2 Cents

Lord willing, I will spend the next two consecutive blog posts highlighting what I found.

Before we answer those questions, however, we need to bring our hearts and minds to a place where they are receptive to God's word instead of defensive.  

Talking about an issue like this can get very emotional and intense because a change of mind in this area may cause major inconveniences and changes to our lifestyles.

But as Christians we must always be ready and willing to be inconvenienced for the sake of God's glory and our own holiness.  Our convenience and comfort are never worth the price of sin, no matter how hard we may try to convince ourselves otherwise.

We live in a culture where the question of birth control and contraception is very important.  

Many Christians today simply have not spent the time thinking through this question and have unwittingly accepted the position of mainstream culture - that there is nothing morally wrong with contraception and any and all forms are acceptable to use as frequently as one may desire.  

But God calls us to analyze everything we do in light of Scripture. (See Psalm 119:105; Joshua 1:8)

So it is simply not acceptable for those of us who claim to have Jesus as the Lord of our lives and the Bible as the authority for our thoughts and actions to blindly accept certain behaviors only because the majority of our culture does so.  

Recently the U.S. Food & Drug Administration lowered the minimum age for girls to have unrestricted access to 'Plan B' or what is more commonly referred to as the 'Morning After Pill' to 15 years old.  Prior to this change a New York district court judge ruled that there should be no age restrictions whatsoever, opening this up to girls as young as age 10.  And there are many who still agree with that decision.  You can read more about this here.

This is but one in a host of examples I could mention that remind us that this is an issue all Christians need to think through.  We need to know what the Bible says and compare it to what's popular. 

As with any issue in life, we need to humble ourselves before the word of God.  We need to be ready to change our beliefs and our behaviors if we become convinced they are not glorifying God.  And we need to have the courage to go against what's popular if that's what God calls us to do.  (See Gal. 6:14; Rom. 12:2)

So if this is something you've never studied or thought through yourself, a great place to start is to pray. Pray for God to make your heart receptive instead of defensive.  Pray for God to give you the humility to submit to whatever he wants for your life, even if it will inconvenience you.  And pray for him to give you the courage to stand up against the majority opinion when needed.

And also get in the Bible yourself.  Just because I say something doesn't mean it's biblical.  I'm human and fallible.  Be like the Bereans (See Acts 17:11) and go back to the Bible to check and see whether or not what I'm saying lines up with what God says.  And if it does not, I pray God would stamp it out and cause it to be ineffective.

Next post, Lord willing, I will present what I have found in the Bible regarding question #1 above.  The post after that will be dedicated to question #2.