The Problem of Procreation

 

One of the astonishing things that I have seen across my lifetime is individuals and whole societies becoming blind to what should be obvious and natural truths. We have embraced a form of collective delusion, it is almost as if we look at the sky and say, "Nope, not blue, definitely green!" and we look at the grass and say, "Nope, not green, definitely blue!"  We convince ourselves that up is down and down is up. We have all believed a lie for so long we cannot even remember what the truth was to begin with.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the area of sexuality. Our culture has come to accept what is evil as good and we call what is good, evil. Most Christians still acknowledge that sexual immorality, homosexuality, and transgenderism are all sinful behaviors, at least those Christians who believe the Word of God, even while many in our society continue to delude themselves into believing those sinful behaviors are good and should be celebrated. They demand we call these actions healthy even while they are clearly in defiance of God's will and the natural order. The lie continues to be repeated over and over again and more and more people are deceived into accepting it as true.

But there is an area of sexuality that I would say the majority of Christians are still in denial about. We have collectively been deluded, following along with the voices in our culture. We have been raised up in the midst of the lie and we have come to accept it as a given. We have breathed it in like atmosphere and do not even realize it is corrupt.

What I am talking about is the connection between sex and reproduction. Or to make the point, birth control.

For most of my life, I was one that took for granted that birth control was good and fine and there was nothing wrong with it. In recent years as I have read and studied about sexuality from a Biblical perspective, I have had to change my mind as I came to understand what the Bible teaches about it. Most Christians believe that the Bible is silent on the issue and while it does not explicitly condemn birth control, it does have timeless principles that apply to sex and procreation.

In the book of Genesis (once again) we find God giving instruction and guidance with regards to sex. In Genesis 1:28 the Bible records God saying to Adam and Eve, "Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth."  God's instruction to Adam and Eve and to all of us is that we are to be fruitful and to multiply. His plan was for them to come together in the sexual union, to become one flesh, and bear children.

When God was speaking to Adam and Eve, He was speaking to the entire human race, and to you and to me by extension. Adam was the representative of the entire human race in the Garden. It was not just Adam and Eve that God wanted to be fruitful and multiply but all people in all times and places. He wanted Cain, Able and Seth to be fruitful, He wanted Noah, Shem, Ham and Japheth to multiply, every family in every generation was meant to bring many new lives into this world.

God from the very beginning linked sex directly to bringing new life into the world. This is the fundamental, natural, biological function of sex. Every animal on the planet understands this, and while animals do not answer to a higher call or utilize any form of higher reasoning, they still understand something that most of us in our modern age have forgotten, the purpose of sex is to produce offspring.

In *Our Bodies Tell God's Story* Christopher West clarifies the issue well, "The biblical vision of sexuality as understood throughout the ages can be summarized very simply: marriage, sex and babies belong together - and in that order. In his loving design, God has united these three realities in a tight knot to reveal in our flesh the truth of His own eternal covenant love and fatherhood. Contraception not only loosens the knot of this fundamental and society-ordering nexus, it also cuts the ties." (P.144) If you want to dig much more deeply into this topic, I highly recommend his book.

For humans, certainly, procreation is not the only reason to enjoy sex, the Bible and Christianity acknowledge that there are emotional and spiritual realities at play in the process of becoming one flesh, but we should never move beyond the idea that sex was meant to produce life. To remove the capability and the capacity for life from the sexual act is to remove the fundamental purpose for which it was given to us. To sterilize sex is to defy God's original plan and command to us as humans. West adds this, "[D]eliberately rendering the genitals unable to generate has the effect of nullifying the natural and essential meaning of gender."  Even the words we use around sex point to life, "gender" and "genitals" both have the prefix "gen-" which we also seen in words like "genesis" and "generate."  The fundamental purpose of our genitals is to generate life. If we cut off that ability, we are cutting the primary purpose for which our genitals were created, and we are defying the natural order that God created.

The whole idea of birth control was not something that originated with Christianity. To the contrary, it has been Christianity that up until recent decades has upheld the value of life and the sanctity of marriage. The idea of birth control is something that has crept into churches from secular culture. For nearly 2000 years all churches condemned the practice. But then in  1930, one by one churches and denominations began to accept the practice as the culture moved more and more that way.

When the Church should have been shining a light into the culture in this area, we have allowed the world to darken our light. The purpose of the church is to impact and transform the culture not to allow culture to transform us. It is unfortunate, but it seems most Christians today are content to go with the flow of culture with regards to sexuality when God has called us to stand firm in the face of this moral decline. God has called us to change the world, not the other way around. We cannot impact the world if we continue to think, believe, and behave the same as our unregenerate neighbors.

There are, perhaps, some legitimate concerns around having multiple children, financial and health concerns among them, though in reality these concerns are very rare in our modern society. Most arguments against having children are not Christ and Scripture centered but are based on our own selfish desires or from ideas borrowed from the secular culture around us. If we do have a valid reason for avoiding bringing new life into the world, then I believe that the correct response according to Scripture is abstinence. Even within marriage. West has more to say on this as well in *Our Bodies Tell God's Story*. Sex was meant to produce life, and if we are not leaving that possibility open to us, we are defying God's original plan and design for our sexuality.

I know there is a great deal of debate around this issue, and I do not want to take space to answer the assorted arguments against it, though I am happy to field any questions or comments. In the next post we will look at some more Scripture around this topic.

The Christian life is meant to impact every aspect of our lives from beginning to end. In this day and age nowhere does this matter more than in our sexuality. If we want to proclaim God's glory, and shine His glorious light into the world, we should start and end with our sexuality. This is most loudly proclaimed when those of us who are married freely allow God to bless us with many children.