Religion, Contraception, and Marriage
A link from majikthise sent me over to Feministe and from there to Contraskeptic, where an evangelical Christian man is blogging about the ultimatum his wife has given him: either get a vasectomy or no more sex. It’s the sort of post that just reconfirms (to me at least) how much religion screws up the lives of people doing their best to get by.
So it has now been 15 months since we have had sex or even done much in the way of snuggling. It’s not that we don’t want sex. She has said several times that she didn’t sign up for a sexless marriage. But even more than she wants sex, she doesn’t want another pregnancy, another delivery, and resetting the clock for being a stay-at-home mom.
The lack of sex has been a wedge between us. The chemical thing that happens to your brain during sex to boost the emotional bond between a couple — that’s supposed to help sustain a couple in through the stresses of living together, but it’s not available to us.
Here is the dilemma I face:
If I get a vasectomy, we’ll be sinning if we have sex, and unlike using a condom, the sin will be permanent (or extremely expensive if not impossible to reverse). Practically speaking, there’s no repentance if indeed contracepted sex is a sin.
But if I don’t get a vasectomy, and we have to abstain until my wife reaches menopause, we’ll be sinning by not having sex. Couples are only supposed to abstain briefly but to come back together to avoid temptation (see I Corinthians 7). And it seems that the NFPers and the Quiverfull folks would agree that abstaining for the purpose of avoiding children is also a sin.
Beyond the concern about offending God, if I opt for abstinence over a vasectomy, our marriage will suffer. Love will diminish because we’ll be avoiding physical affection and because my wife will be offended that I am not complying with her wishes.
This is classic example of everything that is wrong with organized religion. According to evangelicals, marriages are supposed to be about children. About raising children to be successful, fulfilled adults. Christian groups spend lots of airtime talking about how a marriage between a man and a woman is the only true marriage because it can bring forth children. They talk about how children raised any other way will be deficient.
Here we have a marriage that was, by his accounts, relatively happy and engaged in raising their three children. And yet, the last 15 months of the marriage have been strained by an issue that only exists because of religion. Religion, remember, says that this marriage is necessary to create a healthy environment for those three children. But now that religion is creating a situation where the couple is engaged in blaming each other for the lack of sex in their lives.
When Contraskeptic writes that he would okay with having another kid, he is shifting the blame for their lack of sex onto his wife. And when she mentions post-sex that they could have lots more sex if he’d only get a vasectomy, she’s shifting the blame onto him. So now they’re locked into this loop of unhealthy behavior. Each one no doubt believes that the other person is being intractable. No doubt this is all made worse by the fact that they’re currently “living in sinâ€.
There is no way for people as far removed as us to know what sort of effect this is having on their children. Maybe it hasn’t had any yet. Maybe the blame hasn’t leached itself into their rest of their lives yet. It will eventually, minus a resolution. And in the process, it is destroying the very thing that the marriage was supposed to be creating in the first place. Religion’s one true way of raising children correctly.
Somehow I am missing God’s love and compassion in all of this. Creating a marriage where the two parties resent and mistrust each other does not seem like a worthy end goal. And it definitely seems to defile the idea of marriage as the only place to raise children.
February 27th, 2007 at 11:17 am
I suppose anyone could take a bad example of anything and make a case from it against whatever they want to. Isn’t that what radical feminists have done with marriage? Made comments like “all men are rapists”? And isn’t that what far-right “Christians” (I say that because that is suspect) have done about the AIDS crisis? Blamed it on drug users and gays? And isn’t that what you’re doing now?
Taking one bad situation and turning it into the rule…
Bad form.
February 27th, 2007 at 4:28 pm
My point was not that this one example was what made organized religion a bad thing. It was rather that this was an example of what makes organized religion a bad thing. The idea that contraception is against god’s will or that using birth control defeats god’s purpose in having human beings marry is something that seems somewhat silly to me, but that isn’t an adequate rational for condemning organized religion.
My problems with organized religion stem from something much deeper of which that is just one symptom. It is something which I touch on my post above this. Basically, I think that organized religion misses the entire point of what Jesus was saying, inserting other peoples’ personal judgments and a bureaucratic hierarchy into an individual relationship with god. Part of what Jesus was revolting against was the institutionalized nature of the Jewish religion. He was saying that you don’t need to go to the temple to pray, you can pray in your closet at home and you’ll have a closer relationship to god when you do. He wanted to take the public out of religion, but more specifically to take out the Jewish elders who dictate both religious and much of the secular law for the Hebrews (to the extent that the Romans let them).
And that, in a nutshell is my problem with religion. My relationship with god is a personal thing. My moral values that derive from that relationship are my own. I don’t need collection of old white European guys, or a collection of African bishops, or some televangelist laying down a group of laws that have little to nothing to do with what Jesus taught telling my how to worship. I don’t need to tithe ten percent of my income to have a better relationship with god. I don’t need to beg forgiveness from an ordained minister with a questionably closer relationship to god for my trespasses.
So when I see someone’s life being torn apart because they are forcing themselves to submit to someone else’s idea of who god is and how they should talk to god, I see everything that is wrong with organized religion. It is paying more attention to the human and mortal trappings than to the the personal spiritual connection with god.
February 27th, 2007 at 7:37 pm
But if you read his blog, it is not other people’s beliefs he is taking on… he seems to have his own conviction in this area of contraception, and James 4:18 says, “whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.” If he takes the Bible seriously, then he’s got to grapple with even the day-to-day things, if he believes the Bible has something to say about it. It does strike me that he’s going about it in a rather public way, and perhaps he’d be better served to, as you put it, go pray in his closet at home. But for a Christian, working out his own convictions is a big deal. Heck, I’ve sorted through some of my thoughts on birth control on my own blog, so who am I to judge or criticize this guy?
Look, the point is that you’re right in some things and he’s right in some things, and I’m right in some things… but we’re all striving to determine (1) if there is one who was right in all things (namely, Jesus?), and (2) if he was right in all things, how will I respond to that? Televangelists, bossy Europeans, and Pharisees can all stay out of it, but we each have to determine what we’re going to do with the questions concerning God.
But my point is, while this guy may be choosing to work out his faith in a public and rather odd way, others work it out in personal, genuine, and meaningful ways… and religion isn’t ruining their lives. He’s the exception rather than the rule.
February 28th, 2007 at 2:15 am
I don’t think I’ve ever judge or criticized Contraskeptic. I have criticized organized religion (although somewhat erroneously in this case i will admit, since this seems to be an issue of personal faith, not doctrine) and I stand by that criticism.
I agree whole-heartedly that we all have to determine our own relationship with god. I also happen to think that organized religion gets in the way of that for many people.
February 28th, 2007 at 3:47 pm
Sadly, I think you are right about organized religion. For too many people, it stands between them and God. The hypocritical televangelists and the philandering pastors have done material harm to the work of God in many people’s lives. And yet there is still an insatiable hunger there, leaving many people to seek ways to know God even if they don’t realize that’s what they’re doing.
I appreciate your willingness to dialogue about all of this- I think you and I are in agreement about many things; one thing in particular is that Contraskeptic does seem to have his mind pretty firmly made up so it causes readers to wonder why in the heck he has a blog? Just to find other people as thoroughly convicted as he is? Or to commiserate that he’s not having sex? Oh well. Anyway, I’m glad we each get our own personal relationship with God to work out on our own!
March 1st, 2007 at 1:03 am
One thing that has always bothered me about many organized religions has been the elements of fear and ostracication associate with them. The idea that you have to believe in god their way or you’re going to hell or can’t be part of their community seems antithetical to everything that Jesus preached about.
I think I’ve been fairly lucky with my experiences with organized religion. I grew up Episcopalian in a fairly liberal church. I was never once made to feel threatened or coerced into belief. I never heard (in my own church) a sermon which offered hell as an alternative to those who did not agree with the message being preached. I never heard the name of god invoked against people who didn’t agree with the teachings of the church.
Instead I was blessed to have some of the most amazing preachers I’ve ever heard who were able to talk about their own lives and their own connections to god and to show how that guided and directed them. It was almost never about what “I had to do”, but about what their life with Christ was about.
Those are traits I see in far too few churches, ministers, and church-goers, and that’s a large reason that I’ve moved away from organized religion. When the people that I respected and whose words I valued retired or moved on to other parishes, my reasons for being there went away.
I could go on a lot more about that and I probably will at some point in the future.
If Contraskeptic is serious in his posts (and just isn’t looking to yank peoples’ chains) then I think what he is looking for is absolution. He wants to be told that it is okay with god to do whatever it is he decides to do.