Posted on 10/26/2014 8:08:35 AM PDT by GonzoII
Personally, I think NFP (NFO?) used to prevent conception is immoral along with artificial contraception and all rationalizations either by the ecclesiastical hierarchy or end users for its use are invalid. We both know that NFP is not typically used to “optimize the likelihood of conception” — quite the opposite.
That's what God was concerned with. Read the Old Testament and you realize God is only concerned about keeping the lineage going. All else is of no effect since Christ is the final answer.
He became involved in the pro-life movement and became a leader in Operation Rescue. I don’t know what passage of scripture he used but he was personally convicted that by shutting God out of the transmission of life he was shutting God out of his life.
He doesn't need to when He blatantly condemns homosexuality.
How about He increased her conception because people began to die?
Um... no. And my Church doesn't teach that. Does yours?
Um no, but the only couple who I know where the wife felt that way was Catholic. She was convinced that sex was only for procreation and when she reached the end of her child bearing years, that was the end of sex for them.
The poor guy was incredibly frustrated but to his credit stayed with her.
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.
Absolutely.
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."
It's all a matter of perspective, I suppose.
Which condemns *natural* family planning.
It ain't OK because it's *natural*.
What Onan did was *natural* in that he didn't use any artificial medicines or barrier methods.
So the *natural* label doesn't cut it.
Well put.
Without having to wrangle an interpretation out of a passage that really doesn't apply, God commanded men to go out and be fruitful and multiply. Not doing so would be disobeying God.
That alone would be enough of Scriptural support against contraception without loose interpretations of passages which don't really fit.
I looked up the history of natural family planning and found it dates to the 1800’s. And while evidence in the early Church seems scant, Augustine rejected the gnostic idea of trying to avoid sexual relations during a woman’s fertile time. He called this a form of “forbidding to marry”.
This author chose to become Catholic, but I don’t believe for good reason. Just two reasons not to:
-Heavily Catholic areas are also heavily secular. If you look at the first ten to fifteen states to legalize “gay marriage,” they’re almost exclusively heavily Catholic.
-The Catholic Church keeps in its ranks heretics and unbelievers, including in leadership. That would seem to be because Catholics are essentially born into it, rather than being taught one has to really believe in Jesus as their Savior, whom they need to be saved by due to their sins.
I’d say that ‘spilled is actually quite accurate. Whoever heard of a liquid being spilled when it wasn’t also ruined? Once it’s on the floor, it’s useless…. but that’s a separate issue. Onan was condemned to death by God because he thought he could get away with mocking God by carrying out the act of boinking his sister-in-law under the ‘exception’ rule when God knew exactly what was going on his heart…. that he thought he could get away with adultery since he had no intent of being part of the exception rule for the reason why it was created. There is nothing in this passage that applies to a married couple using birth control.
Excellent.
In the New Testament he condemns things in the Church. Unbeliever's are not to be worried about.
Chesterton on birth control/population control:
In 1925 Chesterton wrote an introduction to Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol in which he said that “The answer to anyone who talks about the surplus population is to ask him, whether he is part of the surplus population; or if not, how he knows he is not.”
Judah, and later Tamar, are in the Messianic line. Er and Onan, were thwarting the promised Messiah by their actions. Satan used them in his efforts to stop Jesus, just as he attacked the Jewish nation throughout the Old Testament. If they weren’t useful, he killed them - since presumably they were “evil” or outside of God’s Blessing which included protection (note Jospeh’s protection). Only Tamar’s cunning circumvented Judah’s efforts to keep her childless.
This was all part of a greater spiritual battle, Satan’s ongoing efforts to destroy the Jewish nation, and stop the promised Messiah. You must take a step back and view it from a strategic level, and focus less on the individual sins.
I completely agree with what you posted. I’m not a theologian, but I can read what they write and they are continuously seeing things that are not mentioned in the written word. Jesus spoke about religionists placing burdens on people.
**Sin is in the heart before it is in the act, and Judah did not intend to fulfill his kinship obligation toward Tamar.**
Judah had vowed to give his youngest son Shelah to Tamar when he was grown. It doesn’t say that Shelah was married, just that Tamar saw that ‘he was grown, and not given him to wife’.
There is no indication that Judah was going to fulfill the promise himself. He simply hadn’t given his youngest son to her. There is no mention of Shelah marrying another woman. How many years had passed? It was probably no longer a pressing issue for him. Daily life can become routine. Judah had become lax in his faithfulness to the ordinance. (he had become lukewarm spiritually). But, for Tamar, life had been in a holding pattern while waiting for Shelah.
**He knew he was unrighteous because he had had no regard for the Levitie obligation.**
True.
**That is why NFO is not contraception. At no point does it alter or impair the act of intercourse.............either to achieve or to avoid conception.**
Avoiding conception is...........avoiding conception.
Do you place the same value on the ‘seed’ of a man as on an embryo? You apparently don’t see that with NFO the ‘seed’ is wasted intentionally regardless. I’m getting kinda descriptive here, but, do you demand that the male stay put until his tube completely drains into the woman, getting every last drop, and spilling none?
I disagree… Onan’s act of mocking God through his subversion of God’s intent when He created the ‘exception’ that allowed for the care of widows and the preservation of the name of the deceased is the focus of the message. If the attention was to be placed on the singularity event of ‘Onan’s act of spilling his seed’, then the question could be asked “so where in scripture prior to this event was the prohibition against spilling one’s seed clearly specified….either in specific way or in a more broadly applied way”? The answer is nowhere and hence Onan’s behaviour during this story is NOT a lesson for all married couples everywhere as to how they deal with the question of contraception.
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