In this review, J. Matthew Sleeth discusses a Christian argument for small families, based on the Golden Rule. My wife and I desire to have a large family, of not only biological children, but also adopted and foster, if God sees fit to bless us. We have also chosen not to use contraception. Naturally, I was interested in this opposing viewpoint, printed in a journal that I respect.

Sleeth argues that it’s okay to use contraceptives for family planning purposes. I agree, mostly, that some contraception is an option for Christians, but I’ll get to my perspective in bit. Sleeth summarizes the argument against contraception as thus:

Is the use of contraception against Christian teaching? I have heard many versions of this argument, but they all boil down to the same thing: Contraception is against God’s law, since it interferes with the created purpose of sexual intercourse. In short, contraception is unnatural.

This is a straw man if I ever saw one, one that hits especially close to home. I believe that Sleeth has mischaracterized the argument against contraception and that he, ultimately, misses the point about sexual reproduction.

The Theology of Reproduction
Sleeth gets it backwards. Reproduction is not the “created purpose of sexual intercourse.” Reproduction is the natural fruit of intercourse. Here, I’m summarizing an argument I first heard from James Houston, who was discussing the Trinity and drawing on writings of the Cappadocians and C.S. Lewis. In the beginning, God made human beings in his image. But why did God need to make anything? The Trinity is a self-sufficient community. God is the great “I AM.” He exists because of himself, for himself, without need for prior cause, without need of anything at all, including human company. The pagan gods of the Ancient Near East and the Greco-Roman world needed human beings to make sacrifices, worship them, and honor their sacred places. YHWH transcends humanity.

So why bother with human beings, or a created universe for that matter? Because God is love, and love is expansive. It’s like yeast, or a mustard seed, or good news that spreads and spreads, filling everything and everyone. The Trinity created the universe, and created us, out of an expansive love that sought more persons to love. God did not need to create us, or anything at all. He wanted to. We are wanted by God.

And we are made in his image. “Be fruitful and multiple in number” are God’s very first words to human beings. We are to be productive like God - generating new persons to love. In the perfect marriage, children are created out of the love between ‘adam and ‘adamah. It is a joyful expansion of the love between the lovers. In a sense, children “proceeds” from the marriage. It is not a coincidence that emotional bedrocks of a marriage - the wedding, sexual union, and the birth of children - are part of a continuous whole.

To reduce the connection between sex and childbirth to a matter of mere purpose is like saying the created purpose of Jesus was to die on the cross. There’s nothing incorrect, per se, with that statement, but it misses the mark entirely.

Next, the theology of children.

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The AP recently ran this story.

DAYTONA BEACH - No hymnals. No pews. No steeple. No stained glass windows. And no women.

This ain’t your grandma’s church.

Organizers of the Church For Men say that guys are “bored stiff” in many churches today. “We try to make it interesting for them. We meet in a gym and we talk about issues that mess men up,” said Mike Ellis, 46, the church’s founder. The Church For Men meets one Saturday evening a month, drawing about 70 guys dressed in everything but straight-laced shirts and neckties. The service features a rock band, a shot clock to time the preacher’s message and a one-hour in-and-out guarantee.

The article goes on to talk about hot rod events, fishing outreach, and one preacher’s idea that men have “the attention span of a flea.”

It is important, even Biblical, for Christian men to build relationships with other Christian men, to the glory of Christ. Our Lord himself modeled this for us by gathering the Twelve, and Paul’s cohort of Barnabas, Timothy, Titus, Silas, etc., shows the mighty deeds that men working together can do for the Kingdom.

But is the church’s problem that it asks too much from men and needs to cater their services so that men don’t know whether they’re at church or at home watching ESPN? I don’t think so. First, the popularity of movements like Promise Keepers and writers like John Eldredge suggests to me that too many churches ask too little of their men. There’s a great deal of work to be done in the Kingdom, and professional ministers can only do so much. God’s call is for all of his people to do works of service, and the skills that men have in business, with their hands, in planning and entrepreneurship, in risk taking and boldness, are integral for much of that work. I have seen that with my own eyes.

Secondly, however, I worry that something is lost when we don’t listen to God’s call to humble ourselves like little children when we come to him. Men are prideful, and we don’t like to leave our comfort zones. The problem, of course, is that the gospel is often uncomfortable. It’s easy to dismiss something we don’t want to do by saying it’s “not for us.” Our consumerist culture has taught us that our desires and our needs should be the most important thing to us. Many of these types of ministry try to put the gospel into a friendly, nonthreatening context, like fly fishing or sports cars. I know that these ministries have worked in many lives, and far be it from me to stand between God and another human being. At what point, though, does the context swallow up the gospel?

There have been many popular Christian men held up as examples for Christians. Many of them lived exemplary lives, while others “talked the talk” without “walking the walk.” Only one person ever showed us how a true man lives, a true man made in God’s image and obedient in every respect to God’s will: Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ, the Son of God. May all Christian men look to him for their example and endeavor to conform to his image.

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Read parts one and two of this essay.

This is the longest section because I have found it the most difficult to articulate. In America, where “family values” are coveted by every social class and political party, it isn’t easy to see why family might not be an inherent good. Nonetheless, the fourth argument against community in American culture is…

4) The priority of family. At first glance, family appears to be an ally of community. And in many ways, it is. Families are fundamental building blocks of community involvement and networking. People who are strongly invested in families are often also invested in community. Like a community, families connect individuals to a social network outside of themselves. They therefore play a similar role in the individual’s life.

In this similiarity, however, lies the danger. Because a family can look so much like a community, and because family life promotes so many of the same values as community life, family and community are often viewed interchangeably. This is a mistake. The two should be viewed as distinct. In fact, the family can frequently be the enemy of community.

What I am trying to say here must be carefully nuanced, because I don’t want to imply that family is never beneficial to community life. The clearest example of the distinction between community and family, however, might be seen in a person who converts from the religion of his family (or the non-religion of his family) to another religion. At the heart of religion, or at least, at the heart of the Christian religion, is community. (More on this in future posts.) Joining the community life of the new religion will almost certainly require breaking away from full membership in family life.

For example, a man from a Christian family who becomes Jewish may no longer observe Christmas and Easter. He may choose to respect his family and celebrate with family traditions, but his heart will not move in unity with that of his family as it once did. Or, more radically, he may come to see these traditions as antithetical to his new beliefs, and wholely reject everything about his family traditions. The man’s true “home” is now found with his religious community. He is, ultimately, an outsider to his family, and his family are outsiders to his community.

Even when one’s family and one’s community are mostly in sync, family can become the enemy of true community. The family is an extension of the self, so pride and selfishness are ongoing threats. In many cultures, family clans dominate social life. The families of Romeo and Juliet don’t seem to be that different from one another. Yet, family pride - genetic pride - consumes lives and destroys community. How many churches have been damaged by a pastor’s desire to “pass down” the pulpit to his son, as if a church is a family business? How many pastor’s children have been scarred because their parents failed to negotiate the treacherous channel between family and community?

Imagine a religious order - ostensibly a community of faith dedicated to common values - but one to which several sets of siblings happen to belong. There may be many situations in which those siblings are asked to choose between family and community. If family is chosen often enough, then the community will splinter. This tension can be seen in the Gospels, when James and John (brothers) argue about who among the disciples will be greatest. Fortunately, the brothers among the disciples (not only James and John, but also Peter and Andrew) placed their community and the mission of God above family loyalties.

There are pockets of America where family is considered “sacred.” Given the tensions between family and community, I don’t think it should be surprising that, in these are same pockets, newcomers often have difficulty in making a home, and ethnic or racial tensions are often high. “Family values” do not necessarily include hospitality, justice, righteousness, or even love, the marks of true community.

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Americans, by and large, do not live as if community is a major aspect of their lives. Why not?

Read part one of “The Argument Against Community.”

3) The priority of the individual. The individual, after all, is what America is all about. It doesn’t matter where you come from, who your parents are, what your social class at birth was. The American dream is that you can make yourself into whatever you want. If something isn’t working for you, drop it and try something else.

Much of the power of community, however, comes from its demand upon the individual to submit his or her personal needs to those of the community. For example, a monastery is defined by its “rule.” If each monk were to take the freedom to choose when and how he would observe the rule, the monastery would quickly lose its distinctiveness from the world around it. The monastic order would dissolve into a collection of unhappy individuals.

American culture has made individualism a virtue, to the point where many supposed Christians say without a second thought, “God would want me to be happy” - a statement without precedent in Christian scripture or theology - as an argument for their individualistic decisions. True community asks that an individual be ready at any moment to reject his happiness for the sake of the group. Many Americans call that a fool’s game. The same men who weep at the sacrifices of firefighters or soldiers begin looking for an escape hatch when called to sacrifice their personal happiness for that of their family, town, or country.

Next, the final argument against community, the priority of the family.

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In future posts, I will be explaining why I feel that community is so vital for Christians, particularly in America, and exploring important aspects of community life. It occurs to me, however, that most Americans, even most American Christians, do not view community - whether religious or secular - as central to their lives. Why not?

1) “Religion is a private affair.” It is an American axiom that one does not discuss religion or politics in polite company. The mix of the First Amendment, freedom of religion, and our culture’s view of tolerance as an important virtue have created a climate in which one’s personal religious beliefs are literally no one else’s business. Compulsary church attendance, which was common in Europe and in colonial America, seems radical and almost totalitarian to contemporary Americans. I doubt our Founding Fathers would have envisioned that their goal of religious freedom would have one day resulted in a culture in which individuals create “salad bar” religions, combining favorable bits from Christianity, Buddhism, and whatever other spiritual tradition happens to be available.

For people not actively involved in a religious community, their deepest held beliefs are often formed in isolation from other people. The common language, common context, and even common biases of any human community are difficult for the individual to enter, even more so when religion is viewed as private and therefore is not openly discussed. The beliefs of a community must first be passed through our private lens before we can trust those other individuals, and our individual beliefs pass judgment over communal beliefs. By viewing religion as private, a wall is built between our individual selves and any community we come into contact with.

2) Religion as an op-ed position. The irony of America’s view of religion as private is that religion is also viewed as an op-ed position: a series of positions or arguments which can be promoted, opposed, agreed upon, or disagreed with. Some people possess a literal list of theological positions with which one must agree in order to be a “true believer.” Religion, rather than being the worship of God or even some sort of personal development, is an exercise of opinion and argument.

Communities, in this mindset, are puzzles to be deciphered. Do their beliefs align with mine? How many points do they get right? How many do they get wrong? This is not a process that ends easily. At first contact with a community, and with each subsequent contact, the individual stands ready to oppose the community’s position. For some individuals, this may even be seen as a “holy” role, such as that of Elijah or John the Baptist, holding up the light of truth in a world of darkness. Like those saints of old, these individuals are lonely prophets, who wonder why the blind laugh so much and feast.

Next, the priority of the individual and the priority of the family.

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