The cost of freedom and why we have ceased to regard children as blessing from the Lord
Just a couple weeks before I was married, one of my older, married Christian sisters warned me about the contraceptive method that David and I had chosen. She jokingly added, "Do you know what they call those who use this method?... Parents." Granted, I believe she was speaking out of concern and love, but her words brought me a certain disquieting apprehension.
Ten months down the wonderful road called marriage, I am going to be a mother. The same friend who spoke with such forbidding air about children ten months ago, now celebrates with me about this new life coming into the world. And while I trust that her heart is genuine, I can't help but feel a bit ironic.
What was that bizarre fear--that many singles, engaged couples, and young marrieds share--I had about an "untimely born"? What feeds such fears? How are we, as a church, to prepare our engaged couples for sex and children in marriage? Why do many Christians today look upon children as some horrendous curse when born untimely, and yet smugly celebrate them when they come, timely or not?
These are the questions I think about, and wish I had thought about as an unmarried woman.
I recognize that we live in a culture that very much necessitates careful family planning. Wives today have full-time jobs, work on Ph.D.'s, and childrearing is expensive and time-consuming. As Christians, we want to be responsible about when to commit to raising children. But in other cases (such as my own), fear of the untimely born partly stems from a desire to enjoy our spouse, undisturbed, during the first years of marriage. Neither such desire nor contraception (a means to achieve such desire) is skewed in itself, but the cultural ideas that drive them are.
I suggest that ideas such as absolute personal freedom, absolute family planning, and confusion of love with sexual intercourse are behind contraception and 'prolonged honeymoon.' Even in Christian circles, these ideas have closed our minds to the birth of an untimely child and instill fear in those who are yet to be married or newly married. When we consider that the same ideas have contributed greatly to the deadly custom of killing unplanned babies in this country, however, it is high time that we examined our philosophy and practice of contraception with honesty and humility. It is frightening to think that we too are products of this culture as to be fearful of the untimely born, and consequently to deny love and acceptance to them, when our Lord Jesus taught to love all who enter our lives, whether we invited them or not.
If you are married, please do continue this conversation with your married and unmarried friends. If you are single, I encourage you to be honest with God about children, and come to a healthy acceptance and understanding of them before you are married. One might say that he or she lacks sufficient maturity for childrearing. Here's my unsolicited advice: perhaps you should wait to be married. When we became a Christian, we surrendered ourselves to Christ and gave up our rights. When we marry, we also surrender ourselves, mostly to our spouse, but some of ourselves are also surrendered in humble acceptance and stewardship of God's possible gift of children, asked for or not. We call family planning and contraception responsible, but wouldn't it be truly responsible of a Christian couple if they were to be ready for children as they commit to marriage? How will we distinguish ourselves from pagans if we do not accept that possibility as our responsibility?
God's Word is inerrant and true. When the psalmist wrote, "Behold, children are a heritage from the LORD, the fruit of the womb a reward" (Ps.127:3), he did not say, "Behold, children are a heritage from the LORD, the fruit of the womb a reward... when I want them." But unfortunately this has become the attitude for many Christians today (myself included). Instead of responsibility, we prefer convenience. Instead of humility, we desire control. If we continue on this path, we will begin to regard verses that remind us of how to be human, such as "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it" (Gen.1:28a) as anthropocentric and irrelevant. As Christ-followers, let us not give up the meaning of procreation. It is time that this world did not have the final word on how we think about it.
[EDIT] And forgive me if I have written too harshly. I do not seek to lay a guilt-trip on anyone, but I desire that the Lord help us all so that we will not be afraid to talk about this.
Thanks for sparking an extremely important conversation, one that will hopefully help the church see its unknowing cultural captivity in this arena.
ReplyDeleteSemper Reformanda...
As sisters in Christ, I assume we can agree on the fact that all children, planned or unplanned, are a gift from God. In this same light, contraception is also a gift from God, in the way that all medical advances of our time period have come from the great Physician. Now, that being said, I am quite aware that some medical advances have been twisted and used in ways that God would have never condoned and I am not saying that all methods of contraception are right and equal. Some are simply facades for abortion.
ReplyDeleteNow, if we are to agree that there is nothing morally or spiritually aberrant in using a contraceptive pill or patch, then we must move to your next point: that to use those methods in a marriage is simply wanting convenience and control over the timing of our children. I cannot disagree with those points as I believe there is some truth in them but I also recognize that God is sovereign over all- and if He deems that I will have a child, I will have one...whether I am on birth control or not. And I feel that is an important point that you are overlooking. The question of whether or not I have a child is not simply up to me, my husband and our birth control: it is ultimately up to God.
The use of contraception does not somehow mean that you have not completely given your life to God. As a medical professional, I must point out that having many children (more than 3-4) in a short time period (less than 1-2 years in between each) is actually unsafe and quite taxing on the female body. Obviously those are ranges and are not set in stone, but the point I am trying to make is that although pregnancy and birth are beautiful and gifts from God, pregnancy and birth are hard on the body. There is a reason why God gifted us with birth control so that we would not all have 20 children...and the reason was not simply for our 'convenience.'
Great thoughts Dream. I'm sure my reasoning for not having a child right away were along those lines, to enjoy newlymarried status with Kevin and to enjoy my freedom. But I also was only 20 years old and didn't feel prepared to be a parent at the time. I also wanted to have time to get used to the idea of being married first since that is a huge transition and can bring many changes. I don't think those things were selfish, but rather God gave me that time to grow up more in order to be a better parent with a stable marriage. I think he could have used raising a child to grow me up and help my marriage (as he has done in some of my friends quick pregnancies after marriage) and he has certainly used parenting to grow us as people and as a couple now.
ReplyDeleteI think a child is a gift no matter when it is conceived. After working at Women's Resource Center for years and counseling women in crisis pregnancies, it was difficult to understand why God would give such a gift to someone who didn't want it and would abort it, while there were many God fearing women who couldn't conceive.
With us, family planning was very roundabout. We used contraceptives our first few years of marriage then we stopped and waited for God to bless us with a child. And waited...and waited. For a year we waited and nothing happened. We had to figure out what we believed about how God worked. Were our actions part of his plan, should we look into infertility options? Would that be taking family planning into our own hands and out of God's hands? How did we KNOW that God wanted us to have a child? He hadn't already given us one. Long story short, I did take a fertility drug and one month later we were blessed with Amelia.
So I think it is responsible to consider family planning, to pray about what you think God wants you to do and to act accordingly. The only thing that really matters is that we are asking the Spirit to guide our choices and seeking to honor the Lord in them.
I think your call to consider our culturally conditioned theology is needed. Much of everything we do and believe in as americans is based on what is the easiest thing to do. We need to seek God and do what he wants us to even when it's not easy.
As a non-married(at the moment) person, I'll try to keep this brief, especially as I have no practical wisdom. While I don't think I can go so far as to say contraceptives are evil or a sin against God(and I don't want to hear any Gen. 38 references!), I heartily agree that our motives for contraception should be carefully examined. As in everything, our family life should be pointed towards the glory of the Lord and loving others and so I think we need to consider if the appeal of delaying birth is merely to put off the "hard work of childbearing/raising" and to prolong the "easy" life as a couple without children. Note: easy in quotes.
ReplyDeleteI think that delaying conception for the purpose of growing closer as a couple(without the added "distraction") is not wrong as long as this works towards glorifying the Father and serving others and is not merely an excuse to "have fun all the time".
I thank Anonymous for her reminder of God's sovereignty and Lark for her honesty in relating her and Kevin's story and must confess that I have nothing of the sort to share!
Indeed, God is good. And His gifts of children are equally good and if we are presented with such a gift, how can we help but rejoice? At the same time, I do not feel there is warrant in Scripture for condemning contraception.
And you may ask, what will I decide in the future? Firstly, that's not solely my decision! And secondly, I have absolutely no idea. But I WILL be seeking the Lord first in all things, by His grace!!
Like Mr. Fields said, thanks for bringing this up. :)
ReplyDelete"The only thing that really matters is that we are asking the Spirit to guide our choices and seeking to honor the Lord in them."
I think this is the final word! Indeed I think there are plenty of valid, godly reasons to plan families and even "dis-want" (I wish that was a word) having children and folks here have named them. You just have to seek God's approval of your plans and attitudes.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts, everyone. I agree with you (on all counts).
ReplyDeleteParticularly, I agree that there is nothing inherently wrong about contraceptives (and though brief, I believe I mentioned that above), and that they are even beneficial in many cases. My purpose in writing this was to spark some honest conversations to conquer our "fear" or "uneasiness" about the untimely born children that I experienced as an unmarried or a newly married, not to condemn contraception itself. I see now that in addressing cultural forces that shape today's contraceptives, it came off as condemning contraception itself, and I apologize for not making that clear. Anonymous sister, I too thank you for your reminder of God's sovereignty--this is precisely why I wrote this, because I wish that had been reminded to me and talked about more in my premarital conversations about sex and children.
I guess I'll add my uninformed opinion to James'. Your post reminded me of a conversation about contraception I had with a Catholic roommate a year or so ago. As I understand it, the Catholic belief is that contraception is an attempt to circumvent God's will, and thus the only acceptable contraception is abstinence. I'm sure I'm not doing it justice, but I was never thoroughly convinced. On the other hand, you do bring up a very poignant point - that it's very often a selfish motivation. I heard the term "dink" (double-income no kids) the other day for the first time, and my immediate reaction was "I need to hurry it up so that I (well, someday "we", whoever it is) can enjoy as many dink years as possible before the biological clock rears its ugly head. And while there are certainly legitimate reasons for waiting (grad school is a common one among my friends, which is probably a little more legit - can't really count a grad stipend as an "income" anyway...), the allure of comfortable years of travel and freedom is really hard to justify as being anything but conforming to the patterns of this world. I can only assume your use of "untimely born" was an intentional reference to Paul (1 Cor 15:8), but in case anyone missed it, it's definitely an interesting juxtaposition.
ReplyDeleteThank you for your honest thoughts, Steve! I think there is a consensus here that at the end of the day, individual reasons for waiting to have children are between the couple and God. Like Lark and James mentioned, I don't think "dink" years have to be selfish as long as you are using those years to grow closer as a couple and serve others.
ReplyDeleteI only hope that we as a church do a better job of talking about possibility of children as much as we give advice about various contraceptives with engaged couples and newly marrieds. If we do, maybe the word "baby" wouldn't be such a taboo around them, as it is now.
I whole-heartedly agree with that last, Dream. Indeed(at least in many of the circles I've been in), most of the talk you hear regarding post-marriage plans do NOT involve the possibility or desiring of children at all. And I do find that somewhat disturbing. I feel(as you so aptly pointed out) that this is due to culture bleed-over in which children are seen as a "hindrance" to our progression in life. Of course most of us wouldn't say/think that straight out, but sadly it has influenced us nonetheless. And so now that I think I understand your thesis a little better, I can definitely say that a more welcoming and open view towards children is needed in pre-marital discussions. Thanks for provoking my thoughts. :)
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