What to do? Is it ok
to use artificial methods of contraception?
That can be a difficult question to answer honestly and objectively
looking at both sides of the issue. Many
love the convenience of artificial birth control and therefore neglect to objectively
evaluate the pros and cons of artificial birth control for fear of what they
might find. Today, this author will try
to remedy this situation by looking at the reasons why we shouldn’t be using
artificial contraception.
At first I avoided the issue of an authoritative Church
because I knew what the Catholic Church taught on the subject of contraceptive
use. And in this way I could claim
ignorance of Her authority, I never took the time to find out why she taught as
She did. I was fooling myself that I
wasn’t doing anything wrong. For we
Catholics know that to use contraception is against the teachings of the Church
on moral grounds. God joined the aspect
of unity between two married people with the aspect of procreation in a single
act of marital love. What God has joined
together let no man separate.
Then, one day I took the bull by the horns and looked at why
the Catholic Church taught what She did on the issue. I could deny it no longer and told my wife
that I no longer believed in artificial contraceptive use.
There are many Scriptural reasons why using contraception is
wrong, the main verse demonstrating the misuse of the mans seed making the sex
act infertile (spilling it on the ground as seen in Genesis 38:9-10) was the
withdrawal method and in doing so the man was killed for it. Now some will tell you that Onan was killed
because 1)he did not produce offspring for his deceased brother and that’s why
God killed him. And others will tell you
that it was because 2)he did not do as Jacob, his father, had told him to
do. But that is simply not the case.
First let us look at the passage in question:
Then Judah
said to Onan (Judah
What we see here is a brothers duty to produce an offspring
with the wife of a dead brother, this duty is called the levirate law. Both in Gen 38:8-10, the Onan incident, and
in Deuteronomy (hereafter Deut) 25:7-10 we find someone refusing to give
offspring to their dead brothers wife.
And yet one is killed the other is not.
The difference in methods on how these men refused to give offspring
will determine the reason for the difference in penalty. The man in Deut. simply did not take the
woman and therefore avoided giving offspring while Onan did take her and
spilled his seed to avoid giving offspring.
The spilling of seed is the difference in the act and explains the
difference in penalty. Death instead of
humiliation.
In fact any misuse of the mans seed is extremely condemned
by God. We find that any spilling of the
seed in any unsuitable receptacle (ie inhospitable to the propagation of life)
brings about the penalty of death. The
penalty for a man to lie with a man as with a woman is death and yet nowhere in
Scripture do we see such a penalty for two women. Levitical Law tells us that the wasting of
seed with non-regenerative sexual acts warrants death, even the wasting of
animal seed warrants death(Lev 18:22-23; 20:13). That’s why there is no such death penalty
anywhere in Scripture for the sexual pleasure of two women…because there is no
wasted seed.
This idea of wasting seed to be sinful can be seen in
mountains of Christian writings from the very beginnings of Christianity
itself. But today I’d like to ask a
simple question. Since the use of
contraception was condemned as going against God’s law by Christians for over
2000 years, why would we now believe that God changed His mind on the subject?
Since we know that God doesn’t change when reading Malachi 9:6 “For
I am the Lord, and I change not”.
What was a truth of God revealed to man 2000 years ago will remain the
same today.
God Bless
Nathan
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