Self-Control or Birth Control

 

Abortion has been in the news lately as the Supreme Court readies to hear arguments around the abortion ban the state of Mississippi recently enacted. It is an important case during an important time. I pray for God to give the justices wisdom as they make their decisions. Abortion is certainly a thorny issue, but as I have argued in this blog, the Bible teaches that God is a God of life, he cultivates and cherishes life, and faithful Christians should always come down on the side of life. Abortion has been a central pillar of the sexual revolution and has opened the door to more and more uncleanness. But there is an issue that has preceded abortion in history that has had its share in the loosening of sexual morals, and that issue is birth control. This is the third post in a series on the topic.

My sister is a physician's assistant, day in and day out, she is working with people to try and improve their health. She often laments that her patients refuse to make even simple changes in order to improve their health, especially in their diets. People love their meat, fatty food, and sugary treats, and even when we are presented with solid reasons to make healthier choices, we refuse. We have trained our bodies and minds to indulge every appetite when it presents itself, even as our bodies break down. Heart disease is the number one killer in America. Most heart disease can be prevented if we improve our diets, but we don't want to. We have conditioned ourselves to be self-indulgent, whatever we crave we indulge in and give little thought to long-term consequences.

Our culture is self-indulgent in what we eat, and we are even more self-indulgent in the bedroom. This is a deadly thing in dealing with our health, but it is even more deadly in dealing with spiritual reality. There are more and more voices in our culture leading us to make healthier choices in our diets and health, but few and far between are those voices calling us to lead a healthy lifestyle in our sexuality. The modern concept of sexuality has become simply whatever is expedient, whatever appetites and cravings I may have on a given day becomes what is healthy sexuality for me. One day a homosexual relationship may be healthy for me, and the next a heterosexual relationship may be healthy.

The drive for legalization and expansion of abortion is fueled in large part by this self-indulgent, expedient mindset. Sexual liberation has been the battle cry, and unborn children are just collateral damage. We will have our sexual appetites fulfilled at any cost, even if it means sacrificing our children. Children simply become a means to an end, if we believe they will bring us happiness, then they are a good thing, if we believe they will not, then we simply abort them.

While the majority of Christians would vehemently protest abortion, and oppose this self-indulgent attitude toward sex, there is still an aspect of it that has crept into Christian marriages in the form of birth control. We aren't having sex outside of marriage, and we aren't having abortions, and this is good, but we are still missing the mark. God's design, and the natural use of sex is to create new life, and if we are purposefully cutting off that ability, we are abusing our bodies and our sexuality.

In a previous post we explored the idea that the world tells us that in order to have a full, satisfying life, sex must be a part of it. But the view of sex presented in the Bible is much more practical, it is not the be all, end all thing that the world has made it into. There are those who have become eunuchs and have still had rich, meaningful lives, and Jesus Christ himself never took a bride. Still, we think that we are entitled to sex.

This entitled, self-indulgent attitude to sex often seeps into Christian marriage. We believe that we deserve to have sex when and how we want (as long as it is with our spouse), and we don't want to worry about children getting in the way of that. So, we cut off the natural and good use of our genitals - to generate life - and remove the possibility of children from the equation. While birth control and abortion are different things, though just barely, the attitude behind them is much the same. We want to be able to indulge in sex and not have to bother with unwanted pregnancies. Sex is a good and healthy part of marriage, to be sure, but we are not entitled to sex, and we do not need sex - even in marriage - to live a full life.

The vision of family planning in the Bible is that God is one who blesses us with children. They are a wonderful gift from God, and we should actively seek to welcome them into our families. The temptation in our modern context is to take the plan out of God's hands and take care of it ourselves. We can plan our families ourselves, thank you very much.

Contrasted with the self-indulgent attitude in our culture is the attitude of self-control presented in Scripture. The Apostle Paul wrote this in 1 Thessalonians 4:3-8,

"3. For this is the will of God, even your sanctification, that ye should abstain from fornication:

4. That every one of you should know how to possess his vessel in sanctification and honor;

5. Not in the lust of concupiscence, even as the Gentiles which know not God:

6. That no man go beyond and defraud his brother in any matter: because that the Lord is the avenger of such, as we also have forewarned you and testified.

7. For God hath not called us unto uncleanness, but unto holiness."

God is calling us to holiness, this means that our hearts are unspotted from the smallest sin and from every unclean desire. Certainly, we should have lives free from fornication, but God is calling us to go further, he wants our hearts pure from lust. Just because a man is having sex with his wife, does not mean that his heart is free from lust. It is altogether possible for a husband to be driven by lust as he pursues relations with his wife, and vice versa.

Paul is calling us to possess our vessels, our bodies, in sanctification and honor. This means God wants us to exercise self-control. We should be masters of our bodies and our minds.

It may be that a married couple has a good reason to not have children, perhaps the wife has an illness, or they are in a situation of extreme poverty (though in America, this is highly unlikely), or perhaps they are on a mission field where it would be dangerous to raise children. Whatever the situation may be, the solution to birth control is self-control. If a couple does not want to bring children into the world, the God-honoring choice is abstinence. 

In Galatians 5, we find a list of the fruit of the Spirit, "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance: against such there is no law." (vv. 22-23) We often associate that word "temperance" with abstaining from drinking alcohol, but another way that word can be translated is, "self-control." When the Holy Spirit is ruling in our hearts, one of the products of that is self-control. He guides us and strengthens us to restrain our appetites so that we can better glorify the Lord. God calls us to self-control in every area of life, especially in the area of sexuality.

When we have dogs or cats that we do not want to reproduce we take them to the vet and have them spayed and neutered. Why do we do this? Because animals cannot control themselves. If they have the opportunity to do the deed, they will do the deed. They are ruled by their instincts and impulses, they do not discriminate, use reason or plan, much less consider God's purposes and plans.

In the area of sex, we have become a culture driven by impulses and instincts and behave little better than animals. We have to use condoms, take pills, and some even go so far as to sterilize themselves because we have lost the ability, or the desire, to control ourselves. 

Sex within marriage is a good thing and is an important part of how spouses express their love for one another. The point is that that love is not to remain isolated between the man and woman but was meant to grow and expand and bring new life into this world. The love that a husband and wife have should overflow into the lives of their children.

There are ways to plan sexual activity around a woman's natural cycle that can be used in good conscience to avoid pregnancy without purposefully sterilizing the union. This is called natural family planning. Christopher West discusses this in his book, Our Bodies Tell God's Story.

God is calling us to shine a light in the world, and one of the ways we can most dramatically do this is through our sexuality. It is good for us to ask ourselves if we are using our sexuality to glorify God, or simply using it to satisfy the cravings of our flesh. In a world where most people lack self-control and have to use birth control, may we honor the Lord with our self-control.