TruthHate

Contraception Birth Control BC

 

A soft answer turneth away wrath: but grievous words stir up anger. Proverbs 15

 

Birth Control raises lots of questions in most people’s minds, especially those who are religious. Here are some common Q & A on the subject:

 

Q. Do Christians approve of birth control?

A. Generally, no, though opposition spans a spectrum from total rejection to acceptance. Despite various church teachings on the subject, people tend to do as they please, many considering it a private matter, therefore, many practice one form or another of Contraception from time to time as they see fit.

 

Q. What birth control methods are, and are not, acceptable?

A. Again, there is a range of acceptance from none, to everything, or anything, including abortion that are legal. In ancient times infanticide (killing live babies) and abandonment at any age (leaving in a desolate area) were commonly utilized to get rid of unwanted children. These would be clearly illegal now in most all countries.

 

Q. What about within marriage versus outside of marriage? Do contraceptives have a place in marriage?

A. Government generally makes no distinction, but various religions may make a distinction wherein contraception within a marriage is looked on with greater disfavor, while others do not make this distinction. A popular argument today is regarding encouraging unmarried singles to use birth control to prevent unwanted pregnancies.

 

Q. What does the Bible have to say about the whole matter?

A. Those in favor of birth control take the position that the Bible is either silent on the matter or that in any case that, that was then and this is now. While those opposing birth control point to a wide range of Biblical references that would condemn contraception, most famous of which is Genesis 38 wherein Onan used a technique call coitus interuptus, or withdrawal, to prevent his wife from getting pregnant, for which God killed him. Some Christians argue that God didn’t kill Onan for this act, but for refusing to raise up children in honor of his brother. It is hard to follow this difference. It seems a distinction without a difference.

 

Q. What about children, do they have a value that contraception negates?

A. Most believing people agree that children are a blessing of the Lord, but some qualify this to say that we are also to be a good steward of those blessings and so they justify limiting children to those they can be good stewards of, meaning provide them with advantages that they conclude the child needs. This can be as simple as affording the toys that other children have, and so forth. Another reason is that many believe that marital intimacy was designed for bonding between husband and wife and for pleasure between husband and wife, and not just for procreation. Both of these views can be seen as selfish motives on the part of parents. And another reason that some see as a justification for contraception is that it can prevent some abortions, though how many we are not sure. This raises the whole matter of the difference between a contraceptive act which prevents a birth before conception and abortion which prevents a birth after conception.

 

Q. What does God think about contraception?

A. If children are from the Lord (as the Bible says), then using contraception could be seen as shaking a fist in the face of God saying “Back off, we have our own plans”. There are many scripture references which support the anti-contraception position, but essential none that oppose it. There has yet to be found any scriptural reference that supports the use of any form of contraception.

 

Q. What does the Catholic Church say?

A. Here is a quote from “Catholic Position on Birth Control,” “Contraception is wrong because it’s a deliberate violation of the design God built into the human race, often referred to as “natural law.” The natural law purpose of sex is procreation. The pleasure that sexual intercourse provides is an additional blessing from God, intended to offer the possibility of new life while strengthening the bond of intimacy, respect, and love between husband and wife. The loving environment this bond creates is the perfect setting for nurturing children.”

 

Q. How did Christian Churches come to different conclusions on this matter?

A. Few realize that up until 1930, all Protestant denominations agreed with the Catholic Church’s teaching condemning contraception as sinful. At its 1930 Lambeth Conference, the Anglican Church, (which at the time was vastly influential among Protestant denominations,) swayed by growing social pressure, announced that contraception would be allowed in some circumstances. Soon thereafter, the Anglican Church completely caved in, allowing contraception across the board. Since then, practically all other Protestant denominations have followed suit. Today, the Catholic Church alone still proclaims the historic Christian position on contraception, but even they have given in somewhat to popular pressure. The Rhythm Method is the measure of that compromise that has left many Catholics with a substantial loophole. This is a method of birth control called Natural, because it doesn’t utilize some material object to prevent pregnancy. It uses the timing of the woman’s monthly period, to avoid intercourse during the half of the month that the woman can conceive while allowing it during the time of her menstruation. But, even this method can only be done with certain conditions that have been elaborately detailed particularly in the Papal Encyclical, Humanae Vitae (Of Human Life).

 

Q. What about those people who don’t have the desire to have children?

A. Question comes to mind, why should such persons get married at all? We have loosened the laws to such an extent that people can live together legally, and have sex without even living together, so why degrade and corrupt the idea of marriage by not wanting to have children within marriage? Then again, there is no talk of forcing people to have children, so birth control is only a moral, ethical and religious question.

 

Q. What does it mean when the Bible says, God knew us from the beginnings of the earth?

A. It means, (to a Christian) that God knows the future; therefore He knew all of us at the beginning of creation.

 

Q. Is Contraception a modern thing?

A. No. It has been around since the very beginning. It came in as a consequence of original sin. Cain killing Abel was, among other things, an attempt to cut off Abel’s reproduction. It was the most effective form of birth control. When you kill a person you forever prevent them from having any children. It is the surest form of birth control imaginable. Infanticide was practiced by Pharaoh’s doctors who killed the Israelites babies as soon as they were born, and one of the pagan religions practiced widely by the Canaanites was Moloch, where the people would throw their infants into the mouth of Moloch in the form of a fiery furnace. The most evil thing a human can do is kill their own children, and the most effective way of killing ones children is to stop the woman’s egg and the male’s seed from coming together in the first place. A hundred times more babies are eliminated by contraception than by abortion.

 

Q. How is a baby alive before it is conceived, in other words, when does life actually begin?

A. It depends on how you look at it. In some sense, life never begins and ends, but is a continuous stream. You represent a continuous unbroken stream of life that extends back thousands of years. Your mother had a mother, and her mother had a mother, and so on all the way back to the beginning life on this planet. No matter how you look at it either from a Biblical perspective or from an evolutionary perspective, life is a constant unbroken continuum. For example every single sperm has a complete set of genes, or DNA to make another human being and every single one of these millions of sperm seeds are a totally unique person unlike anyone that has ever lived or ever will life on this planet. Every egg in a woman’s ovaries was there the day she was born, all 300 something of them. And each one is a completely distinct person unlike anyone who ever lived, or ever will live. Thus when a single sperm or egg are killed, a person dies that can never be replaced because no two are alike. This is perhaps the life, and life more abundantly that Jesus spoke of giving us.

 

Q. Doesn’t doing away with birth control mean showing a lack of trust in God? For if He wants a child to be born He can make it happen, right?

A. Yes, God can do anything, by definition, but the Bible is full of examples warning us not to “tempt the Lord thy God.” For although God knows the future, still he let’s us make our own. God knows how everything will turn out, but he allows us the freedom to do what we want to. It is like an experienced teacher who knows in advance the student will fail, but doesn’t want to discourage the student by telling him that he is going to fail. He wants to give the student every chance to not fail, and telling him he was going to fail would not be a kind thing to do.

 

Q. Well, shouldn’t young unmarrieds use birth control?

A. The problem with teen pregnancy is two-fold, neither on cured by condoms, or pills. One, they shouldn’t be having sex as early as some of them are, and two, if and when they do have sex and it results in pregnancy the boy and girl should do the right thing and get married. The difference between a healthy and sick society is that in a healthy society kids who get pregnant get married, and in a sick society they don’t and end up becoming single mom societal problems.

 

Q. Without birth control won’t people have a baby year and end up with 20 kids?

A. Well, no. Most every woman will only have a baby every 3 years at the outside, and if we go back and look at families that did not practice birth control. They would average 8 kids more or less, but in any case, more kids are considered by many to be a desirable outcome. Should we kill some of our kids because someone has figured there are too many kids?

 

Q. Can’t I use contraception if I want? Is it not legal?

A. Yes, you can do as you wish and it is legal to use contraceptives. But, all actions have consequences and we need to know those consequences before we take action. The consequences of using birth control are many and we need to know what they are. Here are a few: First, it displeases God and violates his commandments, Second, It means we may get old and have no children at all. People drop dead every day at all ages, from all kinds of things. If it happened to you and you had “planned” to have children later, then later never happened in your case. Ditto for everyone else. Mothers who have just one child and he goes to war for his country and is killed is devastated in a special way as he was her only child because she chose to use birth control. The list could go on and on with consequences for using birth control, among them is the harm it does to a woman’s health, and the damage it may do to her marriage. A husband may divorce a wife if she will not have children, or more children. So, all actions have serious consequences, and you can make your own list. But it is a good idea to consider ALL the consequences of our actions BEFORE we act.

 

Q. How do we deal with the problem of irresponsible parenting that brings so much heartache into the world?

A. Well, one thing we don’t do is stifle the reproduction of the responsible parents. We crack down hard on irresponsible people, especially if they are irresponsible parenting. Girls who have kids by men they don’t even know need to be jailed, and have the child taken away from them, and then they need to work the rest of their life paying the government child support for the child to be raise in a first class boarding school, or by an adoptive parent. After the word gets around these girls will not do this. When you hit them in the pocket book their conduct changes real fast. And the guy needs to be discovered through DNA and he needs to be paying the rest of his life too, or go do hard labor in jail. After that word gets around on the street, these young thugs won’t be so eager to knock up these girls and then leave them in the lurch. That and a dozen other ways is how you deal with irresponsible reproduction. Soon thereafter you won’t have that much of it. That is, NO Government subsidies for irresponsible reproduction. After this gets cleared up we might get around to subsidizing the responsible young wholesome families that really need our help.

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