“Or do you think that the Scripture says in vain, ‘The Spirit who dwells in us yearns
jealously’?” — James 4:5, NKJV
The world that God created is one where life begets life. From the very beginning, Adam and Eve were commanded not simply to survive, but to be fruitful and multiply (Genesis 1:28). Children were never an afterthought in God’s design. They were always central—an inheritance, a blessing, a living sign of hope (Psalm 127:3–5).
God’s Word reveals a normative design for human life. That design includes the call to raise children and pass on covenantal faith through generations. The desire to be a parent, to nurture and protect the weak, is not merely biological. It’s moral. It’s spiritual.
Modern culture has largely rejected this. Parenthood is delayed, avoided, and increasingly framed as optional or even irresponsible. Economic pressures, ideological narratives, and digital convenience all reinforce the same message: children complicate the life you want.
The result? A world filled with people who still carry the imprint of that desire but are told to suppress or ignore it. However, when you suppress a God-given longing, it does not disappear. It festers.
The Ache Beneath the Surface
There’s a reason digital spaces are saturated with images of youth, with anime girls, cute avatars, artificial sweetness, and nostalgia for innocence. There’s a reason some of the most addictive online content simulates affection, playfulness, and dependency.
We are hungry. And not just for entertainment. We are hungry for the presence of children.
And that hunger, denied its true fulfillment, often reemerges in twisted forms.
We see this in the grotesque rise of online subcultures built around childlike characters, in the parasocial dynamics between creators and fans, and in the dark corners of the web where longing becomes lust. We are not just seeing sin. We are seeing disordered desire—rooted in something good, but redirected toward consumption and control.
VTubers, Loli Fantasies, and the Idolatry of Innocence
A particularly striking example of this distortion can be found in the cultural phenomena of VTubers and loli hentai. These media forms do not merely reflect modern entertainment trends. They exploit the human longing for innocence, family, and affection by perverting those longings into sexualized consumption.
At a glance VTubers (animated streamers who often appear as bubbly, childlike characters) seem innocent enough. But some of the most popular VTubers blend their adolescent features and personalities with flirtation, submissiveness, or fetish aesthetics. They present a simulation of daughterhood that is specifically designed to maximize your attention and establish a parasocial intimacy. Viewers are not called to nurture or protect; instead, they are invited to indulge.
What drives this? An inversion of the parental instinct. Despite all appearances, VTubers are almost exclusively designed to appeal to adults. The Vtuber experience is supposed to mimic a form of parental care while severing that relationship from any moral context. It packages the image of innocence and sells it as entertainment, sometimes playfully but other times as something darker. And, of course, none of it is real. This is all a fantasy.
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Even more disturbing is the genre of loli hentai, pornographic media that sexualizes childlike characters. It is, without exaggeration, a spiritual abomination. What God meant to represent trust, dependency, and blessing is transformed into an object of violation. This genre doesn’t just exploit. It desecrates.
Both of these trends exploit the same thing: the ache for children. What God designed as a calling becomes a commodity. What was meant to sanctify becomes something we consume. The desire to raise children becomes the desire to possess a caricature of them.
These digital counterfeits do not offer legacy. They offer control. Control over you, specifically. They promise intimacy without sacrifice, affection without authority, love without covenant. And they leave the soul emptier than before.
Why These Distortions Work
These trends do not exist in a vacuum. They work because the real thing (family, lineage, covenant) is increasingly absent.
Our society delays marriage, discourages children, and structures life around the self. Parenthood is treated as either a vanity project or a burden. Economic systems, media narratives, and legal policies all tell the same story: don’t multiply. Just optimize.
So when the real is absent, we turn to the virtual. Simulated children take the place of real ones. But these substitutes do not challenge us or transform us. They reflect us and affirm our own beliefs to further exploit us. They do not sanctify us but, instead, only satisfy temporarily.
This is the tragedy. The world has rejected fruitfulness, but it cannot escape the hunger. And so it feeds that hunger with plastic, with pixels, with idols.
Fulfillment Is Found in Covenant
The answer is not merely condemnation. It is covenant.
Christ does not simply rebuke our idols. He replaces them with Himself—and with a calling. In Him we are adopted into God’s family (Ephesians 1:5). In Him we are called to make disciples, to raise spiritual children, and to recover the image of life that the world tries to erase (Matthew 28:19–20).
For those called to marriage and family, this means bearing and raising children in the fear of the Lord. For those called to celibacy or singleness, it means participating in spiritual legacy through discipleship, hospitality, and generational faithfulness. Either way, the longing is not denied. It is fulfilled.
Children are not optional to civilization. They are central to covenant. And their absence in our culture is not just a demographic concern, it is a theological one.
Until we recover the goodness of fruitfulness, in body and in spirit, we will remain a people addicted to simulations, haunted by an ache we cannot name, and increasingly unable to love what we were created to protect.
Don't be discouraged when a handful of people will attack you for this article. A lot more are reading, listening, and maybe learning.
Thank you for writing this this. It puts the finger on the wrongness sensed.