Posted on 10/26/2014 8:08:35 AM PDT by GonzoII
Based on the arguments I have seen on FR over the years about contraception and Scripture, it is more than apparent that some have built a doctrine and fished for verses to support it, than using a reasonable interpretation of the passage to make the doctrine.
Onan was killed by God for failing to fulfill his obligation under the Law to his brother’s wife.
Saying that he was killed for using contraception is a very loose interpretation of the passage, to put it mildly.
If contraception were such a serious issue, then God would have far more clearly spelled it out and there would be many more passages of Scripture dealing with it.
God never leaves us in doubt about what He considers important, but always emphasizes and reiterates those matters.
All we have here for the anti-contraception camp is one obscure passage that can be legitimately interpreted in other ways.
Actually, that's not what the text says. The text says "God slew him for the thing which he did." It doesn't say "for the thing which he didn't do."
It also doesn't say, one way or the other, whether Onan provided for Tamar. That isn't even mentioned in the account. It just says "the thing which he did." Which was immediately described in the previous verse: deliberately impairing the fertility of the act.
It's very hard to think of a sin which doesn't have that dual role of being, in part, both the effect of previous sin and the cause of further sin.
"To say that contraception causes moral failure denies the empowering work of the Holy Spirit to give people the ability to resist sin."
Not so: that does not follow. Nobody said that sin is an irresistable or inevitable cause of further sin. We all agree with the "empowering work of the Holy Spirit to give people the ability to resist sin."
Don't we pray for that every day?
There are many things which are morally objectionable which are not specifically mentioned in Scripture. Sex-change operations ("gender reassignment surgery") based on radical gender theory would be one. It is not mentioned, but it can be reasoned out with reference to the goodness of God's design of male and female, and the wrongness of altering and rearranging this design at will.
A very similar line of reasoning apples to contraception, which is, like sex-reassignment surgery, a deliberate impairment of our normal, healthy sexual design.
I suppose that one could devise an argument that God was making an example of Onan, and thus didn't feel that it was necessary or practicable to likewise kill all those who subsequently committed the "Sin of Onan," but that seems to me to be a rather weak argument, so my question stands: Why has God been so lax with the billions of other people since Onan's time who have likewise sinned by "spilling seed?"
(Also: How did the exact circumstances of Onan's behavior become known to the writer of this particular passage of the Bible? Were there other witnesses to Onan's deed, did it simply become "common knowledge," or did Onan's wife denounce him? And who's to say for exactly what reason God then killed Onan? I mean: If God smites your neighbor, how are you to know for exactly what reasons God did that? How are you to even be sure that it was in fact God, and not just some random stroke of lightning, or a blood clot, or any of countless other possible causes of death?)
I realize that it might appear as though I were attempting a reductio ad absurdum here, but I'm not. Rather, this particular conundrum seems truly baffling to me.
Regards,
Until God greatly increased Eve's conception after the fall, sex was as much for fun and relationship as it was for procreation because most sex would NOT have resulted in conception.
Just where did this mentality come from that sex was only for procreation and that sex without that intent is morally bankrupt, or subnormal? Did GOD state that somewhere?
All that does is diminish sex, which was GOD'S idea in the first place, in the eyes of humans to something less good than it is.
It would be just like the enemy to take something that is good and right and bind humans with all kinds of guilt and hang-ups about it by implying that they're not *doing it right* if they don't have the right intent for having it.
At that point, it simply provides some people the opportunity to point fingers and sit in judgment of others who aren't doing it the way they think it should be done.
Why has God been so lax with the billions of other people since the times of Sodom and Gomorrah who have likewise sinned by acts of sodomy? or rape? or murder? or blasphemy?"
Unsearchable are His ways. But the best explanation I have hears is simply, "Normally, God acts normally."
That is, God does not usually intervene in human affairs via miracles. (This is why "miracles" are considered exceptional and are called "wonders" and "marvels".)
God allows people and societies to experience the natural and logical consequences of their evil deeds.
Our natural and logical consequence for rejecting natural procreation (via contraception, sterilization, abortion, buggery, and the general aversion to natural sex as it was designed) will probably be the success of the Islamic jihad. Jihad will be the scourge upon the backs of faithless, fruitless Europe and America.
I don't wish it. But I can see it down the road.
The demons say "Inshallah." The believers say, "Holy God, Holy Mighty One, Holy Immortal One, have mercy on us and on the whole world."
A Unitarian Universalist? They are hell-bound, filthy heretics. They are not Protestants, and they aren't Christians.
Not all of us pray for that, or even think about sin on a daily basis.
When I pray, it’s not to ask God to help me NOT do something, but to thank Him for what I have.
We don't know whether God increased Eve's conception because He made her more fertile, or whether He increased Eve's conception because --- as a natural consequence of sin -- concupiscence took root and Eve and Adam's sex drive become more irrational, loveless and lust-driven.
Perhaps a case can be made for either. However, I doubt God would have "cursed" Eve through improving her fertility per se, since an increase of fertility is consistently seen in the OT as a blessing, and barrenness as a curse.
Therefore I am inclined to say that lust came and infected their sexual relations, so that they had sex for reasons like selfishness, domination, bribery, conquest, and exploitation for personal gratification --- all of which can cause unintended and even disastrously untimely pregnancies, and all of which are also anti-love. And fun? It's not even user-friendly.
"Just where did this mentality come from that sex was only for procreation and that sex without that intent is morally bankrupt, or subnormal? Did GOD state that somewhere?"
Um... no. And my Church doesn't teach that. Does yours?
Of course people are not *doing it right* if they don't have the right intent for having it. But that :"right intent" is not procreation alone. It is also giving gifts of joy and satisfaction to one another, which heightens the happiness of marriage.
Lust is the enemy of love. But I think you know that. Anyone who uses sex selfishly or heedlessly, without honoring its delicate and powerful love-making and life-making capacities, is falling short of what it;s supposed to be. Intentionaly impairing either its natural fertility, or it's natural satisfaction ("fun" to you your term) is like saying, "No, God, I don't like the way you made sex. But that's OK. It'll just make some cuts here, here and here, throw away this part and that part, and then it'll be fine. Too bad you made it wrong, but I fixed it."
**Well, Judah reneged too,**
Judah, a widower at the time (not that that okayed unmarried sex), THOUGHT he messed around with a prostitute, for Tamar veiled her face, and dressed the part (nowadays, dressing like a harlot seems to be the norm. But, that’s a whole nuther topic). Tamar turns up pregnant. Judah had no idea he was the father, UNTIL presented with his signet, bracelets, and staff, which he had given to the ‘harlot’.
Judah acknowledged then and there. No renegging.
Onan basically performed deceptive practice, before God, and man (especially Tamar).
Couples that use the monthly timing practice are using contraception. They just don’t use any devices. But, the ‘pill’ has got to be one of the most society and health damaging man-made creations ever. We’re not Catholic, and my wife has never used it. The side effects alone should be enough to shun it.
Look, Christians and Unitarians are still allowed to ride in the car and talk. There can still be respect for one another as human beings. That is basic.
There are people I wouldn't want to have a long car ride with, but she wasn't one of them.
Tagline.
And I thank Him for all His gracious gifts to an unworthy being like myself.
God never stops loving me, and for this I am grateful. It's as if I can feel Him squeeze my hand.
It can be Scripturally judged based upon precepts and principals, but making the sin of Onan to be that of using contraception will not do. It was selfishness, not wanting to raise up children for his brother's wife:
And Judah said unto Onan, Go in unto thy brother's wife, and marry her, and raise up seed to thy brother. And Onan knew that the seed should not be his; and it came to pass, when he went in unto his brother's wife, that he spilled it on the ground, lest that he should give seed to his brother. (Genesis 38:8-9)
And the thing which he did displeased the Lord: wherefore he slew him also. (Genesis 38:10)
But from the beginning creating two uniquely compatible and complementary opposite genders, and such becoming one flesh, "cleaving," goes together with multiplying, (Gn. 1:26-28l cf. 2:24)
And Scripture knows nothing of either a sexless marriage btwn virile believing partners or one in which such couples choose to have no children (using Onan's method for instance), as well as restricting conjugal relations to that purpose.
That';s why he said, when the truth came out, "She has been more righteous than I." He knew he was unrighteous because he had had no regard for the Levitie obligation.
Contracepted sex is, in itself, a deceptive practice. It has the form of a natural act, but it is not because it has been impaired in some way, either in the act itself, or before or after, so that the act us rendered null.
That is why NFO is not contraception. At no point does it alter or impair the act of intercourse.
NFO cana rightly be called "Family Planning," and even, technically speaking "Birth Control,: but it is not contraception. It consists only of periodic abstinence, either to achieve or to avoid conception.
The Jews, interestingly, starting in Biblical times, used periodic abstinence as a means of achieving pregnancy. If you abstain from sex during menstruation, and then count 7 days after the last show of blood, then have a mikvah (purifying bath) and resume relations, you have just done 12-13 days of abstinence which puts you on the 12th or 13th day of the cycle, so the man's sperm count is high and the woman is just on the very verge of ovulation. This is the time of absolute maximum fertility.
That is, precisely, using NFP to optimize the likelihood of conception.
So. You want to do it the Biblical way? There you go! Mazel tov!
It was sin in attitude AND in its intended end AND in his chosen means to that end.
This explains more:
#38
All of Christendom rejected contraception until the Anglicans broke ranks in 1930. You will not find any Christian endorsing contraception in he whole history of Christian life, almost to millennia, although it was known and practiced in the ancient world ("Pharmakeia").
By what legitimate innovation did contracepted sex acts become OK in 1930? And why didn't anybody see it up to that point, except the Anglicans?
It says very much what Onan did.
Genesis 38:8-10New King James Version (NKJV)
“8 And Judah said to Onan, “Go in to your brother’s wife and marry her, and raise up an heir to your brother.” 9 But Onan knew that the heir would not be his; and it came to pass, when he went in to his brother’s wife, that he emitted on the ground, lest he should give an heir to his brother. 10 And the thing which he did displeased the Lord; therefore He killed him also.”
The heir he would have raised would have supplanted his own sons for the inheritance. That’s why he failed to follow through fully.
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