My classes recently covered topics regarding the relationship between the body and soul, plus marriage and sexuality (you can read most of the lecture here). I made it a point to speak candidly and without much euphemism so as to be as clear as possible. Interestingly enough, the more shameless the culture gets, the more comfortable and open students are discussing sexuality and developing a moral understanding of it. At the end of each class, I asked the students to anonymously write questions that I would answer in a later class. Realizing the importance for each of my six classes to receive all the answers to the questions, I began the process of writing to the study body as a whole in a Q&A format. Below are a few of the questions and responses.
1. Who can judge true love? Who has the right to?
Jesus can #FTW. In John 15:13 Jesus says, “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” Obviously, Jesus laid down his physical life for us, but at the heart of what he did was sacrifice. He died for our benefit, so we could be with him in Heaven, so we would be saved from the fires of Hell. So, what type of love Christ is talking about? Let’s look at a few of the types of love we might experience everyday:
- I love cold pizza for breakfast.
- I love it when the entire school accidentally dresses exactly the same – everyday.
- I love cats #needsfriends
- I love you because you make my heart go pitter-patter.
- Hooking up with my boyfriend feels great and because of that I love him.
- It’s freezing and I gave my girlfriend my coat to wear because I love her.
Obviously, these types of love are not the same and if we spoke just about any language other than English, that would be obvious because there are often multiple words for love. English has one word for love and that causes confusion. The love that Jesus is talking about – what true love actually is – is a selfless love, a sacrificial love, a love that is for the overall good of another person. Love is not a fuzzy feeling, though emotions can accompany love – love turns the other person into a better person.
Newsflash: You can’t become a better person without God. Is it love (friendly or romantic) if friends lead each other to sin? Of course not, since sin leads us away from God.
Recap: Jesus told us to love each other like he loves us. His love brought us closer to God (himself). You must follow his command and example by loving other people in ways that bring them closer to God. Actions that lead people away from God or are sinful are not love regardless of what they look/feel(physical)/feel(emotion) like.
2. If, in a married couple, someone is infertile, are they allowed to have sex? (because sex must be procreative)?
Because I’m a human with human DNA, I should because of my nature, have two arms. If I was born with only one arm, does that mean I’m not human? No. I’m still human, but there is a privation. A privation is a lack of something that should be there – I’m lacking an arm that I should have. Similarly, if a spouse is infertile, that’s a privation, since they should have the ability to procreate because they are human. Since this is an abnormality, it’s an exception and isn’t a reason a couple can’t get married.
This brings up an argument that many people make regarding homosexuality – that there’s no difference between a gay couple that can’t have kids and an infertile couple that can’t have kids. This, of course, is not the case and nature tells us why:
- By human nature, fertility can only be achieved through sex between a man and a woman. When fertility is missing from here, it’s the absence of a good thing that should be present: it is a privation.
- By human nature, fertility can not be achieved through sex between anything else, whether that’s two people of the same gender, or a human with another species of plant or animal. When fertility is missing from here, it’s because it’s against human nature.
It’s pretty clear that there is a major distinction between an infertile couple and a homosexual couple. Similarly, contraception (whether through a device or surgery) is against human nature because it intentionally causes the privation – the absence of a good thing that should be present.
3. Is it ok to use contraceptives in marriage? I’ve always been curious.
Simply put, contraception tries to remove fertility from sex. One of the vows that people take when they get married is to accept children – following God’s command to be fruitful (Gen. 1). The marriage vows become the spiritual reality and sex is the expression of that. Every time a married couple has sex, they are re-vowing to love each other permanently, exclusively, fruitfully and freely. Contraception scratches out the “fruitfully” vow, making sex an incomplete expression of marriage.
Historically speaking, all Christian denominations taught contraception was immoral until 1930. It was at the Lambeth Conference in 1930 that the Anglican Church became the first to allow contraception and all other protestant denominations quickly followed suit.
Biblically speaking, there are instances of people trying to manipulate marriage and sex – it rarely works out for them. Most notably is Onan (Gen 38:8-10) who didn’t want to have a kid and so contracepted while having sex with his wife (if you’re curious how, look it up…). The result?
“And the thing which he did displeased the Lord; therefore He killed him also.”
-Gen 38:10
Between God commanding man and woman to be fruitful and multiply, Onan being struck dead for contracepting, and the first 1,930 years of Christianity universally holding contraception as being immoral, it seems pretty clear that God intended sex to hold at least the possibility of fertility.
What’s the alternative to contraception? It is not difficult to monitor when a woman is fertile. It usually consists in simply taking a normal temperature reading every morning – generally speaking, when her temperature goes up by 1 – 2 degrees, the woman is fertile and when it returns to normal, she’s not. It’s a bit more complicated than that, but that’s the main idea. That’s called Natural Family Planning (NFP) – using nature to help determine when conception will occur. The practice is simple: if you want kids, you know when the woman is fertile; if you don’t want kids, you know when not to have sex.
Many people look at contraception and NFP and see the same thing: methods to prevent pregnancy. While they have the end goal in common (preventing pregnancy), the way each achieves that goal are very, very different.
- Contraception removes an essential aspect of a woman – her fertility. NFP leaves who she is in tact.
- Contraception avoids pregnancy through changing sex through chemical or device or procedure. NFP doesn’t change anything – it’s simply abstaining from sex, which doesn’t change anything about sex. I mean, really, anybody not having sex right now is basically practicing NFP.
- Contraception does not require self-control. NFP does require self-control.