Kelly Crawford

“I was an accident.” Have you ever heard someone say that? Oh, it just sends pains through my stomach to hear it. Of course the speaker is referring to the fact that his parents didn’t “plan” for his birth, or didn’t expect it, for whatever reason. And worse than hearing someone say it of themselves, I’ve even heard parents say it referring to their own child!

Life is no accident. Never. In the worst of circumstances–rape, incest, adultery, fornication–the life itself, even born out of every possible evil, is never an accident. We are so smug to think that WE create life. Isn’t that really the underlying problem? If we think we create children, then it is OK to prevent them. Either way, it’s our decision.

But, we do NOT create life, and therefore to purposely prevent it is like, well, did you ever see the movie “Back to the Future” where the characters were able to manipulate circumstances in order to change the future? That’s what I think of when I think of preventing children. If you could lunge into the future, and look at things if we let God control life, it would be so vastly different than it is now.

Or, pick up an old photograph–let’s say one of all the men who were at the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Then imagine taking birth control and its accompanying philosophy of children back to that era. Now take your eraser and begin rubbing out all the men who would be gone. Scary. Leave the big stuff up to God.

The following are a few of the Scripture references we base our conviction about children on:

“It is He who has made us, and not we ourselves.” Psalm 100:3

“Children are an heritage of the Lord, the fruit of the womb is His reward. As arrows are in the hand of a mighty man; so are children of the youth. Happy is the man that has his quiver full of them…” Psalm 127:3-5

“…yet she is thy companion, and the wife of thy covenant. And did not He make you one?…And why one? That He may seek a godly seed.” Malachi 2:14,15

“Thy wife shall be as a fruitful vine by the sides of thine house; thy children like olive plants round about thy table….” Psalm 128:3

“Be fruitful and multiply…” various places in Scripture

As believers, we desire to have the heart of God; to love what he loves, and hate what he hates. His heart is clearly stated in Scripture regarding children…desire them, receive them, and rejoice in them. It’s the opposite message of our culture. Birth control certainly does not embrace God’s philosophy of children. It certainly does not speak of “olive plants around the table” and fruitfulness and multiplying. Are we friends of God or friends of the world? Our worldviews will be reflected in the life choices we make.

Birth control is as common a term now as “housefly.” But it hasn’t always been so. Margaret Sanger had her work cut out for her when she first launched the campaign to make it a common household term. Birth control serves one purpose: to prevent children.

Many will argue that birth control itself is a neutral entity, with neither good or evil intentions. But I challenge you to think about something. The only thing anyone ever wants to prevent is something unpleasant. We have preventative medicine to ward off illness. We try to prevent heart disease with excercise and diet. We do all that we can to prevent catastrophes, tragedies, financial loss, etc. I submit to you that birth control could have never come to be an acceptable practice until someone convinced us that children were in some way “negative” and in need of preventing.

For the Christian, it should startle us to think this over in light of what the Lord says about children (blessing, gift, heritage, happy is the man that has a bunch of them, etc.) If we believed the Bible, and thus believed that children were a real-live gift from God, would we have a shred of audacity to try to prevent them???

What must it do to our Father’s heart every time one of his treasures it turned away from the very people that call themselves children of God?