The drumbeat of death. . .

I listened to Elon Musk (not my favorite person) but one thing he said is spot on.  He indicated that from his view the educational system and even the family has done a great job beating it into our children, particularly girls, that if you get pregnant your life is over.  It is surely true that with respect to premarital sex the uniform witness of nearly everyone has been to do whatever is possible to prevent pregnancy and to expand the difficulties of such a pregnancy for everyone.  Could it be that we learned too well?  The birth control that was for particular situations has become universal and normal to make conception exceptional and rare.  But what was perhaps reasoned advice to the teenager has become the normal way a generation or more has come to see pregnancy in every case.  It is not simply life changing but steals your life away from you.  You do not get a career, you do not get advancement in your profession, you do not get happiness -- instead you get chained to a prison cell called parenthood.  No wonder we see pregnancy as a disease to be prevented and abortion as the sacrament of this religion of unwanted children.

I was a pastor during the time when much of youth ministry seemed focused upon this.  We had countless "Bible studies" and pep talks in an attempt to prevent our teens from becoming sexually active or taking drugs.  Kids got so tired of the predictable message they stopped listening.  But what they did hear and what has stuck with them is the Christian version of the idea that if you get pregnant, your life is over.  Girls especially heard this and took this to heart but boys did as well.  Parenthood was a trap and not a joy.  I wonder what they thought this said about them and how their parents viewed them.  Did they also begin to think that their own moms and dads had dreaded the announcement that it was a boy or it was a girl?  Even if they did not apply this to their own conception and birth, they certainly applied it to their own want or desire to be a parent.  We are now reaping the poisoned fruits of our own failure to speak clearly and authentically.  No, motherhood is not a prison and, no, parenthood is not an unspeakable burden, and, no, children are not a curse upon your hopes and dreams and happiness.  Children are a blessing from the Lord.

Curiously, we seem to have lost the battle to prevent premarital (or extramarital sex).  Christian teens and Christian adults seem to be as tempted by and succumb to temptation nearly as often as those outside the faith.  But we have all rallied around the holy grail of contraception and abortion so well that even Christians are not sure that abortion is wrong or always wrong.  What we are sure of is this.  Don't get pregnant or, if you do, wait until you have everything else out of your life that you desired.  Surely this is part of the issue with IVF -- the age at which women are having their first pregnancy keeps advancing and is nearly at that point when most women in the past were having their last pregnancy.  That is the most profound lesson of all our talk against premarital sex and are warning to our girls and boys that a pregnancy would ruin their lives and we learned that lesson too well.  We have turned sex into pleasure without the bother of a child and the laboratory into the place where we get a child when we finally decide we might want one.  Gone is the joyful affirmation that children are a blessing from the Lord.

The threat against premarital sex is not that it might result in a child.  No, the threat against premarital sex is that it is wrong, it works again a good and positive marital relationship down the road, and it delivers on all that is corrupt about sex and pleasure without any of the blessing.  Stop telling your daughters that if they get pregnant they will ruin their lives.  Start telling them that children are a blessing from the Lord to a husband and wife who promised their lives to each other till death parts them.  We are not asking youth to wait for sex because a child could ruin their lives but to wait as a child waits in anticipation of something that is good and for a time when that good is appropriate.  Pregnancy is not a disease nor is being a mother (or a father) a terrible fate.  These are the most wonderful things in their own time.  It is not our job to manage sex the way we would manage a disorder or diagnosis.  It is our job to rejoice in the Lord who has gifted us with marriage and gifted marriage with the heritage and promise of children.