Behold the Lamb of God!

In the world of the internet, like-minded people can find each other. An odd quirk of the internet is that anyone can poke his head into a group of people posting on a publicly accessible webpage. Freak worlds can be infiltrated by the ordinary, average person of above-average curiosity.

One genre of the internet that is sociologically fascinating is the one occupied by Christian homeschooling mothers of many children. Fiercely independent, to varying degrees counter-cultural mothers display their home educating and homemaking skills for consumption. Praise God, the drab and unbecoming shapeless denim skirt is no longer de rigueur among this set as it was in the ‘90s. Still, T-shirts two sizes too large and boxy skirts often predominate. With family sizes on the larger end, housing spaces are unconventional, outdated, and anything but posh. In other words, these are not spaces on the internet one goes for aesthetic appeal.

This is also not a space for cutesy. Unlike the infamous mommy-blogger who exploits her offspring for clicks, the homeschooling set are often much more private. Their children’s lives seem to occur off the screen, rarely is a sweet young face seen, and the children are never the center of attention for the content. There is an aura of professionalism. Many of these mothers are not appearing on blogs and YouTube videos to document the minutia of their days as a family but as a means of generating an income to facilitate their chosen lifestyle.

For this reason, the mothers seem to be most interested in their craft. The purpose of sharing is to communicate skills. It’s not as though one wakes up one day knowing how to prepare 48 freezer meals for a family of nine with an average cost of less than seven dollars per meal. That type of exercise is possible after years of grocery shopping, deal hunting, prepping, chopping, cooking, freezing, cleaning, managing, and mothering. Other women who are on their way to a brood of such size would understandably find the hints and tricks of the undertaking worthwhile.

With such specificity and technicality at the heart of such media, one would think the content would have very narrow appeal. But here is the astonishing fact: many childless, single, unencumbered people enjoy watching these videos. The comments on many blogs and channels of the Christian homeschooling mothers of the world include countless positive assessments from people who share little with the creators. People who have no children or only a few who are grown seem fascinated by the production of having so many children and choosing to spend such a great deal of time with them.

Perhaps some overlap can be seen with the prevailing popularity of shows like the ever-evolving reality television saga of the Duggar family. The Arkansas-based, Evangelical Christian clan with 19 children is viewed with skepticism and ridicule for their backward, faith-filled, homeschooling ways. And yet, people can’t look away.

A similar phenomenon occurs in the online world. It could be, as Ross Douthat wondered, “a weird voyeurism about something that should come naturally.” So repressed are the ordinary impulses to procreate and spend our days with our children that many people yearn for “a simpler time” as depicted in large families living in rural places eating bland food produced in large quantities.

There’s also, one could argue, something overtly attractive about these mothers-of-many. As already established, it is not their dress or their homes, modest and unexciting as they are. The visible indications of carrying half-a-dozen children or more are hard to miss and far from conventionally attractive. No, in these women there is a sacrificial love on display.

In a culture that makes every excuse for avoiding children and relegating large broods of them to the pre-contraceptive dark ages, there remains something arresting about them. Something in us still yearns for a dramatic, noble vision of our lives in which we lay down our lives in an act of great love. For most of us, living in drab surroundings preparing uninteresting food to feed many would not be what we envision, but watching it happen stirs something in us. The longing for self-giving is hard to fully suppress.

Like the artistic tradition of the Agnus Dei, the dead lamb, bound and prepared for the sacrifice, is not appealing, but our eyes are drawn in. After two millennia, our culture still cannot rid itself of the image of the crucifixion. Ridiculed and reviled, it is still calls to us. If our lives are nothing but getting and doing for ourselves, we know we will miss out. What we are missing out on, perhaps we can’t say, but being in the presence of a mother gives us a sense of what love is.

George Frideric Handel’s “Behold the Lamb of God”: