In a recent interview with Fox News’ Bret Baier, Baier asked Musk what the biggest thing was that keeps him up at night. 

Musk paused for several seconds and then gave an answer that was short and to-the-point. 

“The birth rate is very low in almost every country,” and “unless that changes, civilization will disappear.”

America’s birth rate has reached historic lows. Each generation needs about 2.1 children per woman to maintain the population level in the next generation (the “replacement rate”). 

However, 2023 showed American women having an average of 1.6 children, down 2% from the previous year. Musk also identified the problem internationally; according to him, the Korean birth rate is 1/3rd of the replacement rate. His frank assessment: 

“Humanity is dying.”

From Musk’s evolutionary standpoint, the simple math is scary enough. If you don’t reproduce, your species will die. Yet Bible-believing Christians know that this runs deeper than a bare need to keep the DNA in motion. 

A falling birth rate disobeys God’s “Original Great Commission” to humanity: 

“Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it” (Genesis 1:28, NIV). 

Even before sin, the law, Christ’s redeeming work, and many more critical aspects of the biblical story, man was given an original job to do: Have lots of kids and rule over the earth.

Unfortunately, humanity is shockingly skilled at coming up with new ways to not have kids. We indulge in pornographic entertainment that will give us pleasure without reproduction. 

Further, we invent complex chemical processes to keep sex from being fruitful. Even then, we invent complex medical procedures to kill children after they are conceived. 

An alien civilization watching us would think that children must be some infectious contamination that we simply can’t risk bringing into the world.

When nations aren’t fruitful and increasing in number, economies shrink, communities go extinct, the younger generations are not able to support the old, etc. So nations like China (which used to compel couples to have fewer kids) or the United States (which doesn’t seem to need compulsion at all) can only expect harmful consequences for not following God’s command.

Yet there is a caveat to all this—merely having kids isn’t the full solution. In the very next chapter of Genesis, God explains how this is to be done: 

“A man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife” (Genesis 2:24). 

God expects children to not just be brought into the world, but to be brought into a family. Sadly, Elon doesn’t get this part: he reportedly has fathered at least 14 children by four different women, some through IVF or surrogacy. 

“Doing my best to help the underpopulation crisis,” he tweeted in 2022.

God’s design is for one man and one woman to remain committed to each other for life and only become parents through each other. The family structure means that kids are not merely brought into the world, but that they can be raised in a God-honoring way. 

When children are raised in a family as God designed, they have a father that protects, a mother that nurtures, and the constant witness of their two parents committed to each other in a permanent loving relationship. 

Children aren’t digits we input into our population spreadsheets; they aren’t pawns we use to make sure our civilization stays alive. They are real, vulnerable, innocent people who deserve to be raised the way God intended. We are not supposed to solve the population problem by merely ratcheting up the numbers.

Of course, all this requires a proper understanding of a strong marriage, modeled after Christ’s sacrificial work on the cross, ultimately based in the gospel. So to have a strong population, you need a proper structure in which to raise kids, and to have that proper structure, you need the redemptive work of Christ. 

It’s no wonder that when we slash the root of it all, everything above starts to wither.

Ultimately, we cannot simply advocate for a piece of God’s world. Elon and those like him may have clued into the fact that we need to be fruitful and multiply, but they don’t value the committed, exclusive marriage covenant that God has ordained to fulfill this goal. 

They are picking and choosing which aspects of God’s reality they’d like to promote. But because God is Lord of all, you can’t slice up His created order as you like it.

I’m thankful that we’re living in an age where people are beginning to notice the harmful effects of not following God’s design. But in our sorry sinful state, we tend to invent our own alternative solutions which then cause further problems. 

The solution is to actually follow God’s design, and all of it.