abrasive and scary. No amount of fear can equal the gifts God has given me, and now, those gifts include you. For every challenge you might face, remember that, through the cross of Christ, we may even celebrate in our trials. You will grow up in a home that loves you, celebrates your success, and tempers and disciplines your flaws, and I hope that you will read this letter as a happy man or woman, sure of the love of your father, and sure of your worth as a Child of Christ. I love you.