By Tim Challies
I have been asked to write about the Christian position on birth control. This is something I have discussed in the past, but there are many ways to approach the topic and this time I would like to approach it from a bit of a different angle. I intend to share how I have gone about arriving at my own position. I will begin by immediately stating what the Bible clearly forbids when it comes to birth control. From there I will survey the Bible to find principles that are helpful in the discussion. That will take us to the end of this article, leaving me to say more another day.
We begin here: The Bible is silent on any explicit discussion of the subject of birth control. (If you are wondering about Onan, feel free to scroll to the bottom of this article.) Nowhere in the Bible does God command that a couple must or should use birth control at any stage in their marriage. Likewise, nowhere in the Bible does God explicitly forbid the use of birth control. It’s not that birth control did not exist in the day the Bible was written, but simply that God, for his own good purposes, chose not to give us explicit direction. However, the Bible has so much to say about marriage and sexuality and family and human life that we are not simply left guessing and hoping for the best.
What God Forbids
From what the Bible teaches about life and marriage, we can all affirm that two methods of birth control are clearly forbidden by Scripture.
God Forbids Abstinence. The Bible tells us that spouses are not to deprive one another but, rather, are to regularly enjoy the sexual relationship. The only exception is given by the Apostle Paul who says that a couple may abstain for a short time in order to devote themselves to prayer. “Do not deprive one another, except perhaps by agreement for a limited time, that you may devote yourselves to prayer; but then come together again, so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control” (1 Corinthians 7:5). Long-term abstinence within marriage is not to be used as a method of birth control.
God Forbids Abortion. The Bible places the highest value on human life. Time and again Scripture affirms that we are to treasure and protect life, knowing that God is sovereign over life and death. Therefore, we may not destroy life as a method of birth control. I will have more to say about this in our next article (including the difficult subject of ectopic pregnancy).
At this point we know that the Bible does not explicitly command or forbid birth control and we know that at least two methods of birth control are forbidden to us. This helpfully narrows the scope of our conversation. We now need to determine if God allows any form of birth control at all. Once we have done that, and if we determine that at least some forms may be acceptable, we can move on to a discussion of whether one form or method of birth control is morally superior to another.
Principles
What I want to do next is look to the Bible to find principles that can offer guidance as we consider this issue. I have simply surveyed the Bible to gather pieces of information that may be helpful in this discussion. Consider each of these a potential piece of the puzzle.
Be Fruitful and Multiply. God created human life and as one of man’s primary roles told him to “be fruitful and multiply.” It is our duty as humans to procreate and our special duty as Christians to fill the earth with people who know and love the Lord. Therefore it is reasonable to say that as a general principle God expects that a husband and wife will have at least some children and raise them for his glory.
Children Are a Blessing. The Bible is clear that we are to regard children as a blessing and not as a burden. Psalm 127 says “Behold, children are a heritage from the LORD, The fruit of the womb is a reward.” Where our culture too often sees children as a financial, emotional or psychological burden, the Bible tells us that they are a blessing and a reward. Further, Many Children Is a Great Blessing. God gave no conditions to his command that we be fruitful and multiply. He did not say “multiply up to and including eight children at which point you must stop.” At the same time he did not say “be fruitful and multiply until you have exceeded two children.” We are given no rules about how many children are appropriate in God’s eyes. We do hear hints, though, that God approves of large families and that many children represent a special blessing. Psalm 127 continues, “Like arrows in the hand of a warrior, So are the children of one’s youth. Happy is the man who has his quiver full of them.” Many children represent many blessings.
God Is Sovereign. God is absolutely sovereign, having foreordained every pregnancy. Whether a woman has one children or seven, God has decreed the beginning and end of each pregnancy. It is the Lord who opens and closes the womb and he makes no mistakes. In the same vein, God is sovereign over provision. Scripture tells us time and again that God will provide for all of our needs. We are to have confidence that no matter how impossible our needs may seem, he will provide. This means that when it comes to our confidence in God’s provision, a family with fifteen children can have the same confidence as a family with one child.
There Is No Built-in Birth Control. God has not given humans the innate ability to enjoy the sexual relationship while absolutely avoiding pregnancy. This means that under normal birth control-free conditions, and during the childbearing years, there is always the possibility of a pregnancy when a husband and wife obey God by enjoying the sexual relationship.
These are some of the principles we will want to keep in mind as we consider the morality of birth control. And that is where we will turn in the next article.
A word about Onan: The story of Onan is recorded in Genesis 38 and it goes like this: “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.” God did not kill Onan because he used coitus interruptus as a method of birth control, but because he refused to fulfill his duty toward his brother and his brother’s family. He made a mockery of the commands of God, being willing to take pleasure in his brother’s wife but being unwilling to accept the responsibility of raising a child in his brother’s name. While this story may not be entirely irrelevant to our discussion, it is not the place to begin.
Part 2
This is now the second of two articles I am writing on the subject of birth control. In the last article I first said that the Bible neither allows nor forbids birth control, I offered two thoughts on what God forbids when it comes to birth control (abortion and abstinence) and then went looking for a series of principles that would be helpful in guiding a discussion on the subject.
Christian Freedom
We need to begin the second part of this discussion with what I see as an inescapable conclusion. If it is true that the Bible neither forbids nor explicitly commands birth control, this places it within the realm of Christian freedom. This is not to say we are just free to do whatever we want. Rather, we are use the resources God gives us in Scripture, in conscience, in wisdom, in Christian community, and come to what we then trust is a God-honoring conclusion. As we do this we must acknowledge that other Christians may come to different conclusions and we must be prepared not to attack them or do battle with them.
If birth control does fall into the area of Christian freedom, it means that even while the Bible states that children are a blessing and while it tells us to be fruitful and multiply, it does not demand that we are all to be exactly as fruitful as we possibly could be or that we are to all have as many children as we can possibly have. There are good reasons and bad reasons both to limit the size of your family and to choose not to. Both extremes can be a means to pursue idolatries or to give in to those who would overstep their boundaries and bind another person’s conscience. If you do not want children because you just plain don’t like children or because you are a selfish person who wants to pursue your own dreams of a life of ease, you ought to examine your heart and repent and consider that children are a blessing of the Lord. If you want to have twenty children because that is just what people do in your community or because you have made family size into a kind of idol, you also need to examine your heart and repent. The human heart truly is tricky and deceptive and wicked and it will often latch on to good things and raise them into ultimate things.
Bad Methods of Birth Control
As there are bad reasons to use birth control, there are also bad methods. Two of these bad methods of birth control have already been mentioned: abortion and abstinence. I will add a third: abortifacients.
There are some contraceptive devices that do not block or prevent conception, but rather destroy or disrupt a pregnancy. If we believe that life begins at conception, then we must conclude that such methods of birth control do not prevent pregnancy but actually destroy human life.
While there are many contraceptive methods available, most fall into one of two camps: those that prevent pregnancy by blocking contraception (condoms and other blockade devices) and those that prevent ovulation (pills, patches, and so on). If you agree with me that Christians have freedom to choose whether or not they will use birth control, you will likely agree that the first group, the blockade devices, are acceptable choices for the Christian. The second group introduces a greater level of difficulty. I will spend a bit of time on this issue because I know it is of great concern to many Christians.
There are several reasons that make the birth control pill (and similar methods) an attractive method of birth control: It is simple, as a woman need only take a pill once a day to have near-perfect protection against pregnancy; it is highly effective so that when used perfectly, the changes of becoming pregnant are minuscule; it is also convenient, promoting spontaneity and ease-of-use. Compared to other forms of birth control, the pill is highly desirable and it is easy to understand why it has come into such widespread use, even among Christians.
The pill prevents pregnancy by essentially fooling a woman’s body into thinking it is pregnant. There are two main types of birth control pills. The first is a combined oral contraceptive that contains two hormones: estrogen and progestin. Estrogen helps prevent ovulation by suppressing the hormones that would cause the ovary to release an egg. Progestin thickens the cervical mucus which hinders the ability of the sperm to travel through the fallopian tubes. It may also prevent the lining of the uterus from developing normally which means that if an egg is fertilized, it will be unable to implant. The second type of pill contains no estrogen, so while it does not prevent ovulation, it does inhibit the ability of the sperm to fertilize the egg (both by thickening mucus and by suppressing its ability to unite with the egg) and, should fertilization take place, the likelihood of implantation.
A search of resources geared mainly towards women’s health shows that most doctors agree that birth control does not cause abortions. However, many of these doctors would deny that life begins at conception. If life does, indeed, begin at conception, then preventing implantation is already causing an abortion.
Many Christians who have medical knowledge and who affirm that life is inherently precious from the moment of conception have tackled this issue. Interestingly, many of these experts seem to be backing the claims of their colleagues, saying that there is no hard evidence that the birth control pill can cause abortions.
For example, Dr. Michael Frields is a medical expert who attends John MacArthur’s Grace Community Church and he insists that the birth control pill is in no way an abortive method of birth control. Similarly, the majority of the experts James Dobson spoke to “feel that the pill does not have an abortifacient effect. A minority of the doctors feel that when conception occurs on the pill, there is enough of a possibility for an abortifacient effect, however remote, to warrant informing women about it.” It seems that while the evidence increasingly indicates there is little likelihood of causing an abortion by taking the pill, the jury is still out. This leaves Christians having to weigh the evidence on their own and attempting to sort out the facts. My conviction is that because nothing less than human life is at stake, couples should avoid the birth control pill until medical research has advanced to the point that no doubt remains. This is where my conscience leads.
Conclusion
Of course there is much more that could be said on this topic, but I will close there. To recap: Because the Bible does not command or forbid birth control, we have freedom to choose, provided that we first avail ourselves of the resources God gives us. Given this freedom, blockade methods of birth control pose no ethical difficulty but oral contraceptives may. We do well to get the facts and choose wisely.
Like everything else in the Christian life, the issue of birth control is a heart issue and one that exposes our attitudes toward children, toward God’s providence, toward all kinds of things. I am convinced that men and women on both sides of this debate can love and value children, can live in full assurance of God’s providence and can trust and obey God. I am convinced that God gives us freedom to use birth control or to decide not to use birth control. I am convinced that what matters most is motives and a desire to live for his glory.
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