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Contraception is absolutely everywhere. You get ads for it on very tame TV shows. Students are handed condoms for free; you can buy them in public toilets. When a couple marry (or move in together), their friends won't be surprised if children don't result for five or ten years - or ever.
What should Christians make of this? When it comes to other aspects of the sexual revolution, the debate is pretty fierce. Most Christians will be painfully aware of LGBT issues and the distance between Bible and culture there. Sex before marriage, pornography, modest clothing, what is and isn't permissible to watch on TV: it's not unusual for Christians to have heard all these addressed from the pulpit, and to have practiced costly obedience in these matters. Contraception? Not so much. I reckon the average faithful church-going Protestant (at least in the UK, where I live) has never heard any teaching on the subject, and quite likely never thought about it.
Now, I don't want to overhype: there are more important sexual issues than contraception. But thinking about this issue has significantly changed my life, and very much for the better. I hope that it might do the same for some others. Hence this post.
Although this is a long post (probably around a 25 minute read), the basic structure is very simple. First, I want to argue (with most Protestants, but against the Catholics) that contraception is permissible. And secondly, I want to argue that, while contraception is permissible, what I'll call the contraceptive mindset is not. In practice, this will mean a good deal less contraception and, God willing, a good deal more kids.
Before we dive in, a quick word of warning. If you've not thought much about contraception before, then this might be a bit of an experience. A trip. The attitudes and principles I'll discuss are not difficult or particularly complex, but they are miles from the culture around us. That leaves a lot of opportunity for bruises! If I stopped at every tricky moment to check everyone was OK, this post would be three times as long and twice as hard to follow. So my strategy is just to shoot pretty straight and try and bandage any wounds at the end. If you find yourself, halfway through, feeling weirded out, winded, or incandescent with rage, hang in there.
Let's start with a little history.
A Brief History of Contraception
People have been trying to have sex while avoiding babies for millennia, but modern (or modern-ish) contraception has been with us for only a few hundred years. The earliest description of the condom comes from 1564, where a linen sheath was tried as a preventative against syphilis; the first mention of condoms as contraceptives comes from 1655. They have more or less only increased in popularity since then (often made of animal intestines before vulcanised rubber became a thing in the mid 1800s). In the twentieth century the range of options broadened out considerably, and you can now get implants and pills and coils and who knows what else. (I don't plan in this post to cover which contraceptives are OK for Christians and which aren't. The basic principle is that they mustn't be abortifacient, that is, they mustn't work after conception has already occurred. You can find very thorough discussions of this elsewhere.)
The Christian response to all this was at first one of pretty much complete opposition. There are occasional references to contraception even in very old writers (Augustine, for example); as far as I know they are all completely negative. The church as a whole started to take official notice when it became more widespread, and that official notice was, again, always negative. Catholics and Protestants agreed: contraception bad. The 1873 Comstock Laws in America, which effectively prohibited contraception, are a good example of the moral consensus at the time. As late as 1920, the Anglican bishops met for the Lambeth Conference. One of their resolutions discussed contraception, and it's short and meaty enough that I think it's worth quoting in full:
The Conference, while declining to lay down rules which will meet the needs of every abnormal case, regards with grave concern the spread in modern society of theories and practices hostile to the family. We utter an emphatic warning against the use of unnatural means for the avoidance of conception, together with the grave dangers - physical, moral and religious - thereby incurred, and against the evils with which the extension of such use threatens the race. In opposition to the teaching which, under the name of science and religion, encourages married people in the deliberate cultivation of sexual union as an end in itself, we steadfastly uphold what must always be regarded as the governing considerations of Christian marriage. One is the primary purpose for which marriage exists, namely the continuation of the race through the gift and heritage of children; the other is the paramount importance in married life of deliberate and thoughtful self-control.
We desire solemnly to commend what we have said to Christian people and to all who will hear.
That was the Anglicans, and nobody disagreed. To the best of my knowledge, not one Christian denomination of any flavour allowed contraception at this point.
The parting of the ways came in 1930. In that year, the Pope put out Casti Connubii, which condemned contraception in no uncertain terms; but the Anglican bishops met again and changed their minds. The famous/infamous Article 15 reversed the decision from 10 years earlier. Contraception, said the bishops, should never be used from "motives of selfishness, luxury, or mere convenience", but there might be other motives which could make it permissible.
After that the floodgates opened. Once the principle was conceded, it spread through Protestantism pretty rapidly, and those harsh words about "selfishness, luxury or mere convenience" started to be heard less and less. You could still find people objecting - anyone who has read C.S. Lewis's That Hideous Strength knows that he was no fan of contraception - but they stood against the tide. Nowadays, as I said earlier, you can easily go to an evangelical church for years, read evangelical books on sex and marriage, attend pre-marital counselling with your pastor, and never hear a single word on the subject. (Meanwhile the Catholics, despite some pretty vigorous internal opposition, have officially held the line that contraception is always wrong. We'll come back to their famous 1968 Humanae Vitae later.)
Now, as I said earlier, I do think some contraception can be used legitimately. This needs arguing for, and we'll turn to that now. But that's the point of this little historical detour: it does need an argument! When contraception became widespread enough to attract the church's attention, the first reaction was universal condemnation. In our current free-for-all, that should at least give us pause.
Is Contraception Legitimate?
We'll start by looking at the arguments supplied by opponents of contraception. Broadly, you can split them up into three. First, there's Onan; then, there's the nature and purpose of sex; and finally there are the effects of contraception on society and the individual.
Argument #1: Onan
The story of Onan in Genesis 38 is pretty short, so let's just quote it in full. Not for the squeamish:
And Judah took a wife for Er his firstborn, and her name was Tamar. But Er, Judah's firstborn, was wicked in the sight of the Lord, and the Lord put him to death. Then Judah said to Onan, “Go in to your brother's wife and perform the duty of a brother-in-law to her, and raise up offspring for your brother.” But Onan knew that the offspring would not be his. So whenever he went in to his brother's wife he would waste the semen on the ground, so as not to give offspring to his brother. And what he did was wicked in the sight of the Lord, and he put him to death also.
Gen 38:6-10
The background to this story is the tradition of levirate marriage: if there are two brothers, and one dies married but childless, then the surviving brother has a duty to "give children" to his dead brother by the dead brother's widow. This is no longer a thing under the New Covenant, and certainly to our modern ears it sounds way bizarre, but it's right there in the Old Testament law (Deuteronomy 25:5-10) as well as being a key plot point in the book of Ruth. So the rules are pretty clear: Onan should have been raising up children for his dead brother. But he refused.
Here's the anti-contraception argument: although Onan doesn't use tools (such as a condom), he still acts contraceptively. He wants to have the sex and avoid the babies. And God hates it and puts him to death. The papal encyclical Casti Connubii (sections 54-55), following Augustine, connects this straightforwardly to all contraception. Any sexual act which tries to deliberately prevent children is doing what Onan did. So don't do that.
Is that argument right? Does the story of Onan rule out all contraception? No, I don't think so. The problem with the argument is this: it makes Onan's sin primarily about the individual sexual act rather than the whole sexual relationship. (Note that this is not a one-off thing for Onan: "whenever he went in". It wasn't a single event; it was a pattern.) Onan's duty is to raise up children for his brother. His behaviour in the bedroom flows from his determination to avoid his duty. If Onan had gotten Tamar pregnant three or four times and then started his little spill-it-on-the-ground routine (say because the last pregnancy nearly killed Tamar and he'd like her alive to help raise the kids)... would that be the same sin? At the very least, that's not obvious. It seems like Onan's basic sin is the refusal to get children at all, not the refusal to get children in any specific sexual act.
Still, Genesis does seem to draw attention to the disgusting physical nature of Onan's disobedience. And I think that's significant. Given that Onan didn't want to do his levirate duty, why sleep with Tamar at all? (In Ruth, the guy who doesn't want to do the levirate duty just doesn't marry her. That's to his shame, but it's not Onan levels of shame!) The basic sin is that he doesn't raise up children, but the fact that he still sleeps with Tamar seems to make that sin worse. Remember those Anglican bishops condemning "selfishness, luxury, or mere convenience"? That's Onan. So while I don't think the story of Onan gives us a blanket ban on contraception, it's pretty relevant. Onan did what many do today: he wanted sex and didn't want babies. That's an ugly attitude.
Argument #2: The Purpose of Sex
This is probably the most common and weightiest anti-contraception argument. What is sex for? It's for children. The reproductive act reproduces. Sex is designed with babies in mind.
Now, of course, if this was all sex did, then that would be case closed. Don't plant an apple tree if you don't want apples; don't have sex if you don't want babies. But it's a little bit more complicated than that, because children are not the only result of sex. Scripture plainly teaches a number of other purposes for sex beyond child-bearing: avoiding sexual immorality (1 Cor 7:1-5, Prov 5:15-20), comfort (2 Sam 12:24), union (Gen 2:24), and of course intimacy and pleasure (there's a whole Bible book about this - which, by the way, contains no explicit mention of children).
We can lump all these other purposes together. All the purposes in that last paragraph are unitive. They are all about uniting: all to do with bringing the man and the woman together, for support, comfort, pleasure, and intimacy. So we have basically two main purposes for sex, unitive and procreative. And the big anti-contraception argument is this: the two go together. Here we turn to the Catholic encyclical Humanae Vitae, which is the single most famous and influential piece of Christian writing on the topic of contraception. Humanae Vitae wants you not to use contraception, and this is the heart of the argument: there is an "inseparable connection" between unitive and procreative "which man on his own initiative may not break."
Is that right? Is there an inseparable connection which man on his own initiative may not break? Well... kinda. My own take is that Humanae Vitae really asserts that connection rather than arguing for it. But we could sketch an argument from Gen 2:24, "and the two will become one flesh". That is, very vividly, a description of the unitive power of sex. But it is also points to the procreative power: out of the "one flesh" union of the parents comes the "one flesh" reality of the child. The child is the highest representation of the union of their parents, since they are literally in their body one person who has come from the two. So the unitive and the procreative aspects of sex are two aspects of the same reality, that sex takes two and makes them one flesh.
That also seems to be what God says in Malachi 2:15, where God is accusing the men of Judah for their unfaithfulness in marriage. This is a famously difficult verse to translate, but here's how the ESV puts it:
Did he not make them one, with a portion of the Spirit in their union? And what was the one God seeking? Godly offspring.
Malachi 2:15
If that's the right translation, then it's very relevant. Why did God create us with the whole one-flesh thing? Because he was seeking godly offspring. The unitive serves the procreative, not just in terms of the number of kids produced but in terms of the type of kids. Marriage is a great place to raise saints. (This is still true in the New Testament - even when only one spouse is a believer, let alone both. 1 Cor 7:14.) Now, like I say: difficult verse, several translation possibilities. But, if you look at those possibilities, I think at a minimum it's clear that seeking a godly seed is part of the good of marriage.
So I think Genesis 2:24 and Malachi 2:15 both point to this, that unitive and procreative go together. And, honestly, so do the simple facts of that matter! God could have given us two acts: a fun, bonding, marriage-creating act and a boring, formal, do-this-a-few-times-in-your-life child-creating act. But he didn't. He gave us one act which does both things. That seems like a very strong argument that those two things go together.
So, like I said, I (kinda) agree with Humanae Vitae here: unitive and procreative really do go together. And I think the conclusion is sound: you shouldn't seek sex while trying to avoid babies. It was bad when Onan did it, and it's bad when anyone else does it. It separates what God has joined together.
But (and this is where the "kinda" comes in) the question we asked with Onan is relevant here too. Is this about each sexual act individually, or is it about the whole sexual relationship? I think, again, there are things that point us towards a more holistic view. Both Genesis 2:25 and Malachi 2:15 seem to be talking about sex with that whole-marriage lens. And nature seems to point the same way. God has deliberately made humans so that, under ordinary married circumstances, only a small fraction of sexual acts will lead to children. More than that, by instructing married couples to come together regularly (1 Cor 7:5), God has more or less commanded them sometimes to have sex which they know will not lead to children (e.g. during pregnancy). A brief look at the animal kingdom shows that he didn't have to do it this way; many animals only mate when the female is fertile.
Yes, God has joined the unitive and procreative purposes of sex. But he's not joined them together so that they must both be present in each act. In God's good design, a healthy sexual relationship will produce babies, and it will also include lots of unions which do not produce babies. In fact, because they unite the parents, even the non-baby-producing unions are good for the babies, by strengthening the marriage that nurtures them. In a healthy marriage, every sexual act is pro-child, even the ones that don't produce new children.
An Important Digression on Technology
Remember that Lambeth 1920 resolution? I quoted it in full earlier because I think it bears chewing over. There's a lot of wisdom in there, good Biblical sense. If we're going to disagree with them, we need to know why. Well, here's where I differ from the bishops:
"We utter an emphatic warning against the use of unnatural means for the avoidance of conception..."
Unnatural means. Implicitly, that means they're fine with natural means. And that implication is brought right out into the open by the Catholics. Humanae Vitae spends quite a long time explaining this: contraception bad, "recourse to infertile periods" good. It's fine to avoid children, so long as you're doing it using a calendar not a condom.
Although this is very understandable, I don't think it stacks up. Remember that the Lord judges the thoughts and intentions of the heart. The law is a law of love, and love is a heart issue. "Clean the inside of the cup, and the outside will be clean as well." It is the intentions and loves which drive an action that ultimately matter. So if we've said that the desire to have sex while avoiding children can (in some circumstances!) be a legitimate desire, then that same desire can still be legitimate when aided by technology.
In other words, I think the appeal of the Catholic position actually comes from a confusion about that word natural. Sometimes, natural means "according to God's design" and unnatural means "defying God's design". But at other times, natural means "unassisted by technology" and unnatural means "assisted by technology". We need to keep these two things distinguished. Something can be tech-assisted and still the most natural thing in the world - think of a farmer ploughing. And, as Paul tells us in Romans 1, something can use no tools at all and be deeply and horribly unnatural. The presence or absence of technology simply doesn't tell you whether an act is morally natural or not.
In fact, we could say more: the use of technology is part of human design. Technology is (in that first sense, the moral sense) a very natural thing indeed. This is true even when bad people develop a technology for bad ends: the tech itself is not the problem, the bad ends are. A good person is free to use that technology to good ends; remember that metalworking and musical instruments were invented by one of the worst families in history (Gen 4:17-24). There's a lot more good stuff on this topic here.
Having said that, we do also need to recognise that man's relationship with tech is two-way: we use it, but as we use it, it affects us. (As anyone who owns a phone knows.) And this brings us on to our final anti-contraception argument.
Argument #3: The Impact of Contraception
Contraception lets people have sex without having babies. That's the whole point of it. Well, what effect is that going to have on people? It doesn't take a genius to come up with some possibilities, or to simply observe the effects in the culture around us. Here are some to chew on (the first three come straight from Humanae Vitae):
(a) The possibility of pregnancy is a big drawback for sexual immorality. Contraception makes pregnancy much less likely. So, contraception will generally lead to more sexual immorality. And, in fact, the introduction of the pill in 1960 is generally seen as one of the big causes of the sexual revolution.
(b) without contraception, it's hard to have sex without remembering that it potentially ties you to a whole host of duties, to the child that might result and to your co-parent. Contraception makes that much less obvious, and so makes it easier to think about sex in purely selfish terms: my pleasure, my needs. Again, this is very obvious in our culture. Married Christians would do well to ask whether it has crept into their attitudes as well.
(c) As Lewis taught us, "man's power over nature" is often really "man's power over other man." The existence of contraception means that society, or even government, can get involved in our families in a way that it couldn't before. And again we see this today, not only in places like China but also in the West, where there is increasing social stigma on larger families.
(d) Making it easy to avoid kids enables us to... well, avoid kids. It encourages a basically anti-child attitude, or at least a child-neutral attitude. And, once again, that's everywhere.
I don't have much to say about this argument except to agree wholeheartedly! A technology can be used for good and yet still have huge, huge risks (nuclear fission, for example). Contraception certainly has risks. I wish Christians thought about them more. My only comment is this: the fact that contraception has had these societal effects doesn't mean we should ban it outright. The fact that it can be used badly doesn't mean it can't be used well. Abusus non tollit usum, and that's Latin, so the Catholics should be all over it.
Christian Liberty
We've surveyed the main anti-contraception arguments. Let's tie up the question of legitimacy before we move on to the question of wisdom. In short, what I've argued is that none of the arguments above quite work. Onan did a bad thing, but Gen 38 doesn't prove that contraception is always wrong. Considering the purpose of sex helps us see that avoiding children in the whole relationship is bad, but that doesn't prove contraception is always wrong in specific sexual acts. And, finally, contraception can be used in bad ways and affect our thinking unhelpfully; but, again, that doesn't prove contraception is always wrong.
This is where Christian Liberty comes in. Basically, if God hasn't bound the conscience, then neither should we. It's true that there's a terrible danger of relaxing or denying God's actual commands - Jesus speaks strongly against that (Matthew 5:19). But there is also a danger of adding our own commands and pretending they're from God, and Jesus speaks strongly against that too (Matthew 15:1-9).
Look: contraception is a dangerous thing. Our culture uses it as a tool for heinous wickedness. Our churches are rife with unthinking use of it, and that unthinking use damages our families and keeps us from some of God's richest blessings. I hate that. I feel the pull to just say "contraception bad, don't use it", I really do. But the fear of God prevents me! I don't get to bind consciences that God has not bound. As far as I can tell, God has not said in nature or Scripture that contraception per se is a sin. So I don't get to say that either.
But just because it's lawful doesn't mean it's beneficial. Just because it's permitted doesn't mean it's wise. So let's turn to that question of wisdom.
Is Contraception Wise?
Biblical maturity, Biblical wisdom, is far more than a matter of skills and external nous. It is about the heart. Christians no longer live under the old law, constantly asking "is this allowed", because we live under a much deeper and richer law, the law of love. The law of love actually fulfils everything in the old law (Romans 13:8-10), while going way further. It seeks not just the right external actions, but the right heart motivation. It seeks a heart that reflects the heart of God.
When it comes to contraception, then, we should be asking: what does God love? How has God made the world, so I can cut with the grain of it? What has he told me to focus on, to love, to seek? When we ask that question, we may not be led away from all contraception; but we will be led far away from a contraceptive mindset. Listen to W. Ross Blackburn, a rare Protestant opponent of contraception:
the explicit command “Thou shalt not use contraception” cannot be found in the Scriptures. What we do have in [the] Scriptures is unqualified enthusiasm for the blessing of children, lamentation at barrenness, and the affirmation that it is the Lord who opens and closes the womb. Absent from the Scriptures is any hint of the kind of contraceptive mentality that is pervasive in our culture, and often in our churches as well. In the end, the call to the church is a call to repentance, to allow our minds to be transformed.
W. Ross Blackburn, "Sex and Fullness", 130
Now, I disagree with Blackburn that this rules out contraception. But I think he's exactly right that it rules out a "contraceptive mentality". It is that mentality, that mindset, that I want to take aim at now.
Here are three basic principles to guide our thinking. None of them are rocket science, and yet I think if we get them into our bloodstream they will make a huge difference.
Principle #1. God has made children the natural fruit of sex.
I laid out arguments for this above, so I'll be fairly brief here. It's there in Genesis 2:24, in Malachi 2:15, and it's stark staring obvious if we consider nature itself. Sex is designed with children in mind. This is from God. He made it like that. Sex doesn't only result in children; we've already seen a bunch of "unitive" purposes to sex, like joy and comfort and pleasure. But all those unitive purposes are still connected to children; in God's design, they create and strengthen a marriage that is the best place for those children to be raised. As I said before, a healthy marriage will contain a lot of sex over the years, and a handful of those acts will produce children (God willing), but all of those sexual acts will benefit the children. Sex is designed as a fundamentally pro-child thing.
Cutting with the grain of creation means welcoming children as the fruit of sex. Even if apples aren't the only benefit of apple trees, still, it would be a strange thing to plant an apple tree and be dismayed at the arrival of apples. It is a much stranger thing to seek sex and then be dismayed at the arrival of children. It doesn't cut with reality; it doesn't recognise the way God made the world. God is giving us a gift, and we try to pull it to pieces. We're like a child who is given a doll and pulls off the arm, throwing the rest of the doll away. This is an ugly attitude. It's much more like Onan than we should be comfortable with.
Principle #2. God gives children as a blessing.
If we wanted, we could spend hours on this. Over and over again in Scripture, childlessness is seen as a great grief, even a curse, while children are a great blessing. We could see this in the stories (Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel & Leah, Hannah, Zechariah & Elizabeth); we could see it in the commands (e.g. the levirate law, Deuteronomy 25:5-10); we could see it in the promises and judgements of God (Deuteronomy 28:4,18, Psalm 113:9, Hosea 9:14). If you think this post is long, it could be much longer.
But let's go with just two psalms, Psalm 127-128. Psalm 127 opens with the famous "Unless the Lord builds the house, the builders labour in vain." Nothing you work at will really do anything unless God blesses it. And the second half of the psalm zooms in on a particular blessing.
Behold, children are a heritage from the LORD, the fruit of the womb a reward.
Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the children of one’s youth.
Blessed is the man who fills his quiver with them! He shall not be put to shame when he speaks with his enemies in the gate.Psalm 127:3-5
It's pretty clear, isn't it? Children come from God, and they're good. They're a heritage, a reward, a blessing. Not only are children good, but lots of children are good. The more the merrier.
That might seem quite strong, but Psalm 128 is perhaps even stronger.
Blessed is everyone who fears the LORD, who walks in his ways!
You shall eat the fruit of the labor of your hands; you shall be blessed, and it shall be well with you.
Your wife will be like a fruitful vine within your house; your children will be like olive shoots around your table.
Behold, thus shall the man be blessed who fears the LORD.Psalm 128:1-4
The reason I say this might be even stronger is that while Psalm 127 speaks of children as a blessing, Psalm 128 makes them part of the blessing blueprint. What does it look like when God blesses a man? Fruitful work, fruitful family. (Which is the same blueprint as Genesis 1:28, when you think about it.)
If we don't think of children as a blessing, we've shown that we don't understand children. But it's worse than that. We've shown we don't understand blessing either.
Principle #3. God loves children.
This is the most basic principle of all. God loves children. He gives them as a blessing not so that they will bring something else with them (economic strength or a sense of purpose or instagram opportunities), but because they are a blessing. He thinks children are a good thing. He likes them.
“And they were bringing children to Jesus that he might touch them, and the disciples rebuked them. But when Jesus saw it, he was indignant and said to them, ‘Let the children come to me; do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of God. Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it.’ And he took them in his arms and blessed them, laying his hands on them.”
Mark 10:13-16
Jesus was not just pro-children in an abstract way, happy for other people to have them in theory but objecting if the dirty little blighters got too close. No: he wanted them nearby. He wanted to spend time with them. He wanted babies in his arms. He wanted to put his hands on them, the hands of God, for blessing. And he was indignant that anyone might get in the way.
Doesn't that ring out in the stories? When he raised the little girl from the dead (Talitha cumi - so familiar, as a father might get his daughter up after a night's sleep), he told them to give her something to eat. In all the commotion and excitement of an unbelievable miracle, he remembered the girl herself and her needs. When he went into Jerusalem, it was the children who sang hosannas and cried out in his praise, much to the Pharisees' disgust. Have you ever pondered the implications of that childish enthusiasm? Children have good antennae; they can tell when someone doesn't care much for them. But they sang the praises of Jesus.
If we are being remade in the image of Christ, we will be like him. Christian wisdom is to love as Christ loves. So the wise Christian will love children. And for the wise married Christian, that love will affect their approach to contraception. How could it not? After all, what we love is revealed in the choices we make. Esolen's words are well worth pondering:
If we loved children, we would have a few. If we had them, we would want them as children, and would love the wonder with which they behold the world, and would hope that some of it might open our own eyes a little. We would love their games, and would want to play them once in a while, stirring in ourselves those memories of play that no one regrets, and that are almost the only things an old man can look back on with complete satisfaction. We would want children tagging along after us, or if not, then only because we would understand that they had better things to do.
Anthony Esolen, Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child, xii.
If we loved children, we would have a few.
A Personal Testimony
This is perhaps the right place to say that, for my family, this is not at all theoretical. When my wife and I married, I was just starting a degree far from home in a US seminary (a really good one, if you happen to be in the market). My plan was that we would avoid having children for the whole of our 3-4 year stint in the US, and then probably for at least a year after our return to the UK while my wife got some career experience and we saved up a decent deposit for a house.
Over the next year or so I became increasingly uncomfortable with that plan. My discomfort had a number of sources, but the crunch came when I did some serious study of the Songs of Ascent. I just about made it through Psalm 127 without buckling; but then I had to do Psalm 128, and I gave in. I realised that I was pursuing genuine blessings (in-person theological lectures, a deposit for a house), but I had inverted the blessing hierarchy. I was using lesser blessings to put off greater blessings. And so, to cut a long story short, I repented, and God was immediately gracious to us, and we returned to the UK for the birth of our first child a little under nine months later. I finished my degree online, and we still haven't bought a house. Were in-person lectures better than online? They were. Would it be nice to own a house? It would. Would I choose those things over my daughter? You must be out of your tiny mind.
That's one half of our story when it comes to contraception. But it's not the whole story. Our daughter's birth went badly, and ended in a pretty gnarly emergency C-section. The doctors made it clear that, if we really wanted a large family, some recovery time was a must. We didn't do an amazing job of this; our son arrived 18 months later. But, you know, we tried! And we tried for the sake of future children.
In our marriage, then, we first used contraception in an anti-child way, putting off children so we could get on with other things. I repented of that folly, and praise the Lord for his kindness to us. (It really was my folly, by the way - my wife wanted children from the start and had graciously submitted to me.) Since then we have used contraception in a pro-child way, seeking under God to plan our family so that we pursue his blessings.
And so, in short...
What does all this mean? If you've read up to here, you probably have a fair idea of what I'm batting for, but let me try and lay it out in a few words.
I am against the contraceptive mindset. Our culture sees children as (mostly) a hindrance and (sometimes) an accessory; we should see them as a gift and a blessing. Married couples should want children, and ideally plenty of them. (And when they have children they should, to quote a wise man, "disciple them like crazy" - but that's a topic for another time.)
At the same time, I am not against contraception. You can't just beget kids, you need to raise them too. There might be medical reasons why contraception is a good move, or financial reasons, or reasons to do with personal capacity, or who knows what else. The thing about Christian liberty is that I'm not going to legislate for you the exact situations in which contraception is and is not OK. The key is to get the heart right, and the right heart will do different things in different circumstances. As Augustine said, "Love, and then do what you want."
Time for Caveats and Quibbles
As I said right at the start, this one might hurt. And perhaps, for you, it has - either hurt or enraged or both! Maybe that's a good thing. "Faithful are the wounds of a friend." But I want any hurt from this post to be the result of faithful wounds, not clodhopping miscommunications. So let me try and cover some bases. Here are some thoughts that may have crossed your mind as you read.
Thought #1: are you really saying you can't be blessed if you don't have kids?!
No. Thanks for asking! I'm not saying that.
When we talk about how children are a blessing, there are two things we need to bear in mind. Firstly, children are not an automatic blessing; or rather, in a fallen world, they are a blessing that sin can turn into a curse. "A wise son makes a glad father, but a foolish son is a sorrow to his mother" (Proverbs 10:1). This is why the Bible spends way more time talking about raising children than about begetting children.
But secondly, and to answer your question, I am not saying that someone who has no children cannot be blessed by God. That would make a nonsense of Jesus' and Paul's teaching that singleness, for those so gifted, is a higher calling than marriage. But I think it is true to say that the blessed person, even if they're physically childless, is always parental. A blessed woman will be a mother to many (e.g. Romans 16:13); a blessed man will be a father. Jesus never married, but he saw his offspring (Isaiah 53:10); Paul was single, but fathered whole churches (1 Cor 4:15). To give life to others, so that they are shaped in our likeness and receive an inheritance from us - this is the glory of man and woman, and it is sometimes seen most clearly in those who have no physical children.
Thought #2: this all sounds crazy judgemental
It's quite possible that you've read this and felt judged. I've called the attempt to have sex but not kids an "ugly attitude"; I've even said that I "hate" some of the impacts of contraception in our churches. Pretty robust language. And if the issue is a quarter as widespread as I suspect, then this robust language applies to a lot of people.
So I want to say as clearly as I can: no judgement. There are a number of reasons for this. Firstly, and most obviously, I would be condemning myself; just read that Personal Testimony section again. Secondly, I simply don't know enough. Whether and when a couple have children is on the one hand a really public thing (there the children are, or aren't!) but it's also deeply private. Fertility is not a straightforward thing; and when contraception has been used, well, there's liberty for that. Can I discern the thoughts of your heart? Of course not. Let alone judge, I wouldn't consider myself qualified to assess unless a couple tell me frankly what's going on.
But thirdly and most importantly, Jesus tells me not to judge. He is the Lord of his people, the Judge, the Master. I am not. (Nor are you!) He is able to make his servants stand before him. So when, for example, I call a particular attitude "ugly", I am not attempting to pin that judgement on anyone. You may pin it on yourself if you think it's right, and if so, I'd encourage you to repent. But I am not the one judging you in that case; I am, I hope, merely helping you do the life-saving work of judging yourself, so that you will not come under judgement (1 Cor 11:31).
Perhaps you are reading this and your decisions are irreversible. You avoided children when they were an option, and now they are not an option. That might feel very crushing. But don't be crushed. Remember that the Lord delights in mercy (Micah 7:18); remember that he promises to restore the years the locust has eaten (Joel 2:25). The question to ask is "how can I be fruitful now?" There is no point in worrying how you could have been more fruitful in the past. Once you have repented, you can leave that to your gracious Lord.
Also, this is crucial: please don't read this and use it to judge others. If you see the contraceptive mindset in yourself, repent. If you see it in others, pray for them and leave it to the Lord. You are not their judge. Don't let the pursuit of blessing turn you into someone who despises his brother.
Thought #3: this feels very burdensome
It might be helpful to go over what I'm not saying. I'm not saying that Christian couples should aim for as many children as physically possible. I'm not saying that you should have your children as soon as possible, or as close together as possible. All of these are issues of prudence, requiring the application of wisdom to particular situations.
But I am saying that we should love children, we should desire the blessing of children. (And more children, sooner in life, and closer together, would be a great move for many!) If that feels burdensome - well, I sympathise. I certainly know the experience of coming up against God's wisdom and wishing very fervently that it were not so. To confront God's wisdom and kick against it is a very claustrophobic experience. If that's the position you find yourself in, let me suggest prayer. Ask God to help you love his blessings! And then try him out. Taste and see that the Lord is good. You are not being required, right now, to sign up to a quintillion future children. Who knows what tomorrow may bring? The question to ask is what obedience and wisdom and love would look like now. If we ask that question, and then put one foot in front of another, we will find that the Lord gives strength for that daily obedience. When it comes to the duties of ten years' time, he will still be there, he will still be faithful, and you will have grown.
And that's a good note to close on: the faithfulness of the Lord. My argument against the contraceptive mentality boils down to this: God is faithful. His design in creation is wise. The blessings he gives are good. The things he loves are truly lovable. Let's seek to live wisely in his world, to receive his gifts with gratitude, and to love as he loves. Bring on the babies; they come from our life-giving Lord.