This month Forbes published its list of the 100 Most Influential Women in the World.  The top of the list is most composed of CEO’s and successful businesswomen, so in one interesting feature of the list, Forbes asked a number of women for their personal reflections on power. What follows is some of their responses:

• “Confidence is Power” – Lauie Ann Goldman, CEO, Spanx
• “Power is the ability to create change in the world” – Tensie Whelan, Executive Director, Rainforest Alliance
• Power is not being tied to any person or any thing. “If a deal or a relationship does not make sense, I can walk.” – Lynn Tilton, CEO, Patriarch Partners
• “Power is one’s ability to inspire positive change…to impact the global village.” – Tina Sharkey, Chariman and Global President, BabyCenter
• Power is confronting “the demons that prevent us as human beings from living up to our full potential.” – Cheryl Dorsey, MD, President, Echoing Green
• Power is about having choices. – Karen Wickre, Senior Manager of Global Communications & Public Affairs, Google.
• “I feel powerful by being able to influence others in a positive way.” – Missy Robbins, Executive Chef, A Voce Madison and A Voce Columbus
• “I do consider myself to be a powerful woman…having [a] person believe in you is very empowering.” – Deanna Kangas, CEO of Stila Cosmetics
• Power is having “the ability to change the world in powerful ways through collaborative and collective efforts.” – Linda Avey, Co[Founder and Co-President, 23and ME

In response to these reflections, I couldn’t offer a better response than that of author Mary Kassian. On her blog she wrote the following challenging words:

Reading through the Forbes list, and the reflections of these nine “powerful” women made me think how very differently things work in the economy of God. For the Christian woman, “power” has an entirely different meaning. “Power” is not about chipping our way to the top of Forbes list. It’s all about the gospel. The gospel of Jesus Christ is “the power of God.” Paul proclaimed that he would never shrink away from proclaiming that fact. (Romans 1:16)

So what does power look like in a Christian woman’s life? It looks very, very different than the world’s idea of power. For the Christian woman, power is knowing Christ and the power of his resurrection and sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death. (Philippians 3:10) Power is not about attaining confidence, prominence, influence, having choices, being the head of a government or having a CEO position in a company. Power is living a cross-centered life. Power is dying to sin and living to righteousness. Power is laying down our lives for the sake of the gospel. Power is humility, and service, and self-sacrifice, and often involves suffering and shame. It’s “sharing in Christ’s sufferings, becoming like him in his death.” That’s a radical thought.

Power in the cross? That truly is a radical thought.

About a month ago I was hanging out with some friends when someone raised a really interesting question for discussion: Should single women adopt?

One friend, who comes from a large family in which a number of her siblings are adopted, had an immediate response. She felt that this was absolutely wrong, and contrary to God’s design for the family. As she explained, God created families to be composed of a mother AND a father, and while there are families in our broken world that fall outside that category, and God can still redeem them, it is not a scenario to be sought after intentionally.

Another friend of mine was not so sure. She pointed out that there are a LOT of orphans in the world, and as Christianity Today recently reported, as many as a third of Christian women will have to remain single because they so greatly outnumber Christian men. What is better, for a child to be raised in an orphanage, or to be raised by a godly, caring single woman? The answer would seem quite obvious.

Honestly, I have really mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, I’m sometimes wary of the emphasis that Christians place on the family as being THE fundamental foundation of our community. Now don’t freak out on me yet–I’m not saying it’s not important. It is. But what is more important, more fundamental and foundational, is the Church. As the Body of Christ, we have a responsibility not only to our own families, but to every member in our community, as well as their children. This point is grossly understated in our language about family and the church.

When I got married, I stood before an entire community of people whose very presence was a kind of commitment to hold me and my husband accountable to our vows. I expect that accountability, encouragement and teaching to continue the rest of our lives, and many of my married friends expect the same of me. That said, if a single Christian woman were to adopt a child, I would expect that child to be well cared for by her entire church community, which possesses ample men who can be a kind of father figure for the child. In fact, this should be happening in any church community in which single parents exist. As the Body of Christ, we play a crucial role in our friends’ children’s lives.

So with that in mind, I can see an argument for single mother adoption, not on the basis of God’s created design for the family, but on God’s created design for the Church.

HOWEVER, to jump to such a conclusion is to miss the real problem altogether. If we have come to a place in which the numbers of orphans are so vast that the burden is falling onto single women to adopt them, then married couples are missing their call. Scripture specifically highlights orphans as a demographic we are to care for (James 1:27), and it’s no wonder–is there a better picture on earth of what God did for us? Though we made ourselves strangers to Him through our sin, God adopted us through the sacrifice of his Son and loves us as his children, allowing us to inherit all that He has.

Amidst a culture that values biological children so highly, going to extreme lengths that are sometimes theologically questionable–in vitro fertilization, surrogacy, etc.–we must be cautious of the message we are sending. Our biological children are not more important than adopted ones. So while it is by no means wrong to desire and have our own children, we must value all life equally, consider the way that God, not culture, defines parenthood, and take seriously our call to care for orphans and make disciples of all nations (Matt. 28:19). After all, adoption fulfills both those Scriptural commands, while blessing a child in a way that will not only change their life for the better but enhance their love for God.

So should single women adopt? I’m still not entirely sure and I would really love to hear your input, but I don’t want that debate to overshadow the bigger issue. In America where we have so much and countless Christian parents have sufficient financial resources to support large families, why aren’t they adopting? My friend who was raised in a large family of adopted children explained that while her dad was a doctor and they could have lived a more luxurious lifestyle had they had fewer children, her parents chose to live at a slightly lower standard so that they could adopt more children. What a wonderfully counter-cultural, radical Christian idea!

This is truly something that more married couples should be praying about it. God may not call your family to adoption, but you will never know if you don’t come before Him in surrendered obedience and ask. And if He does call you to adoption, I guarantee you will share in many of the blessings and joy that God received in adopting us.

When I’m being completely honest with myself, I have to admit that I doubt my faith and the whole premise of Christianity a lot. I don’t know if it’s my over-analytical mind, or if faith just doesn’t come as easy to me, but I tend to wonder if this whole Christian thing is pure lunacy, and I do so on about a weekly basis.

Most of the time, the main cause of my doubts is an inability to feel the presence of God. When I was in college I grew like crazy and it was a very exciting time for me spiritually. I could feel God everywhere in everything, and my thirst for Him was nearly unquenchable. But I haven’t felt that way in a long time, and it’s during those time when I feel the least connected to God that I really begin to wonder if He’s even there at all.

During these times, I come before God in near despair asking, “Why? Why does it have to be so hard? Why can’t you just make your presence known to me?” I feel frustrated and helpless, yet I trudge on obediently, knowing this is merely a time of wilderness.

However, I have begun to detect a pattern in these times of spiritual alienation. They are not random. There is almost certainly a common denominator to them. The strength of my Christian walk and the degree to which I can feel God’s presence in my life is almost always proportionate to my spiritual self-discipline. If my time in the Word and prayer has been inconsistent for awhile, if I don’t have a consistent group of women who are encouraging me and pouring into me, or if I’m not worshipping regularly, I feel further and further from God. There are exceptions to this, of course. In times of tragedy or depression I have felt isolated from God as well, despite my time in His Word. But overall, this has consistently been the rule.

This pattern become clear to me today as I reflected on Scripture verses that challenge us to seek and search for the Lord:

Proverbs 2:4-5–If you look for it as for silver and search for it as for hidden treasure, then you will understand the fear of the LORD and find the knowledge of God.

Matthew 6:33–But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.

Matthew 7:7–Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.

As a Christian, I tend to assume that the “searching for God” portion of the process ended the day I got saved. I don’t need to search anymore. I found Him.

But therein lies my problem. While the Holy Spirit does dwell within me, God has designed us to access Him in other ways as well–through His Word, through prayer, and through His Church. When we fail to seek Him and relate with Him using all the resources by which He promised to make His spirit known to us, then we shouldn’t be surprised if we begin to feel isolated. God isn’t pulling away–we are.

What’s more, there is no quick fix to this problem. If you’re reading this and you realize that you’ve felt somewhat estranged from God because you’ve neglected the means by which He has promised to make Himself known to us, you can’t solve the problem with one really good quiet time tomorrow morning. One, single day of obedience cannot repair weeks, months, or years of neglect. Numerous military wives report that when their husbands return from duty, there’s an adjustment period in which they have to rebuild parts of their marriage relationship, remembering what’s familiar, how to live with one another, etc. It is the same with God. The difficulty in rebuilding closeness with God is not His way of spiting you for being lazy. It simply takes time to restore Him to the center of your life. You need that time to transform yourself.

So if you find yourself struggling to discern the presence of God, if your faith feels empty or someone fake, ask yourself how your time in the Word and prayer is going. Are you a member of a local church that you attend regularly? Do you have Christians friends there who know you and can encourage you?

For some of you, you can answer “yes” to all of those questions and yet you still feel alienated from God. In your case, I would seek counsel from your pastor since he can get a better idea of what’s going on in your life. But no matter the reason, remember to never stop searching for God. He gave us His Word and His Church for a reason–they are to be an ever-living source of spiritual refreshment and truth in our lives, but we must use them.

Cliques.

This is a word that instantly generates feelings of annoyance and disdain. We all knew those girls in high school, that group in college, maybe even some people at your church right now. Few things feel worse than being excluded from those tightly-knit groups who so ably highlight our inadequacies. And that is why we hate them.

I still remember sitting in my Middle School cafeteria the day my best friend moved on to a better group. Even though we’d been inseparable for years, I’d seen the move coming for weeks. She’d been spending more and more time with those “other girls,” and then came the day when she sat down at their table for lunch. I asked her to come sit with me, and she gave me the “please don’t talk to me anymore” look. Brutal.

(Of course I can’t really blame her. She was blossoming into the most gorgeous girl in our school, while I simultaneously spiraled into the depths of what I call me “awkward phase.”)

Because of stories just like mine, we all detest cliques. We’ve all been excluded at one time or another, and many of us still bear the scars from those emotional blows.

But is there more to it than that? Aside from the way cliques make us feel, is there something inherent about their very nature that we should avoid? What does Scripture have to say about this rampant social practice? After all, we may have been hurt by a clique, but we’ve probably been in a clique as well. What might God think about this?

Well to find the answer, we can look at the very first clique in the Bible, and it’s found in Genesis 11. In this chapter, we see the people of Babel growing in number, as well as pride. They have deceived themselves into thinking they can attain equality with God, so they set out to build a tower that will reach to the heavens. God told them to be fruitful and multiply, but they instead hunker down and stick together. They have bigger fish to fry than simply multiplying. They have the rep of the group to protect.

And what is God’s response to this? It goes as follows: “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them.” (v. 6) So He confuses their language and scatters them all over the earth.

What exactly did God mean by that statement? Nothing will be impossible for them? Did He really mean that nothing at all would be impossible? That they could really become like God Himself if they merely stuck together? I don’t think so.

What God meant by those words was that no evil would be impossible for them. Already they were seeking to replace God, and they were only just beginning. Clearly, no act of disobedience was out of bounds, so what would be next??

This is the danger of the in-group mentality. It is a mentality in which the self-preservation of the group is put first and foremost ahead of every other concern. And when this happens, all other people, interests, or causes are subordinated to the well-being of the group. We have seen the in-group at its worst during the Holocaust and the practice of slavery. We even see it in Christian cliques when pastors and prophetic voices are driven out of their churches for reasons having nothing to do with Christ.

In-groups mentalities are therefore extremely destructive because they use peer pressure to get the whole group to act, at which point their collective actions become all the more powerful. If you don’t go along with the group, you risk being shunned, thereby making it very difficult to change them.

So the larger these in-groups get, the more dangerous they become, which is why God scattered them. As the group gets larger it gains momentum, growing faster and faster. And as this growth transpires, it gains increasing man-power to promote its cause.

God knew all of those things, and foresaw the potential destructiveness of this in-group mentality, which is why He responded so definitively. If left unchecked, there was no end to the evil they could accomplish.

That said, beware of cliques–and by that I don’t mean avoid people who are in them. Rather, don’t be in one yourself. When we are in a clique, we fall prey to the in-group peer pressure, and subsequently hurt others. What’s worse is that these cliques often prevent us from even caring if we trample those around us. We find ways to rationalize why we are so exclusive–”I do hang out with other people…sometimes;” “We tried hanging out with her but she’s just so hard to talk to;” “She’s just at a different stage in life than the rest of us, so she should find someone her own age to hang out with.” All of these are justifications for exclusion, exclusion that wounds and destroys.

How do you know if you’re in a clique? Some of the tell-tale signs include the way you spend your time–do you make an effort to hang out with anyone else, or do you only hang out with one specific group of friends who also happen to be exactly like you? Also, what do other people think about the group? Odds are if you’re in a clique, then people have mentioned it to you before. Listen to them. And finally, has anyone been hurt because of the group dynamic? And by that I mean has anyone felt intentionally excluded. Although friendships are never perfect, which means people will inevitably get hurt from time to time, the group’s willingness or unwillingness to make amends and include them in the future reveals a lot.

If you find yourself in a group that fits any of those qualifications, then you need to do one of two things–talk to the group and make an effort to change, or start making new friends. Cliques can be spiritually toxic, so if your friends are resistant to change then you need to switch social circles.

Instead, resolve to be outwardly focused. God called us to be fruitful and multiply, and this command applies to more than mere procreation. We need to multiply spiritually, we need to be adding to our number daily those who are being saved, as well as making our Christian friendships more fruitful. Reach out to the people in your church, dorm or workplace who need a friend, and reach out to those in the community that the socio-economic in-group has marginalized. This practice will generally take us out of our comfort zones, but if the people of Babel teach us nothing else, it is that we can either take ourselves out of the clique, or God will do it for us.

This week the Lutheran Church figured prominently in the news as it took a giant step forward in affirming homosexual lifestyles. While the denomination stopped short of out-right supporting homosexual lifestyles with Scripture, it did affirm those who are “bound by their conscience” in their reading of Scripture. As the ELCA (Evangelical Lutheran Church in America) put it,

“In our Christian freedom, we therefore seek responsible actions that serve others and do so with humility and deep respect for the conscience-bound beliefs of others. We understand that, in this discernment about ethics and church practice, faithful people can and will come to different conclusions about the meaning of Scripture and about what constitutes responsible action. We further believe that this church, on the basis of “the bound conscience,” will include these different understandings and practices within its life as it seeks to live out its mission and ministry in the world.”

They later go on to state that in matters of salvation it is important to be dogmatic, but in matters of morality and lifestyle Scripture allows a little more wiggle room:

“When the clear word of God’s saving action by grace through faith is at stake, Christian conscience becomes as adamant as Paul, who opposed those who insisted upon circumcision. … However, when the question is about morality or church practice, the Pauline and Lutheran witness is less adamant and believes we may be called to respect the bound conscience of the neighbor. That is, if salvation is not at stake in a particular question, Christians are free to give priority to the neighbor’s well-being and will protect the conscience of the neighbor who may well view the same question in such a way as to affect faith itself. For example, Paul was confident that Christian freedom meant the Gospel of Jesus Christ was not at stake in questions of meat sacrificed to idols or the rituals of holy days. Yet he insisted that, if a brother or sister did not understand this freedom and saw eating this meat as idolatry to a pagan god, the Christian was obligated to “walk in love” by eating just vegetables for the neighbor’s sake!”

What really stands out to me in all this rhetoric is the consistent use of the word “conscience.” This word and this logic is popular in both liberal and conservative circles alike. You may also have heard it referred to as “natural theology.” Yet in both instances, denominations are appealing to the idea that within every human being there is an inclination to know and recognize truth. C.S. Lewis himself makes this argument in his apologetics:”

Whenever you find a man who says he does not believe in a real Right and Wrong, you will find the same man going back on this a moment later. He may break his promise to you, but if you try breaking one to him he will be complaining “It’s not fair” before you can say Jack Robinson….This law was called the Law of Nature because people thought that every one knew it by nature and did not need to be taught it. They did not mean, of course, that you might not find an odd individual here and there who did not know it, just as you find a few people who are colour-blind or have no ear for a tune. But taking the race as a whole they thought that the human idea of decent behaviour was obvious to everyone. And I believe they were right.” (Mere Christianity)

While I love C.S. Lewis and find great encouragement and teaching in his writings, I am wary of his conclusion, as well as that of other Christians today. It sounds worryingly similar to a liberal philosopher by the name of Immanuel Kant. Kant believed in the “categorical imperative,” a philosophical idea that our systems of morality must be based upon the inherent good-will possessed by every human being. He taught that there is an ingrained knowledge of right and wrong inside every person. A conscience.

Kant’s influence was so sweeping that he subsequently defined the grounds by which much of the philosophical AND theological discussions have been conducted ever since. Whenever you hear a Christian apologist argue on the grounds of conscience or objective experience, you are hearing the echoes of Kant.

But here is where Kant, C.S. Lewis, and much of natural theology perhaps wander astray–the CONSCIENCE CAN BE WRONG. The ELCA decision is a prime example of this. When we begin to appeal to people on the grounds of their conscience instead of revelation and Scripture, we underestimate how profoundly sinful human beings are. Without the divinely inspired truth of God, we will always choose wrongly. We cannot help ourselves apart from the intervention of God through Christ, the Holy Spirit, and His Word.

That is why the ELCA’s language is such a great lesson for us in the direction of our own churches and the theological language we use. If we insist on appealing to conscience and natural theology, we will go the way of the ECLA and the Episcopal Church before them. Conscience and Scripture do not equate. Even if human beings are given the common grace to discern a tiny sliver of truth in this world, D.A. Carson reminds us that “Error is truth out of proportion.” Our broken natures have a profound ability to take that bit of truth and turn it into a God-slandering idol. Our churches must never fall into such a snare.

Right now I’m in sort of a postpartum wedding depression as I try to remember just what it was I did with my time before I started planning a wedding. It’s almost anti-climactic now that it’s over. Not that I don’t love being married, but you put all your time and energy into ONE day, and then it’s over. Poof!

In the days following the wedding, I began to reflect on how much of myself I poured into this event and I started to feel ashamed, if not hypocritical. A wedding can really mess with your perspective as you gradually become totally consumed by it. I went into the whole process intending to keep a level-head, not like those “other brides” I had known. But I’m not entirely sure that is a possible goal. Almost inevitably, I succumbed to the very same pitfalls into which I had watched many other brides fall.

When I looked at how much time I put into planning the menu and the wedding favors and the table centerpieces, and I compared that with the message of the wedding ceremony–namely, the centrality of Christ–I felt convicted that there was a huge discrepancy. On the one hand, I wanted it to be all about the Gospel; on the other hand, I was essentially losing myself in the preparations. That doesn’t exactly seem to match up.

However, I have begun to wonder if my conviction is rightly placed. I have started to suspect that the preparations themselves are a part of the divine reflection that marriage is meant to be. In the Bible there are a lot of parallels between marriage and the Christian life–Christ is the groom and his bride is the Church–so we focus on this illustration the day of the wedding and the days that follow.

But here’s the thing–a wedding doesn’t just happen out of nowhere. It’s not like one day my husband and I decided to get married, so the next day we went to the church and said our vows. We spent months and months preparing ourselves for one another. We took classes, we read books, we prayed, and we made sure that the day itself would glorify God. And in addition to all that, we had actually been preparing long before we even met each other. For the last 28 years my parents have been praying for me, and I’ve been praying as well. I’ve tried to guard my purity and be the kind of woman with whom a godly man would want to partner.

With all of that in mind, one might say that on some level, preparation for marriage has actually defined my entire life up to this point.

Is this degree of readiness inappropriate? Or is it exactly what God had in mind as He designed marriage to reflect our relationship with Him? Are such thorough preparations not the very thing God intends for us as we prepare for our heavenly bridegroom, Jesus Christ? In the same way that a bride pours herself into preparing for that special day when she becomes one with her groom, are we not called to do the same?

In Matthew 25 Jesus tells the story of 10 virgins, 5 wise and 5 foolish, who are waiting on their bridegroom throughout the night. When the groom finally arrives, 5 are prepared and ready to meet him, so they immediately join him at the wedding banquet. The other 5, however, are not prepared and must return to their homes to get ready. In doing so, they miss the bridegroom and are left outside the wedding banquet.

This is indeed an analogy for our lives. The parallels between Christ and the Church do not begin on the wedding day–they begin long before. As I frantically rushed about doing all I could to make the wedding day perfect, I was participating in a story far greater than I realized. My preparations were a picture of how we should live our lives in preparation to meet our heavenly bridegroom. These preparations should literally consume us–every minute of every day we should be readying ourselves for the day we meet our Savior. Like a bride in a white dress, we want to stand before him knowing we did our best to honor and serve him, without a spot or stain of pride or disobedience. We must throw ourselves into these preparations like a crazy bride who will do anything to make her wedding day perfect. After all, as much as I love my husband, I desire to please my Savior so much more!

So yes, I did get a little carried away with the wedding preparations. But I think God knew that would happen to just about every bride who ever said “I do,” and perhaps He even planted that drive within us. Why? Because it is a perfect reflection of the avidness with which we should approach our heavenly union with God. Whether you’re married, engaged, or forever single, the analogy transcends all relationship statuses. We are all to be in a state of preparation for marriage, living each day in preparation for our most adoring groom.

Well I am back from my honeymoon and it was awesome! I had a wonderful time with my new husband, and special thanks to David Goodman for posting his thoughts on science, theology, and birth control.

Without trying to beat a dead horse, I want to close out this discussion today with a few final thoughts. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the science involved in the debate, I hope this was helpful. The reason I asked David to post his own perspectives is that a) I am completely incompetent in all things science, and b) I frequently hear Christians excuse some methods of birth control on scientific grounds. For instance, countless fetuses fail to survive on their own, so is there really that much of a difference whether a fetus fails to survive due to nature or birth control?

It is at this point in our discussion that I become wary of how greatly we are letting science determine our theology. While science can tell us things about the world, the purpose of science is not to explain the why behind it. While we should indeed give ear to the scientific community, we must not give authority to science that it does not possess.

That said, even if many fetuses fail to survive, that is God’s call to make, not ours. In no other arena do we allow ourselves the freedom to take another person’s life simply on the grounds that they might die anyway, so it is strange that we hedge on this one.

But with all the science aside, I have one final word to all my female readers out there:

Ladies, God has created a world in which our bodies are Ground Zero for the beginning of life. The creation of a new person, a divine image bearer for which God has a purpose and a plan–it all begins inside of us. This is a gift, but it is also a responsibility. We owe it to God and ourselves to study and learn as much as we can about how God created us, for what purpose, and how best we can be stewards of it. This does NOT mean we all have to churn out babies, but it does mean we must never be casual about it. Never. The creation of a new life that bears the image of God is a serious, beautiful thing, and I hope that these last few posts have challenged you to consider how you understand your body within God’s greater story for the world.

Your body is beautiful and wonderfully made. God has a special plan for you, and for many of you that involves children. But no matter the plan, I pray we will be a generation of women who seek to honor God in ALL that we do, offering a prophetic voice of hope and clarity in a world that consistently devalues human dignity, treating people more and more like things to be used than reflections of their gracious Maker. We must be defenders of the glory of God in one another, and that begins with defending the glory of God in ourselves.

Welcome back to She Worships.  Sharon is still living it up on her honeymoon, but you are sitting by your computer (or snazzy iPhone) reading a blog post from some nerdy medical student.  Sounds like a fair trade huh?  Hey!,  you didn’t have to be so frank.  You could’ve just chuckled.

Like Sharon said on Tuesday’s post, my name is David and I have been friends with Sharon for the last 3 years since I came to town for medical school.  She asked me to write some posts for her while she was away on how we as Christians ought to approach and live in light of the often confrontational opinions of the scientific community.  I hope you had the chance to read Tuesday’s post, but today I want to get down to business with a specific topic today.

Just this week I was reading a textbook on the biological basis of AIDS and was amazed by the first sentence in one of the chapters.  It states “Every science has its borderland where the known and visible merge with the unknown and invisible.” The author, rather than opening with some cold hard fact, opened his chapter with an invitation away from the realm of the known virology of HIV and invited the readers to consider the mystery of its complexity.  As believers this is where we often have to live, balancing the tension of understanding the known and longing for the invisible.

It is in that tension that life exists most of the time.  One area where I still don’t have an answer is the question of the ethics of birth control.  I was talking about this issue with my family the other night, and my mom and my sister-in-law where shocked when I told them that there is a possibility that oral contraceptive pills (OCPs) may cause a chemical abortion after fertilization occurs.  This is a topic that is hotly debated and little consensus has been reached within the Christian community.  I care greatly about seeing healthy marriages raise healthy children and doing so to the glory of God.  It is essential that all of us considering parenthood be educated about this topic. Once again I want to arrange the topic in a series of points.  (Spoiler alert: Parents if you don’t want your kids to know that babies don’t come from storks please screen accordingly.)

1. Sin begins in the heart-The way I see it, the driving factor for the overwhelming majority of abortions is idolatry.  “On average, women give at least 3 reasons for choosing abortion: 3/4 say that having a baby would interfere with work, school or other responsibilities; about 3/4 say they cannot afford a child; and 1/2 say they do not want to be a single parent or are having problems with their husband or partner.” (1)  For many in our generation children are seen as an inconvenience, yet free and uninhibited sex is an assumed right.  I believe that there is an inherent difference in the willful cessation of a life and the failure of birth control to prevent ovulation for two parents who are trying to do the best that they know how to prevent pregnancy out of very good intentions.  (I know I am just throwing up comment fodder, but it will be fun.)

2. The Bible does not say that life specifically begins at conception- Like I said in point number 3 in my last post; the Bible is not a scientific textbook.  Before you go getting mad about the statement I just made, I think that this issue is painted with a much more significant brushstroke.  You see, I think it is most clear in the Scriptures that in God’s eyes my life began before the foundation of the world.  (Eph 1:4) Paul goes on to say in Ephesians that we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. (2:10) I believe that those good works are carried out through supernatural acts of the Spirit AND by the very natural arrangement of my DNA which God ordained to make me the precise version of a human that he desired.  This arrangement of DNA happens at fertilization.  Most of the time.

3. Becoming pregnant is actually incredible complicated-Why this issue is tough for me is the fact that 70% of fertilizations do not result in a viable pregnancy. (2) Fifteen percent fertilizations are not viable due to a failure to implant into the endometrium which is an issue we will talk about later.  For me as a believer, I have to make a faith statement about what I believe happens to those arrangements of DNA that fail to ever develop into ex utero human beings.  The case for fertilized eggs that fail to appropriately undergo integration of the two parent genomes or fail to survive the treacherous week traveling down the fallopian tubes is that they either are simply conglomerations of DNA that never obtain an existence in the mind of God or they are eternally known and loved souls who are free from the curse of sin (supported in Romans 1) and they dwell eternally with God.  I don’t know what to make of that startling 70%.  God does.

4. The oral contraceptive pill has three mechanisms of action by which it prevents pregnancy- The primary effect is that the progesterone and estrogen derivatives contained in OCPs block the surge in a hormone that tells the body to ovulate and block the development of a dominant egg that is ready to ovulate, respectively.  If this fails due to any one of a number of reasons, the progesterone in the OCP should have also acted to thicken the cervical mucus that theoretically acts as a barrier method to fertilization.  I have read some studies done in rabbits that questioned the effectiveness of this phenomenon, but it is generally accepted that it occurs.  Finally, if steps one and two fail, the third mechanism by which pregnancy is prevented is that the progesterone in the OCP has blocked the proliferation of the endometrium.

5. The endometrium is more important than you think-Many Christian authors (Randy Alcorn et al) use the term “hostile endometrium” when they describe the condition of the endometrial lining for women on OCPs.  My first reaction was “That is a little harsh.  But is it true?” I was very surprised to read in a highly respected Endocrinology textbook (3) that the author actually used the same term.  He goes on to say that “The progestin in the combination pill produces an endometrium that is … exhausted and atrophied…and is therefore not receptive to ovum implantation.”

Other studies  ”suggest that an endometrial thickness of 8 mm or more is necessary for successful implantation, although not all studies have found such an association. (4) Other researchers have shown that normal OCP use reduced thickness to ~3-4 mm. However the mean value of 3.9 mm had and SD of 3 mm meaning that for some women (top 15%) would retain a possibly thick enough endometrium after a year of OCP use.  This study was conducted using a lower dose progestin OCPs which are most common nowadays.  (5)

Even with all this information I just read this morning in a paper that “exogenous (coming from the outside) progesterone…prevents abortion (spontaneous ones) , further supporting the hypothesis that ovarian progesterone production is essential for the maintenance of early pregnancy” (6)

6. So what does all this mean?-Putting everything together I think the bottom line is that the decision to use OCPs is one that ought to be entered into with sober awareness that there is a risk one may accidentally cause an abortion that they would otherwise be appalled by.  The odds for this occurring are where the tension of science and theology is seen.  From the best I can deduce without finding hard and fast numbers I would say the odds of having a fertilized embryo that would meet a hostile uterus and that be the reason that it fails to survive would be between 1/100 to 1/1000. More clearly, if 1000 women in our church were having sex with their husbands every month and all of them were on the pill, 1 of them would have an abortion that their choice of medical therapy was responsible for.   I know that is a wide window, but there are several factors and conflicting data to consider in that calculation.  I don’t know if those numbers are true or not, no one does.  Keep in mind that 15/100 fertilized eggs fail to do this naturally.  Women get pregnant on the pill all the time, so we know it is not guaranteed to happen just because of the pill.

I believe Sharon has a lot of wisdom and has demonstrated in previous posts that your choice of contraception is tremendously more complicated than simply physiology.  Sharon’s question for me was “Do the numbers matter, or do you just know something is wrong regardless?”  I will ask you the same question.

References

(1)    www.Abort73.com-http://www.abort73.com/index.php?/abortion_facts/us_abortion_statistics accessed on 08/12/09

(2)    Blueprints of Obstetrics and Gynecology

(3)    Kronenberg: Williams Textbook of Endocrinology, 11th ed. 2008.  Accessed online through MD Consult. July 2009.

(4)    Gabbe: Obstetrics: Normal and Problem Pregnancies, 5th ed. 2007. Accessed online through MD Consult. July 2009.

(5)    Lüdicke F et al. Effect of a combined oral contraceptive containing 3 mg of drospirenone and 30 microg of ethinyl estradiol on the  human endometrium. Fertil Steril. 2002 Jun;77(6):1308-9

(6)   Norwitz E. UpToDate article: Physiology of Parturition. Updated Nov 19 2008.

While I’m on my honeymoon, my friend David Goodman will be posting his thoughts about the relationship between science and theology. Now before you tune out because this sounds nerdy/boring, you should know that my conversations with him have surrounded the issue of birth control, and that’s why I’ve asked him to post. He is going into his 4th year of medical school at UNC-Chapel Hill and has wrestled with this topic a lot as he considers the ethics of prescribing birth control, and how it coincides with his pro-life beliefs. He is a godly man, as well as being super sharp, so I thought you all would benefit from his insights!

 Hello blog world.  She Worships has been invaded by a dude, most notably illustrated in the picture from Rocky IV situated to the left.  No, this is not a shameless plug to get Sly Stallone on Sharon‘s blog.  This was the image that came to my mind when Sharon asked me to write about the relationship between science and theology.  You see in the film Rocky is a fiery, passionate boxer with a mission to prove going up against the formidable Russian Ivan Drago, the machine-man that represents the overwhelming strength of the Cold War USSR who crushes opponents with almost superhuman force.  At one point in the fight Rocky is dancing around the ring, taking punches from the Russian and taunting him saying “You ain’t so bad!” in an effort to tire him out.

Well my wedding is now 2 days away, which means this is officially my last post until after the honeymoon! I will hopefully have a guest blogger posting while I am gone, so you can check back for that. In the mean time, I thought I would touch on a topic that is at the forefront of my mind: marriage.

Recently Christianity Today published an article entitled “The Case for Early Marriage” in which sociologist Mark Regerus explores the reasons behind such rampant pre-marital sex amidst evangelicalism (80% of church-going Christians, in fact!). Given how long young people are waiting to get married these days, Regenerus claims that it should come as no surprise. God created us in such a way that during our 20′s we are often at a sexual peak, yet a large percentage of Christians are not providing themselves with the God-given outlet for dealing with that drive.

To read the whole article, you can check it out here, but Al Mohler also posted a great blog in which he processed the implications of the article, which you can check out here. In his summary of the article, Mohler writes,

“Regnerus understands that many evangelical parents and pastors are most likely to respond to this reality with the reflex mechanism of an even greater emphasis upon sexual abstinence. Nevertheless, the data reveal that the majority of evangelical young people — most of whom have been targeted for years with messages of sexual abstinence — are engaging in sexual intercourse before marriage.

Evangelicals tend to marry slightly earlier than other Americans, but not by much. Many of them plan to marry in their mid-20s.Yet waiting for sex until then feels far too long to most of them. And I am suggesting that when people wait until their mid-to-late 20s to marry, it is unreasonable to expect them to refrain from sex. It’s battling our Creator’s reproductive designs.”

Now I find this conclusion to be absolutely fascinating. On one level, it makes total sense! The longer you wait the more you really are tempting fate, especially if you date multiple people or are engaged in long-term relationships.

The only problem is that most women I know aren’t exactly putting off marriage to the last possible second. Most Christian women would love to get married but don’t have the option. And Regenerus takes note of this saying,

“There are about three single women for every two single men….If [a woman] decides to marry, one in three women has no choice but to marry down in terms of Christian maturity. Given this unfavorable ratio, and the plain fact that men are, on average, ready for sex earlier in relationships than women are, many young Christian women are being left with a dilemma: either commence a sexual relationship with a decent, marriage-minded man before she would prefer to—almost certainly before marriage—or risk the real possibility that, in holding out for a godly, chaste, uncommon man, she will wait a lot longer than she would like. Plenty will wait so long as to put their fertility in jeopardy. By that time, the pool of available men is hardly the cream of the crop—and rarely chaste.”

Mohler adds to this point explaining,

“Men often delay marriage believing that they can always marry when ever they are “ready.” Meanwhile, their evangelical sisters are often very ready for marriage, even as they watch their prospects for both marriage and fertility falling.

All of this points to the fact that the delay of marriage has far more to do with the patterns of life adopted by many, if not most, evangelical young men, rather than those chosen by young women. Yet, at the same time, the parents of both young men and young women can, by either intention or default, make it difficult for their children to marry.”

So what’s a girl to do? Unfortunately neither Regenerus nor Mohler offer much short-term comfort for women who feel trapped in this situation, but they are stepping up and calling men to task, and there is some encouragement in that.

However, that leaves me with two nagging questions:

1. To all you single guys out there, do you really feel as though you or your Christian brothers are engaging in this delayed maturity, putting off marriage in an unnatural way? Honestly, I’m not sure if I know a lot of guys like that. Most of my single guy friends would love to get married, but just haven’t found the right girl yet. From the single girls’ perspectives it seems like you’re dragging your feet, but are you really?

2. OR, are you possibly being too picky? And that leads me to my second question–Is it wise or foolish to encourage early marriage? In a climate of such sweeping divorce rates, I’m not quite sure. Both Mohler and Regerus seem to believe that guys ARE being too picky, and that while marriage is indeed hard work, it’s still very doable with a solid Christian woman. The emphasis is less on marrying the right person and more on building a strong marital foundation. This struck me as somewhat foreign given the battle evangelicals having been waging in defense of the family. A teaching that urges young people to hurry up and get married seems almost irreconcilable with the enormous evangelical emphasis on prudence.

But then again, maybe it’s not. Perhaps one of the reasons so many marriages fail is because people are having sex before marriage. They are sealing habits of promiscuity and lack of self-control, habits that can altogether undermine a marriage. In pre-marital sex, young people are setting themselves up for all kinds of marital problems, regardless of whether or not they find that perfect person. Maybe that’s what Regenerus and Mohler are getting at.

That is a tough call to make, but I would be interested to hear your thoughts, especially from you guys out there.

And with that, I am signing off. The next time I post I will be Sharon Hodde Miller!