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.

Posted in Children and Family, Christian Theology, Sex and Gender | No Comments »

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.

Posted in Men, Following Jesus, The Church in America | No Comments »