The Protest of a Protestant Minister Against Birth Control
by Rev. Matthew Trewhella
Sunlight was just beginning to break over the darkness of the morning as my wife and I headed toward the entrance of the cold brick-faced building. Fear and apprehension gripped me each step of the way. A thousand questions and thoughts raced through my mind. "How much pain will there be? Why the heck did I ever do this in the first place? Maybe I should just leave."
As I entered the door, I figured these were my last moments to bolt and run. I thought back to when I had done something similar six and a half years earlier and remembered the words that blazed across my mind when the procedure began--I will never do this again! Yet there I was, about to have a vasectomy reversal. What could possibly bring a man to the point where he would be willing to go under the knife once again?
Read the rest of the article here.
What does the LORD "think" of BC? What is the First Commandment? No, not of the Ten Commandments, the core of the law of Moses. The First Commandment? "Be fruitful and increase (multiply)." What was the First Commandment given to Noah, his wife, their sons, and their sons' wives? "Be fruitful, and multiply. Fill the earth." This was given TWICE, once when they first came out of the ark, and the second time a little later.
Now, objectors say that this did not forbid contraception. But there is another incident that shines light on that: the matter of Er and Onan.
Now, the Bible does not tell us exactly what it was that Er did for which God struck him dead, but the context strongly indicates that it was the same thing for which his brother Onan was killed: practicing "Natural Family Planning." Objectors say that Onan was killed for disobeying his father, Judah. But the penalty given later in the law of Moses and in Proverbs for disobedience was a beating, not death. Others say that Onan was killed for refusing to procreate with his dead brother's widow, Tamar, so that his brother's name would not be forgotten in Israel. But in the law of Moses, the penalty was public shaming, not death.
The method that Onan chose to avoid procreation is well known as quite ineffective. If God had just let him alone to continue practicing it, Tamar probably would have become pregnant anyway. But it appears from the Scripture that Onan was stricken dead after one perpetration.
The method Onan used was not "NFP?" Well, if not, was it artificial? He certainly took advantage of nature, which has limitations on what people can do and still procreate. We aren't fish, that deposit their milt on the clump of eggs already laid in the water. It has to be done fairly correctly or it won't work. Onan's trick sorta works, but it depends a lot on exactly how the male goes about it: timing, etc. So in practice it has a high "failure" rate.
There was an excellent article on BC in Life Advocate in 1993. If anyone would like to read it, perhaps someone can e-mail it to them. I haven't seen it on the web.
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