Birth Control: The Allowable Exception

    So in writing about “A Worthless Expression” (“Do it in God’s strength, not yours”), I had originally intended to include a short aside about this exception that most Christians allow to work alongside the nonsensical idea of “Doing something in God’s strength” (follow this link to that post for that argument). It quickly became a very large hiatus from the main point of that article, so I separated it out here.

    I believe that Christianity at large has absorbed secular notions of family planning without even realizing it. Not to pick on Jared Longshore as he only expresses what everyone already believes, but this brief video summarizes exactly how a majority of Christians justify family planning (ie, determining if/when you should have children). If there is anything I view as a legitimate application of “doing something in my own strength rather than God’s,” it is this issue. Yet this is the one issue where it is culturally acceptable to plan our own families “in our own strength” (ie according to our own foreseeable abilities/means/income according to our current abilities/means/income). As far as I'm concerned, your role in family planning begins and ends at who you marry and everything else is just wishful (or sinful) thinking.(*)

(*) This is not in reference to adoption; this post is only concerned with the use of birth control under ordinary circumstances. Adoption is clearly a good thing that has considerations different from natural birth.

    My entry point into theology came from a weird place. As a Christian in my formative years when I was saved out of being a false disciple in the Charismatic movement, I was obsessed with finding the connection between the faith of the Old Testament saints and the faith that we’re called to today. There were things I got way wrong at the time, of course (I wasn’t a general equity theonomist and probably would have been repulsed by the idea if I had heard it then), but that initial obsession with finding a practical application of the Old Testament (beyond “It’s all about Jesus”) has protected me from a lot of worthless doctrine over the years. ND Wilson expressing how silly we are for picking out King David like he was the worst kind of heinous sinner on Stories are Soul Food is good to hear, but I didn’t need to hear it because I had already faced the problem while refusing to see King David as anything other than a hero in the faith because of God’s opinion of him. My work ethic comes from a Paul Washer sermon on Nehemiah about building the wall (they built the wall right in front of them, so “whatever work your hand finds to do, do it with all your might”). This theological quirk is also the reason I have always rejected antinomianism despite sitting under a professed antinomian pastor for 7 years.

    All that to say, my first response to most questions is “what would a person living in the past think about this?” Originally it was trying to look at the New Testament from an Old Testament perspective to find the consistency (ie, “obey the law of love” can’t mean the death penalty is now unjust because that would condemn David and Solomon for executing people). But the question I ask is more generally how “a past people” would think about it because it sheds new light on technological, medical, and philosophical advantages/disadvantages while removing my modern cultural bias and context as much as is humanly possible for me to do. This is why I couldn’t tolerate people complaining about “AI taking jobs” before it was the cool thing to do. I’ve argued with ladies complaining about self-checkout lanes on facebook for that very reason. Combines took jobs away from the poor and we’re better for it. If you would like to go out into a corn-field with a basket and try to keep up with market demands in a modern context, be my guest. Farmers in the past would have seen that technological breakthrough as a tremendous blessing worth investing in and they did: that’s why they all use combines now.

    So when it comes to the issue of family planning, my mind immediately goes to “how would a serf living in the middle ages have heard this message?” And I am immediately offended by our culture. Look at the issue from the perspective of someone who would have had no preventative measures and couldn’t even guarantee their children would live past infancy (the commonly sighted statistic of their average life expectancy being 32 comes from this fact: those who did live into adulthood had a comparable lifespan to modern day if slightly lower). Despite this, they still saw children as a means of furthering their wealth rather than a burden (like we do).

    I shouldn’t have to spell out how stupid our culture is more than that. But I will.

    The first issue of “no preventative measures available to people in the past" is what makes this whole argument possible in the first place. There was no pill. There were some preventative measures to avoid unwanted pregnancies, however. We know, because God killed the man who choose one in the only instance of such a means being recorded in scripture (see Genesis 38:9). So that’s a good start to the argument: do something that God directly killed a man for doing. I am not at all done driving that point into the ground (ie God’s worldview is that children are good and expected in marriage and you probably don’t actually believe that), but the only point I want to make right now is that people in the past only had access to birth control in forms that were unreliable or unnatural at best. It was the invention of “the pill” that enabled women to sterilize themselves on demand that proliferated the idea of family planning, and Christians today have just latched on to that worldly way of thinking.

    Some might argue for “natural family planing” as an alternative: I see no difference. Either way you are attempting to take God’s sovereignty to open and close a womb (1 Samuel 1:6: Jeremiah 1:5: Psalm 127:3, etc.) and granting it to yourself.(*) How can you act in faith when deliberately taking charge of something God claims direct sovereignty over? Are you wiser than Him? Can He not be trusted to give you children when He wants to and close the womb when He wants to?

(*A necessary caveut: there are always exceptions. I am not saying there is never a time to go on a pill. There are hormonal treatments after hard pregnancies that function like the pill but not in the same way specifically to give the uterus a rest and protect the mother. I’m sure there are other exceptions as well due to health concerns or genetic issues: again, there are always exceptions. I am only rebuking the idea of a healthy married couple who have no justification for preventing a pregnancy claiming that right for themselves.)

    “It’s a matter of wisdom to live within our foreseeable means.”

    And I suppose the many men and women of the past who suffered through numerous pregnancies and infant deaths would have been better off considering your wisdom. Let’s just say they had the means to effectively prevent pregnancy: would you have been a good councilor? Can you imagine their conversation with a modern medical doctor:

    “Now Mrs. Bard, you know that very few children survive into adulthood. Think of the child’s quality of life: you can barely afford to feed yourself. And children need room to grow. Your quarters are only a single bedroom, and you don’t even own it: you’re a serf on your master’s land. Everything you have, in fact, is dependent on his continuing good grace to you and your continuing value as a servant. And the kingdom across the river has been eyeing that land greedily. Plus, the resources that would be wasted on a potentially doomed life could be better spent on the already living, seeing as the child will be unlikely to survive. Wouldn’t wisdom suggest that getting pregnant right now might not be a good idea?”

    Not much different than the silly conversations you’ve had, is it?

    Do you know why so many people still willingly suffered through the trials and tribulations that were common hardships in child-bearing prior to our modern era? It wasn’t because they couldn’t prevent it. People don’t have to marry. Childbearing is not a matter of survival instincts, despite what our shared evolutionary worldview tells us. Look again at the story in Genesis 38: people don’t have to care to carry on their own lineage.

    The reason people endured such hardships is because children were seen as valuable.

    “Ah yes: children are a gift from the Lord: the fruit of the womb a reward (Psalm 127:3). I believe that too.”

    No, you don’t. You see children as an expense. Go back and watch that video by Jared Longshore at the beginning (again, not to pick on him: it's just the most recent example I have). At 5:21 he says “Take a look at how dad’s wallet is going” when it comes to family planning. I agree that parents have the ministry of health, education, and welfare. I also agree that this is a generational problem, because I know very few and not more than a handful in my local church that would aid me in providing these things to my children. Growing up, it was my dad’s boss who loved him and provided him with work and a means to raise us ten stupid children. And now it’s my boss who has done more for the good of my family at his own expense/inconvenience/profit that enables me to raise my children. The church preaches that children are valuable, but it doesn’t act like that’s true-I think the acceptance of “family-integrated worship” and the goodness of homeschooling sometimes marks the end of the church’s role to educate children, placing the impetus entirely on the father and mother (which is why we have more men’s/women’s meetings than co-ops). But I’m getting off track: these things have always been the responsibility of parents and everyone knows that parents raised a better breed of kids when they were put to work on a farm than the fatheads we raise through institutions and electronics now.

    It’s amazing: we live in an era where child-bearing is the safest it’s ever been in history, cost-of-living is as low as it’s ever been in history (despite the skyrocketing prices currently: we have luxuries only the wealthiest throughout history could have afforded at our fingertips), education is as easily accessible as it’s ever been in history (my dad didn’t teach me how to do an oil change: Youtube did), and yet somehow we also have the lowest birth rates in history because “dad’s wallet is too tight.” I’ll grant that medical expenses are stupid expensive, but maybe you should be preaching against the evils of taking advantage of people in need rather than the evils of “presumption” in presuming that God is better at planning my family than I am.

    People in the past wanted children. And it wasn’t just the theological “Oh yes; they are a blessing.” They needed farmhands. They needed a construction crew. Their neighbors needed them to grow more crops because they were also dependent on the local farmers for food. Their neighbors needed boys to take over their construction business when they couldn't work anymore because you couldn’t drive someone in from 2 hours away to work six hours a day setting walls that had been pre-built in another state. You may think you think of children as a blessing, but, if you're like me, you don’t need your neighbor for anything. And that includes your children: you probably have no practical use for them.

    And so what’s left? We raise our children for the good of someone else out there where they’ll have to find their own place eventually, investing in them entirely devoid of return. Our households aren’t productive: there’s no room to add another loafer here. We’ll put up with them until they’re 18 and then hope they get married as soon as possible so they can go stand on their own two feet and we can go back to our retirement home of a house, hoping nothing too terrible happens so we can live out the end of our days in peace. That’s why you see them as an expense: because they are of utterly no benefit to you personally.

    Yet education does not have to be expensive. Take the Amish for example. They have their own regulative body that supplies schools, teachers, and supplies funded and supplied by the local community. Here in Illinois, they send their kids to school through 8^th grade, after which they work in a trade and pay a percentage of their paycheck to their parents (the percentage and period of time they do this for varies by household). When they marry, they typically already have tons of work experience and connections. If the children want to pursue an education further they have that option. Unfortunately this may require leaving the Amish culture which is akin to forsaking their religion. But the education of the men and women I’ve worked with (yes I’ve worked with very skilled, very intelligent Amish women as well as men) is a completely sufficient basis for intellectual pursuits AND incredibly practical in the trades. Many of them know more geometry than I ever learned in high school thanks to the practical use of it in the trades.

    I’m all for a better education than the Amish offer. Better is always better. But I still want to use my children in a way that benefits me. Is that selfish? They’re my arrows to shoot. I’m the one aiming them. Why should I aim them the useless way this culture demands? I want my boys to learn construction, how to design panels, and maybe even go on to become architects if the road clears for them. I want my girls to write and illustrate stories, which they’re all already showing an interest in. If the girls want to learn construction and design, great. If they boys want to write and draw, great. If I see them heading in another direction or with other skills, of course I’m going to encourage them that way too. The goal is for any of those to produce an income that will benefit both this family and them.

    Raising children is incredibly expensive. But that’s only because our culture is incredibly stupid. We see children as expensive because our connection of necessity to them has been lost. We are a disconnected people, and I see the Christianized version of family planning as the prime example of that.

    But it’s more than just a disconnected argument that I have in the abstract realm of online debate or in my own mind for me. This is personal. I don't have to try to think of how someone in the past would see this to be offended by it. Because before I even get there, I also immediately ask "how does “I’m afraid there won’t be enough to go around if we have another child" translate into faith?"

    You only have to deny that’s what you’re saying so often because that is exactly what you are saying. And I mean really, things like downsyndrome can really add a financial burden that could have been prevented if we had just paid more attention to our income and sanity levels and sex lives early enough to take non-abortive precautions against any such potential expense. How does anyone justify risking having children when such a life-altering, expensive disease exists, producing children with a low quality of life who “bring no benefit” to society?

    I have room for such a circumstance in my worldview, because I don’t have the final say on pregnancy or my own future financial estate anyway. Christians like to play up people who "endure that hardship" as if they have some exceptional faith. Granted, they may be exceptional people in a exceptional circumstance, but having a child with downsyndrome is no exceptional act of faith if a pregnancy ends with a baby being born with downsyndrome. That's just what's required of a Christian in that situation.

    Still, this is one of those topics where people are allowed to be stupid because it’s simply the air we breathe. It is hard to be more than a product of your culture. And you definitely should disagree with the ravings of a lunatic like me on this topic since I’m arrogant (and presumptuous) enough to oppose the accepted narrative of every Pastoral authority on this issue.(*)

(*I am aware that the Catholic church condemns all forms of birth control, but I only learned this after coming to my own convictions on this issue. Please do not consider me responsible enough to consider other people’s opinions before forming my own.)

    I write that jokingly but I can’t let it stand for even a moment because there are seven little lives that only exist because of my wife’s and my conviction here. I can’t be wrong on this issue without one of them potentially being that “foolish decision” on our part. I don’t believe any child conceived in the God-ordained manner can be pointed to as an evidence of sin and where there is no sin, there is no need for preventing something from occurring.

    Which one of my children was the mistake as we dip into the red financially for the first time in a long time this Christmas session? My wallet's currently too thin: were our children a mistake? I’m asking in all seriousness: at what point do we look at a child and say “he was too much of a burden on his parents: they shouldn’t have had him?” But you won’t, obviously: being that consistent would instantly cure your stupidity by making it appear as evil as it actually is. So instead, you’ll just say “they have way too many children” and wave away your own destructive arrogance with a sense of moral superiority. God help you if you’ve ever devalued any child/large family for being too much of a burden on the world or a community simply for their number and noise: a mirror would be more useful to you in a quest to find the worthless soul who was mistakenly granted life.

    And on this post, like all others, I'll make no apologies for my presumptuous claims because I refuse to apologize when I'm right.