Friday's Times carried a fair piece about the Bible and contraception. A few clarifications are in order.
Both the IUD and the "morning after" pill are not contraceptives. Contraception means "against the beginning"; that is, contraceptives work to prevent the egg and sperm meeting and starting a new life. Once the egg and sperm join, a new human life has begun. To prevent the implantation of this new life is an abortion. Thus, the IUD and the "morning after" pills are abortifacients, not contraceptives.
The Times is to be commended for saying that one of the ways the birth control pill works is by preventing implantation. Sadly, couples using the birth control pill may be aborting their children without intending it. Using the birth control pill is like standing atop the Dlanubeka building with a rifle and firing a shot in the general direction of the bus rank. One does not know if the bullet will strike and kill anyone, but one cannot be sure.
Concerning the Onan incident, listen to a portion of the booklet Birth Control and Christian Discipleship by John F. Kippley: "Biblical scholar Manuel Miguens has pointed out that a close examination [of Genesis 38] shows that God condemned Onan for the specific action he performed, not his anti-Levirate intentions. The translation 'he spilled his seed on the ground' fails to do full justice to the Hebrew expression. The Hebrew verb shichet never means to spill or waste. Rather, it means to act perversely. The text also makes it clear that his perverse action was related towards the ground, not against his brother." Kippley quotes Miguens: "...His perversion or corruption consists in his action itself, not precisely in the result and goal of his act...In a strict interpretation the text says that what was evil in the sight of the Lord was what Onan actually did (asher asah); the emphasis in this sentence of verse 10 does not fall on what he intended to achieve, but on what he did."
Every Christian church, from 33 A.D. to 1930 A.D., condemned artificial birth control in any form as gravely sinful. In 1930 the Anglican church said artificial contraception for married couples with serious reasons was acceptable. The day after the Anglican church in America made this decision, the Washington Post newspaper wrote: "Carried to its logical conclusion, the committee's report, if carried into effect, would sound the death-knoll of marriage as a holy institution by establishing degrading practices which would encourage indiscriminate immorality. The suggestion that the use of legalized contraceptives would be 'careful and restrained' is preposterous." The fact that it is easier to get free condoms in Mbabane than it is to find a free toilet gives credibility to the Post's prediction. Is anyone under the delusion that those condoms, or the other contraceptives promoted in various quarters, are intended only for married couples with serious cause to avoid pregnancy?
Happily, for those couples who do need to delay the birth of another child, there is a method called Natural Family Planning (NFP). NFP uses some easy-to-record physical signs of the wife to know when she is fertile and when she is not. As a husband and wife become knowledgeable about her fertility, and as they consider their readiness for another child, they can decide when marital relations are appropriate and when they are not. Natural Family Planning is not the unreliable "rhythm method"; NFP works as well as any modern contraceptive technology. This is documented in the British Medical Journal by an author who studied the use of Natural Family Planning among Hindu and Muslim couples in Calcutta, India. These couples were instructed in Natural Family Planning by Mother Teresa, the famous Albanian nun who spent decades among the poorest of the poor.
Natural Family Planning, in addition to being effective, encourages couples to grow in communication, understanding, and cooperation-and surely every marriage can use more communication, understanding, and cooperation. It is acceptable to every Christian denomination, and it builds the kind of love God wants for married couples.
Rudy Poglitsh
rpoglitsh@live.com
more letters at http://letterstotheTOS.blogspot.com
