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.

A couple months ago I had the privilege of sitting down for coffee with Carolyn McCulley, author, speaker, and founder of the documentary company Citygate Films. Carolyn is someone that I look up to in the realm of women’s ministry. She is a sharp and intelligent Christian woman whose unique work places her at the forefront of women’s ministry’s entrance into 21st century relevance. Her writing is intellectually engaging while also remaining spiritually sensitive and insightful.

This past year, Carolyn published a book entitled “Radical Womanhood: Feminine Faith in a Feminist World.” In this book she explores the three waves of feminism and Scripture’s pro-woman response to them. While I have not read the book myself (every time I’ve gone to stores to purchase it, it’s been sold out!) I follow her blog regularly and I am consistently challenged by her engagement of Scripture and culture.

With that in mind, what follows is an excerpt from her new book “Radical Womanhood.” It appears in a chapter entitled “The Mommy Wars” and it explores the development of the birth control movement, its effects on pro-life ideology, and its connection with a Gospel message that includes God on a cross. It is a moving read, and it is a caliber of historical research, cultural engagement and theological reflection that I hope to aspire to in my own ministry.

I pray you will be blessed and challenged by her words.

~~~~~~~~

“The Clogs and Destroyers of Civilization”

Margaret Sanger was the founder of the modern birth control movement and a vocal proponent of eugenics — the theory of race improvement that was the cornerstone of Nazi Germany. Sanger believed that all evils stemmed from large families, especially large families of those she deemed as unfit. As she wrote in her 1920 book, Woman and the New Race, “The most merciful thing that a large family does to one of its infant members is to kill it.”3

I can’t even fathom saying such a thing, but Sanger’s personal history undoubtedly influenced her thinking. She was born in 1879 in Corning, New York, the sixth of eleven surviving children. Her father was a stonemason and a supporter of radical socialist causes. Sanger’s mother succumbed to tuberculosis at forty-nine. Sanger later said the strain of eighteen pregnancies was what broke her mother’s health. 4

Sanger went on to study nursing and married in 1902. Her first pregnancy was a difficult one that landed her in a sanitarium for her confinement and recovery. But she regained her health and gave birth to two more children. In 1910, she began to work as a midwife and home nurse on the Lower East Side of New York City. A year later, she joined a radical labor movement and participated in several labor strikes.

By 1912, Sanger began writing a series of articles on female sexuality and contraception in the socialist publication, The Call, in bold defiance of then-current laws against the dissemination of information on sexually transmitted diseases and contraception. Two years later, by then separated from her husband whom she would later divorce, she founded the monthly magazine, Woman Rebel, under the slogan, “No gods; no masters!”5 In 1914, she fled to Europe after she was indicted for violating U.S. postal obscenity laws. But two years later, having avoided imprisonment, she was back in the U.S. to open the nation’s first birth control clinic, in Brooklyn, New York. After ten days of operation, she was arrested and jailed. The trial made her a national figure, and it handed doctors the right to prescribe birth control advice.

In 1921, Sanger organized the American Birth Control League, which later became the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. For Sanger, the birth control movement was founded on two goals: limiting the reproduction of the “unfit” and challenging Christian teaching by creating a “new morality.” She campaigned against women “with staggering rapidity” breeding “those numberless, undesired children who become the clogs and the destroyers of civilization.”6 Sanger’s scorched-earth writing left no one guessing about her views:

While unknowingly laying the foundations of tyrannies and providing the human tinder for racial conflagrations, woman was also unknowingly creating slums, filling asylums with insane, and institutions with other defectives. She was replenishing the ranks of the prostitutes, furnishing grist for the criminal courts and inmates for prisons. Had she planned deliberately to achieve this tragic total of human waste and misery, she could hardly have done it more effectively.7

[T]he most urgent problem to-day is how to limit and discourage the over-fertility of the mentally and physically defective. Possibly drastic and Spartan methods may be forced upon American society if it continues complacently to encourage the chance and chaotic breeding that has resulted from our stupid, cruel sentimentalism.8

She was equally as caustic about Christianity and the Bible’s teaching on sexuality:

Let it be realized that this creation of new sex ideals is a challenge to the church. Being a challenge to the church, it is also, in less degree, a challenge to the state. The woman who takes a fearless stand for the incoming sex ideals must expect to be assailed by reactionaries of every kind. Imperialists and exploiters will fight hardest in the open, but the ecclesiastic will fight longest in the dark. He understands the situation best of all; he knows what reaction he has to fear from the morals of women who have attained liberty. For, be it repeated, the church has always known and feared the spiritual potentialities of woman’s freedom.9

When women have raised the standards of sex ideals and purged the human mind of its unclean conception of sex, the fountain of the race will have been cleansed. Mothers will bring forth, in purity and in joy, a race that is morally and spiritually free.10

I think it’s safe to say that with the perspective of nearly a century of hindsight, we have hardly attained a cleansed human race that is morally and spiritually free. To expect this kind of salvation from women is unwise, unbiblical, and downright impossible. As we will see in a following chapter, women did not manage to raise the sex standard — in fact, third-wave feminism gave rise to the feminine “raunch culture” we live in today. Yet, Sanger was so confident about the fruits of birth control and the new race that she predicted exactly the opposite of what has come to pass:

When motherhood becomes the fruit of a deep yearning, not the result of ignorance or accident, its children will become the foundation of a new race. There will be no killing of babies in the womb by abortion, nor through neglect in foundling homes, nor will there be infanticide….

The relentless efforts of reactionary authority to suppress the message of birth control and of voluntary motherhood are futile. The powers of reaction cannot now prevent the feminine spirit from breaking its bonds. When the last fetter falls the evils that have resulted from the suppression of woman’s will to freedom will pass. Child slavery, prostitution, feeblemindedness, physical deterioration, hunger, oppression and war will disappear from the earth…. When the womb becomes fruitful through the desire of an aspiring love, another Newton will come forth to unlock further the secrets of the earth and the stars. There will come a Plato who will be understood, a Socrates who will drink no hemlock, and a Jesus who will not die upon the cross. (emphasis added)11

God forbid. God forbid!

I type that quote with tears on my cheeks. Without the cross, we are doomed. There is no hope of new heavens and a new earth, free from the effects of the fall, without the atonement of our sinless Savior. There is no hope for mercy to triumph over judgment unless it be at the foot of that cross. There is no hope for “child slavery, prostitution, feeblemindedness, physical deterioration, hunger, oppression and war to disappear from the earth” if the Father’s righteous anger against these terrible sins is not satisfied. Where would justice be in the universe if such sins go overlooked? No, on the contrary, our only hope is the cross! If Jesus had not been obedient to this plan of salvation, who could possibly be our mediator?

And who could possibly atone for the slaughter that eventually arose from this “new morality”? Only Jesus Christ, our Savior!

So let’s not get lost in a smokescreen. I don’t quibble with Sanger’s observation that numerous pregnancies can be very hard on a woman’s body or that poor families with many children can suffer tremendous financial hardship. But right observation does not always lead to right interpretation. Sanger saw poor health, poverty, sin, anger, abuse, and numerous other challenges and her interpretation was that the “unwanted” children were the root problem — or even that some people shouldn’t reproduce at all. Thus, she was able to make the outrageous statement that “the most merciful thing that a large family does to one of its infant members is to kill it.” That is the farthest thing from mercy! But her thinking has influenced our culture. Therefore, contraception is not the true issue of contention. (Abortifacients, however, are. We need to clearly distinguish between prevention and abortion.) Understanding Sanger helps us to understand why children are now disposable — seen as anything ranging from inconveniences to parasites — instead of being received as gifts from God.

Margaret Sanger lived to see the development of the first birth control pill in 1960 — something she had worked toward. She died in 1966, the year the Johnson administration incorporated “family planning” into its foreign policy and domestic health and social welfare programs for the United States.12 Her life bridged the first and second waves of feminism, but her philosophies were the booster rocket for the most profound effects of second-wave feminism.

Of the myriad changes created by second-wave feminism, the most pronounced would be the movement’s unwavering commitment to abortion. This is where second-wave feminism parts most sharply with the first-wave, as 19th-century women’s rights activists were generally pro-life. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, for example, called abortion infanticide and wrote, “When we consider that women are treated as property, it is degrading to women that we should treat our children as property to be disposed of as we see fit.”13

Notes:
3. Margaret Sanger, Woman and the New Race (New York: Brentano’s, 1920), 63.
4. Deborah G. Felder, The 100 Most Influential Women of All Time (New York: Citadel Press, 1996), 12.
5. Ibid., 13.
6. Estelle Freedman, The Essential Feminist Reader (New York: Modern Library, 2007), 214.
7. Ibid., 213.
8. Margaret Sanger, The Pivot of Civilization (Whitefish, MT: Kessinger Publishing, 2004), 15.
9. Woman and the New Race, 174.
10. Ibid., 185.
11. Ibid., 232–234.
12. Deborah G. Felder, The 100 Most Influential Women of All Time, 14.
13. Letter to Julia Ward Howe, October 16, 1873, recorded in Howe’s diary at Harvard University Library.

MTV has come out with a new show that follows the lives of high school girls who are pregnant. The show is called “16 and Pregnant,” and the following trailer will give you a taste for what this mini-series has in store:

I watched the show for the first time last night, and I have really mixed feelings about it. If you only watch the first 30 minutes, it would almost seem like MTV is glamorizing the idea of teen pregnancy. All you see is young girls throwing baby showers and getting excited about how cute the baby will be.

In my opinion, that’s the last unrealistic message that MTV’s viewers need to hear. Lately the news has been peppered with stories of young girls who intentionally got pregnant for a myriad of reasons. My fiancé’s mother is a high school teacher with numerous pregnant students, and when I asked her why she thought it happened so frequently given the education schools are providing about safe sex, she replied, “Oh, they wanted it! A lot of these girls come from bad family situations where they don’t receive a lot of love and encouragement, so they think that if they have a baby then the baby will love them, or maybe they can get their boyfriend to stick around.”

That scenario is by no means true for all teens, but it is safe to say that when most young people make the fateful decision to have sex before they’re married, they’re not considering the weight of their actions. So is MTV feeding their naiveté?

Surprisingly, I don’t think so. I actually think there is some virtue to this show. (I can’t believe I just said that about MTV. Write it down, people!) First, if you hang on and watch the second half of the show, it follows the young mother after she has the child, and chronicles the hardships that she faces–her dying social life, her un-supportive boyfriend, sleepless nights and all. It’s a realistic look at how tough it can be to have a baby in high school, and it de-romanticizes any misconceptions young women might have about the process. It challenges young viewers to stop and weigh their actions.

But in addition to this strength, I can’t help but wonder if shows like this will de-stigmatize out-of-wedlock pregnancies. That is something the pro-life movement has been talking about doing for years–How do we talk about pregnancy in a way  that values life whenever it comes, and does not produce such crushing shame and hardship that women would rather get an abortion than face the world?

I think this show might serve as a positive step in this direction. While it does portray a realistic picture of teen pregnancy, and in a way that will hopefully educate young women about the consequences of their actions, it doesn’t do so in an armageddon kind of way–ie. THIS WILL END YOUR LIFE FOREVER! The show doesn’t treat babies as a curse upon humanity, but actually highlights some of the wonder of new life as well. While watching the show, I couldn’t help but swoon over how precious the little boy was, and you could see in the young mother’s eyes that she felt the same.

By chronicling the beauty AND the hardship of pregnancy, MTV strikes a careful balance between encouraging responsibility and also valuing life. From what I can tell, each of the girls featured in the show actually carried her pregnancy to term, so there is a subtext of life underlying the entire story line.

But perhaps I am being too optimistic. Anyone else have thoughts on this?

Yesterday a doctor who practiced late-term abortions was shot and killed by a fanatical pro-life proponent.

His name was Dr. George Tiller.

He was shot in his church.

While he was serving as an usher.

These last two details of the story really threw me off. Without calling into question the salvation of either man involved, to the world it would appear that Christians are now killing other Christians over the issue of abortion…a movement that is supposedly “for life.”

Not only were both men Christian, but they were both Lutheran as well. And both men were acting out of their spiritual convictions. The shooter likely thought he was saving thousands of lives through the taking of one. Dr. Tiller, on the other hand, engaged in his work for the protection of female lives. In a public statement, Tiller’s wife explained that her loss “is also a loss for the city of Wichita and women across America.”

One faith, two totally different convictions. What is going on here?

The problem is that both men had strong convictions about the value of life, but they applied their ideology in very selective ways. They both supported various aspects of life, but not ALL life. One failed to value life whenever it comes, the other failed to value life no matter what it does. And in so doing, they departed from the example set for them by Christ.

This is what happens when Christians get tunnel vision on one particular issue–it eclipses EVERYTHING else, including God Himself.

I think that’s why the world is so often confused by the pro-life movement. While the events of yesterday are by no means the norm (that man was probably just insane), there are other ways that we engage in a kind of philosophical schizophrenia.

We say we support life whenever it comes, but we don’t follow this statement to its logical conclusion. We’re as vocal as can be about the evils of abortion, but we don’t actively support unwed mothers (and I mean actually support them in tangible ways–not just talking about supporting them in some vague, hypothetical way). Nor do most churches actively invest themselves in the school systems and under-privileged families that raise those children.

What’s more, the people who fight so long and hard for abortion seem almost oblivious to the injustices that occur in our system of capital punishment. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, numerous individuals have been falsely convicted and sentenced to the death penalty due to eye witness error, government misconduct, and false confessions, just to name a few. (Source) Why isn’t the pro-life movement fighting for these lives, many of which were only exonerated AFTER their executions?

Our culture is also baffled when staunch pro-lifers are liberal on the issue of war. Now I am not going to dive into the topic of whether or not our present war is just, but how you discuss this war, regardless of your position on it, betrays your stance on life. Do you grieve for the loss of life, both American and Iraqi? Are you committed to ending the bloodshed in as peaceful a manner as possible?

When the pro-life movement focuses almost exclusively on one type of life, we reveal ourselves to be no different than Dr. Tiller. He ranked the value of adult women over unborn women. Oftentimes we rank the value of innocent unborn babies over criminals and strangers in other lands. But we part ways with God’s character when we do this.

To fight only against abortion is not a holistic approach to pro-life. We must therefore embrace a worldview that not only values life whenever it comes, but also values the redemptive possibilities of all lives, no matter who it is or what they have done. It may sound radical, but this is the appropriate response to a God that has shown impartial grace to a world that does not deserve it. God sent his son to die for criminals and strangers, so I wonder what that might look like were we to live it out today.

Conservative Christian=Hardcore pro-life advocate.

Over the past several decades, that is how the world has come to define us. And for good reason–the pro-life movement has been one of the definitive issues of evangelicalism. If you’re a conservative Christian, then you are a staunch believer in the pro-life movement, so much so that many Christians have become “one issue” voters–if your candidate is pro-life, then nothing else matters. Vote for them.

This is where we find ourselves today. You’re either pro-life or pro-choice. And in the ears of many evangelicals, that means you’re either a good Christian or a bad Christian.

However, I’m starting to wonder if the pro-lifers are really as devoted as they claim to be.

My doubt began to emerge in the last couple months after my fiancé and I decided to practice the natural family planning method of birth control. Considering numerous factors, such as the possibility that hormonal birth control methods like the pill can cause unintended abortions in early pregnancies, we prayed about it and felt this was the best path for us to take.

I’ll save that blog topic for another day, but what I want to highlight right now is the reactions we’ve received upon telling our Christian friends that we are practicing this method. It’s ranged from anything like, “What the heck is that?” to “Does that mean there are times each month when you won’t be able to have sex??” (horror of horrors)

But perhaps the one response that I’ve heard more than any other is,”What if you get pregnant??”

Initially, I found myself getting defensive about the method and entering into a kind of debate. I would explain how scientific it is, and how I know many people who have practiced the method without getting pregnant until they planned to, and how no method is fool-proof.

But one day, after hearing this reaction for the 100th time and entering into yet another debate about its effectiveness in preventing pregnancy, I stopped myself and asked, “Wait a second, is getting pregnant really all that bad?”

And therein lies the rub–the mindset behind that question, AND my response, seems to overlook two very important things:

1. Babies are good.
2. God created marriage to lead to families.

That said, it struck me as somewhat odd that Christians would be so scandalized by the idea that a married couple would get pregnant. Aside from the fact that we pro-lifers should be valuing life WHENEVER it comes, marriage is God’s ideal plan for raising children. Having babies within marriage is a good thing!

Now it IS important to be responsible and strive to provide for your child to the best of your ability, but we also have to trust that God will take care of us in the face of an unexpected pregnancy, and that’s not a language I hear amidst Christians circles very often.

If God created sex and marriage to result in children, then He’s going to be faithful to His plan. Getting pregnant before you own a home and have a solid salary isn’t going to throw God for a loop. He created marriage SO THAT the child will be provided for, which means the child isn’t going to undermine marriage’s created design. The child is PART OF marriage’s design.

But here’s the real problem: If we respond to the birth of children in a kind of worst-case-scenario manner, if having a child in the first year of marriage is such a scandal, we cannot sit back in shock and judgment when the rest of the world does the same. We are operating off of the same mindset, just in different ways. Maybe we don’t believe in abortion, but we are still placing different values on life, depending on when it comes.

That mindset is the heart of the pro-choice movement.

Again, I am not advocating that everyone has to practice the natural family planning method, nor do I believe we should churn out children like rabbits–there is a degree to which we should be discerning and prayerful about how many children we should have. BUT, that decision should be guided by a trust in God, not in a fear of limited financial resources, or even limited freedom.

That language should also serve as a framework for the way in which we talk about pregnancy.

Ike and I may get pregnant within our first of year of marriage. We may not. But whatever happens we will certainly consider our first child a gift from God, whenever he or she comes. And not simply because that child will belong to us, but because we are disciples of Christ, and that’s what it means to unconditionally affirm the goodness of that divine image bearer that God once named “Man.”

Forty years ago Pope Paul VI released a statement on contraception that, looking back, was stunningly prophetic.

The essay, entitled Humanae Vitae (“Of Human Life”), was written at a time in American history when contraceptive pills were becoming very popular. Women across the country were celebrating their newfound freedom as the history of American sexuality turned a new page.

The Catholic Church, however, was singing a different tune. Unlike the many women who rejoiced over the changing cultural tides, the Pope raised a voice of concern–a concern that we can now see was completely warranted.

Although the Catholic Church’s position on contraception has been debated among Christians (Catholics put a heavy priority on the procreative purpose of sex,whereas many other Christians do not), there is one point on which the Pope was completely right.

If only we’d listened.

What follows is an excerpt from Humanae Vitae in which Pope Paul VI projects the cultural implications of contraception. His predictions could not have been more accurate, and I have posted this today because of the profound impact it has had for women since:

Another effect that gives cause for alarm is that a man who grows accustomed to the use of contraceptive methods may forget the reverence due to a woman, and, disregarding her physical and emotional equilibrium, reduce her to being a mere instrument for the satisfaction of his own desires, no longer considering her as his partner whom he should surround with care and affection.

Did you get that?

FORTY YEARS AGO, Pope Paul VI predicted the exact situation that we find ourselves in today. He warned that the practice of hormonal contraception would divorce the responsibility of sex from the act of sex. He also feared that, as a result of this divorce, men would no longer need to guard the sanctity of sex, thereby leading them to treat women and sex in a recklessly casual way.

And his fears came true.

Sex without consequences. That is what the contraceptive revolution bought our country. And what do you think happens when we cheapen the price of a costly good? We no longer value it quite so highly.

Pope Paul VI was exactly right.

So while the contraceptive pill seemed like a gateway to women’s freedom and a means for valuing the female life even more, it instead devalued women, giving men the freedom to use them for sexual gratification without weighing the implications of their actions.

Now I write all of this not as a diatribe against the practice of contraception, but to caution us about considering the ideological impacts of the decisions we make. Just because science develops a solution to making our lives easier or providing us with a convenient short-cut does not mean we should embrace it.

Whenever we seek to relieve ourselves of divinely placed forms of accountability and responsibility, we forget that God created those measures for our own protection. Sex is about more than just procreation, but the fact that sexual intercourse leads to the birth of a new human life should cause us to approach the act of sex soberly and reverently.

While the contraceptive pill can’t take all the blame for the objectification of women and the number of absent fathers in our nation, it certainly played its own part. In a consumer-driven culture that wants what it wants right now, we have taken a thousand tiny steps in the wrong direction, and those tiny steps add up to a society that has wandered horribly off the path of truth.

No, the contraceptive pill is not, in itself, an evil, but blank-check contraceptive practices do not coincide well with a Scriptural view on marriage, family and sex. It is time we start examining why. I hope you will ask yourself that question.

Right now I am sitting on a plane that is somewhere between Minneapolis and Raleigh-Durham. This weekend I was in Albuquerque, NM for a family reunion, and even though the idea of a family reunion might sound kinda lame, just picture a large band of Hoddes wandering around random tourist attractions like the Rattlesnake Museum and a landmark commemorating the “Skirmish of Albuquerque.”

(You’d really think they could’ve come up with a manlier title than “skirmish.” It sounds like they just stood around and slapped one another with gloves in between exchanging verbal insults.)

Yes, the Hodde clan is a colorful bunch. Between my uncle sneaking up behind people and making farting noises, and the stories about UFO abductions (no one in my family has experienced this personally, but apparently it happens a lot in Albuquerque?), there was never a dull moment.

On the flight from Albuquerque to Minneapolis I also had an interesting experience, but of a different kind. I happened to sit right next to a Catholic priest named Father Stephen, and we spent the entire flight discussing theology, ministry, and the Gospel.

Father Stephen has a parish in New Mexico, but he is also heavily involved in the pro-life movement and we had a fascinating conversation about it. In particular, he had some tremendous insights into the role of men in the current abortion crisis. As Father Stephen explained, the sin of Adam in the Garden of Eden is still very much alive in the practice of abortion today.

What follows is the logic behind this very astute conclusion:

Adam’s sin in the Garden was a failure to lead. Rather than protect Eve and dispute the serpent, he sat by and let her make a decision that negatively affected both of them. Ironically, when it came time to place blame, Adam pointed directly at Eve. As far as he was concerned it was ALL HER FAULT. End of story.

But it wasn’t all her fault, was it? God had given Adam moral responsibility for Eve by giving Adam His commands before Eve’s creation. Of the two, Adam should have seen right through the serpent’s lie, and he should have taken responsibility for caring for Eve. But he didn’t. Instead, he let Eve take full responsibility.

And therein lies Adam’s sin.

Yet this story is not unlike many of the scenarios playing out today, particularly in regard to abortion. Men are failing to step up and take a stand when women need them to.

In his own experience, Father Stephen has witnessed countless women go to their boyfriends or husbands and ask, “Do you think I should have this baby?” The man then responds, “It’s up to you,” which she interprets to mean, “I don’t really want this baby.”

So the woman aborts the child, thinking she’s done what the man secretly wanted. Meanwhile, the man washes his hands of it. And if it ever becomes obvious that abortion was the wrong decision, he can easily point to her and blame, “I left it up to her. It was all her decision.”

Sound familiar?

It is the story of Adam and Eve playing out over and over again, thousands of years later. Just like Eve, women today need men to step up and support them.

You see, there are two crucial parts of the decision making process that a woman must consider in light of an unexpected pregnancy: whether your significant other wants the child, and whether you’ll be able to take care of the child. Both of these questions are easily resolved when men take responsibility for the choices they have made.

That said, women need men to help them while they’re pregnant, take care of the baby once it’s born, or even help them with the adoption process if that is the path she needs to take. And most of all, before the baby is even born, the man needs to voice his desire to keep the child and love the child. Such words of affirmation can make all the difference in saving the life of a baby.

Now at this point you may object: “What if the man is absent or refuses to support the pregnancy? How can we possibly address the countless scenarios in which men fail to step up?” Well it is here that we remember Paul’s teachings about Christ—he is the second Adam, the one to reverse the curse, which means that Adam’s failure was not the final word.

Similarly, the absence of men in the family today does not mean the family is doomed. Even when “Adam” fails today, Christ steps in to make things right. Christ fills that gap and heals the world that Adam and Eve left broken.

And how does Christ do that? Through the Church. As the Body of Christ, we are the hands and feet of Jesus, so we are a part of the curse reversal. We are the ones to step in when fallen men repeat the sin of Adam. We are the agents of healing, renewal, and protection for this world. That is our job, so while we must certainly challenge men to stand up and fill the role that God created for them, we cannot waste time placing blame. That is what Adam did.

So as much as we want the government to fix our problems for us, we have a far more reliable Savior for that job. Christ, through his Church, can effect the healing we long to see in our broken country, and we are a part of that plan.

That said, we must stop waiting around for someone else to do the hard work for us. When we lazily complain about the state of abortion in our country and do nothing but point fingers at our liberals policy makers, we do little more than perpetuate the sin of Adam. Instead, let’s stop waiting around, and let’s do something.
What are you doing?

With the recent nomination of Sarah Palin for Republican VP, the feminist movement has taken a very unexpected turn. 

On the one hand, she’s taking a giant step forward for women. She speaks of breaking the glass ceiling and she’s aspiring to hold a political position that no women has ever before attained.  

And in an even more shocking turn of events, we are now hearing Conservatives use language that has traditionally been attributed to feminists. They argue that anyone who questions Palin’s candidacy in light of her family responsibilities is a blatant sexist. Conservatives also point out that no one ever asks Barack Obama that question, so they firmly defend Palin’s equal right to political opportunity.  

Yet traditional feminists are befuddled, if not frustrated by Palin. Why? Because she is a new breed of feminist, opposing many of the views that feminism has typically held. She is not pro-choice, and she does not support same-sex marriage. She is a Conservative, and she promotes an ideology that feminists have historically assumed to be inherently anti-woman.  

Such a development is fascinating, as well as enlightening. It reveals that the feminist movement has not represented women nearly as holistically as they have claimed. Rather, it has represented a particular brand of women, a brand that excludes a large portion of women in America today. 

But how did this come to be? In their quest to further the cause of women, how have feminists divided women? The answer is quite simple–they have done so by committing the same crime that they sought to amend. In response to a brand of womanhood that was seen as narrow and oppressive to women, they sought to redefine womanhood, but they redefined it in just as narrow a category as their predecessors.  

Feminism reacted against a  school of thought that placed women solely in the home raising the children. Women were not allowed to vote or hold positions of leadership, so they were also discouraged from pursuing higher education. The feminist movement felt that women had more to offer the world, and that the female voice needed to be heard.

As a result, feminists sought equal status and opportunity with men.  Yet in this process, some feminists have over-reacted, belittling motherhood and bashing men. Not all feminists have done this, but the movement has digressed enough that it has developed specific, narrow standards by which true feminism is measured. If you do not conform to these standards, then you are, by definition, opposed to the movement itself.  

The problem with this development is that it does not account for the diversity of women that we find in the world. Yes, some women are ambitious and aspire to be doctors, lawyers, investment bankers, etc. But some women desire to be stay-at-home moms and that is all they’ve ever wanted to be. Is it somehow less noble that these women want to spend their time pouring into the children who will one day be the leaders of our country? By no means, but it is not a role that has been touted as furthering the cause of women.  

In seeking to correct the culture’s understanding of womanhood, feminism has committed the error it sought to correct. Both ends of the spectrum, extreme conservatives and extreme liberals, define womanhood far too narrowly, and thereby exclude other women as somehow being less feminine. 

And that is a dangerous game to play. When you make that move, you no longer encourage women to pursue their inherently female strengths, and a woman’s femininity is no longer defined by God. Women are instead pressured to conform to a mold, which will ironically limit them instead of giving them greater freedom.  

That is why this new development in feminism is so exciting. The feminist movement is taking on a new texture as more and more voices contribute to its direction. And as Christian women, we shouldn’t miss out. Rather than bite the hand that fed us by condemning the feminist movement which gave us the rights that we have today, we should rise up and add our voices to the conversation. Women constitute a powerful force in our society, so we need to take responsibility for helping to direct it.  

We must, however, avoid the pitfalls inherent in the feminist movement. Namely, we must be wary of becoming too woman-centric either. Ultimately, that is where feminism has gone awry, as well any movement that does not have Christ at the center. Feminism has the tendency to focus solely on women (as the name implies), thus leading feminists to occasionally trample other causes that interfere with their own. 

That is exactly what has transpired in the pro-life debate–the life of a child becomes an obstacle in the life of a woman, so the child is eliminated.

But we must be Christ-centered feminists. What does such a feminism look like? It is a feminism that values women as being equal to men, just as Genesis describes. It fights for the image of God in woman, defending their role in the Body of Christ, acknowledging that women add a crucial dynamic to the Kingdom of God.  

HOWEVER, Christ-centered feminism is a feminism that never subjugates the Gospel to the cause of women. Yes, God can be glorified through women and we should do everything in our power to protect that glory, but sometimes God is glorified in our sacrifice and humility as well.  When our cause threatens to override the good and pleasing will of God, then we must cease and desist. But you know, that’s what’s best for women anyway. When we think that the two agendas are at odds, we deceive ourselves. What is good for the Gospel is always good for women. It may not appear to be so at the time, but if God is faithful, and He is, we can trust this to be true. Be a strong woman, but be a strong Christ-centered woman.

This past week Barack Obama and John McCain appeared together at Rick Warren’s church for a discussion of their beliefs. Although I was slightly weirded out that the event was hosted by a church, I was pleased that Warren pushed them on issues relevant to evangelical Christians, particular that of abortion.

For me, the topic of abortion is a very central one. One’s stance on abortion reveals a lot about one’s understanding of the value of human life. Period.

HOWEVER, just because you are opposed to abortion does not mean you are consistently pro-life, and that is what I want to discuss today.

To be pro-life is to value all life, across all ethnic and class lines. And while I don’t want to go into all the details of how that might play out, there is one instance that I want to highlight here:

How does one’s pro-life ideology relate to birth control?

Now before I dive into this, let me give you a little bit of background as to why this has been on my mind of late. You see, recently I’ve been seeing a commercial that irks me every time it airs. In the commercial, a woman stands in the foreground describing all that could happen to her in the next 5 years–she could get a promotion, buy a new house, coach soccer, move to Memphis or finally finish a book.

“But,” the commercial continues, “if your plans don’t include having a baby, then consider taking _______. ”

I then checked out the contraceptive’s website, and it’s all about having a worry-free, hassle-free life.

Now is it me, or are a lot of birth control commercials now sounding just like this? There’s another commercial that bemoans the hardship of having to take a pill every day and how inconvenient that can be. Why not simplify your life with a once a month shot? Or an IUD that you NEVER had to think about? Then you don’t have to deal with the annoyance of daily birth control. What a relief!

The language of these commercials is what gets me–worry free? Hassle free? That’s the same kind of thing you hear about vacations, buying a car, ab workouts, or 30 minute meals. But birth control? They talk about time and sacrifice as if it’s a bad thing, but when it comes to family and children, is “quick and easy” really the best approach?

It is clear from commercials like these that the culture has turned birth control into just another instant gratification means to getting the life you want. A baby is not convenient for me right now, so I’m gonna take a little pill that prevents the unpleasantness of an unwanted child.

And herein lies the problem: when we treat birth control that way, we find ourselves using the exact same language as the pro-choice camp. We treat children as being valuable on a conditional basis. Only when they come at certain, predetermined times are we really excited to have them. Otherwise, they can stand in the way of getting what we want on the time line we want it.

All of this is not to say that birth control is in itself wrong. There is something to be said for being responsible–I wouldn’t have unprotected sex with my husband anymore than I would drive without a seat belt. Trusting God doesn’t mean letting the chips fall where they may. There is a degree to which we must take responsibility for our own actions, and be good stewards of what we have.

But our motives for doing so should be distinctly different than the world’s.

And something else to consider–some birth controls affect the lining of the uterus, making it difficult for an egg to attach to the wall of the uterus. In such cases, it is still possible to get pregnant, but we are, in a sense, creating an inhospitable environment for our potential children. It’s like we’re saying, “I’ll take you, but only if you can survive in the hostile environment I’ve created for you.” That’s not exactly a pro-life attitude is it?

What’s more, artificial birth control requires the very least sacrifice and thought on our parts. Natural birth control demands that we be thoughtful and intentional about our bodies and our sex lives, in a way that taking a pill each day does not. When we take a pill, we don’t have to think about it quite as carefully, which I find a bit worrying. If we call ourselves a people who value family highly and want to discerningly protect it, such an instant gratification approach should cause us to pause and examine ourselves.

It is for all of these reasons that I will seriously have to pray through whether or not to take birth control whenever I get married. There are still natural methods of birth control, so if I don’t take a pill or an IUD, then I will certainly practice natural methods until we feel God calling us to intentionally expand our family. But in the meantime I’m trying to discern what it means to practice “pro-life” with my body and in my language about human life.

Please don’t misunderstand me to mean that taking a contraceptive is morally wrong or counter to Scripture, because that is not at all what I mean. There are certainly times when we are not yet able to provide the life that our children deserve, and in those cases I believe that contraceptives are warranted.

But if it’s simply a matter of inconvenience, if it’s a matter of not having the quality of life you would want to have, not being able to afford all the luxuries you would otherwise be able to have, then be wary. I know a lot of people who say, “We can’t afford to have a baby right now,” but in reality, that’s not really true. If they accidentally got pregnant, they would be just fine–they’d just have to cut corners a bit more. So when we find ourselves speaking about babies that way, we must be honest with ourselves and admit that we are talking about children using the same language as the world.

When it’s all said and done, I don’t have any prescriptive wisdom or a concrete answer to give. I honestly and sincerely believe that each couple should prayerfully make their own decision, and whatever position they come to is right for them. But be sure to ask yourselves how your language about that decision differs from the world. Ask yourselves how the orientation of your heart differs from the world’s. Is this an area of your life that you have totally surrendered to God, or are you wanting to hold a tight grip of control on it, under the guise of being responsible with your resources?

To be pro-life is to value life to the utmost, no matter when or how it comes. That is what I offer here, so let us be Christians who live out our beliefs in every corner of our lives, and lifestyles. Please pray about what that looks like in your own life.