How the American Church Helped to Usher in a Culture We Claim to Oppose

So, the Supreme Court will decide what constitutes "Marriage" in the United States and, therefore, who can be a party to it.  The way things have been going with the SCOTUS these past 40 years, I'm not counting on them to support God's will for marriage.

And we have ourselves to blame for that.

And for a very unlikely reason.

Before I go there, let me say, I am not going to be bashing homosexuals.  I know a number of homosexuals - I have friends who struggle with homosexuality.  Confession:  All of my friends are sinners.  Every. Single. One.  (Of course they are, how else could they stand to have me as a friend?)

{Some of my friends are reading this and right now they're thinking, "hey....wait a minute..."  It's true, sister.  Deal with it.}

I am going to make a crazy proposition to you, and I hope you'll join me as we search the Scriptures that led to my hypothesis.

Which is:

The American church's embrace of "Family Planning" has led to a culture where homosexual marriage is a given.

{Yeah.  You weren't expecting that, huh?  Me either.}


So let's just jump right in:  What is the premise behind "Family Planning"? 

All children are not blessings. 

{Does this remind anyone else of the lie told in The Garden?  "You most certainly will NOT die!"  "All children most certainly are NOT blessings!"}

Psalm 127:³ Children are a heritage from the Lord,
offspring a reward from him.
⁴ Like arrows in the hands of a warrior
are children born in one’s youth.
⁵ Blessed is the man
whose quiver is full of them.

The idea behind Family Planning is that some children are born at the wrong time or to the wrong parents.  Some children are born too early in the marriage, too soon after the last child, or at the wrong time in their parents' careers.  In fact, some children should never be born - they would be too much for their mother's fragile nerves, too much for their dad's thin pocketbook, and too inconvenient for the plans their parents have made.

To prevent these children from being born, we must "plan" them.

But...

Scripture says that God decides when babies are born. 

Family Planning says that I decide when babies are born.

Isn't that the crux of the very first sin?  "God says this...but I want that...and who is God to tell me what to do anyway?"

Scripture is clear that it is God who "opens and closes the womb."  That is, God decides whether or not we have children.   He chose to close all the wombs in Abimalech's household (Genesis 20:18); He opened Leah's womb and closed Rachael's (Genesis 29:31); in Genesis 30:2 Jacob points out that men do not provide their wives with babies, God does; In Genesis 30:22 we learn that God considered Rachael kindly and made it possible for her to conceive; God closed Hannah's womb (1 Samuel 1:6), etc...

Scripture has much to say that is pro-babies, pro-fertility, etc... but that isn't the point of this post so we won't go there.  The point is, when the American church embraced "Family Planning," we denied Scripture and attempted to rebuke our God.

When we embraced Family Planning we sent a subtle message: children are blessings to be embraced if I plan them - if their existence is the result of my decisions.

And then our conversations turned more worldly - following where our hearts had already gone.

I cannot tell you how I have heard Christian parents, young and old, say things that are completely the opposite of God's will for His people.  When we announced that we were expecting our 7th child a year and a half ago, a mother of 2 asked if I was crazy.  She said she could barely manage her two and, in fact, that she couldn't stand being around one of them.  I once asked an older devout Christian couple we know how many children they had.  They said they had two and then both went on to express how glad they were that they only had two - that any more than that would be a burden.  Sisters, this is not God's heart when it comes to children.  When we harbor these opinions, we have set our hearts against God's heart.

We also distanced reproduction from sexual intimacy when we embraced "Family Planning" - which was never what God intended.  Certainly, marital sex was designed by God to promote intimacy, to bring about physical pleasure, and to unite a couple - as well as to create babies.  God declares what He wants from the marriages of His people: Godly offspring.  (Malachi 2:15)  Children are not a potential byproduct of marriage up to the Christian couple to accept or thwart - they are God's intention in marriage.

So, we joined hands with the world and embraced Family Planning...  Are we really surprised that we find ourselves living in a culture that aborts 3,500 children a day and now seeks to establish homosexual marriage?

We agreed with the culture when it said that sex does not need to result in childbearing - in fact, we agreed with the culture when it said that it is preferred that sex does not result in childbearing.  We agreed with the culture when it said that sex is about me - it's about my physical pleasure and building my relationship with my partner.

So why is it surprising when homosexual couples want the same thing? 

 

Why is it okay for my sexual relationship to be about me, my pleasure and my relationship with my spouse...but not okay for them?

 

If we have taken God out of our sexual relationships how can we require them to honor Him in theirs?

Why is homosexuality wrong?

Because God says it is.  (Leviticus 20; 1 Corinthians 6:9)

Why does God say it is wrong?

Because it is unnatural.
     ²⁶ For this reason God gave them over to degrading passions; for their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural, ²⁷ and in the same way also the men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another, men with men committing indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error. (Romans 1)

What is unnatural about homosexual relations?

In the passage referenced above, Paul is saying that homosexual relationships do not serve the "natural function" of sexual relations.
     Since sex is the obvious context of this passage, it seems pretty obvious that what distinguishes the "natural function" of heterosexual intercourse from the "degrading" and unnatural homosexual intercourse is reproduction.  The natural function of sexual relations is not just physical pleasure and emotional bonding (homosexual couples experience those byproducts as well) - it is making babies!

So... here we sit many, many generations after embracing the lie that human reproduction is about me and my right to control it...and we act befuddled that the culture around us believes that human reproduction is about them and their right to control it.

What happened to the salt and the light?