I don't know if a lot of you know about this but this past week was natural family planning (NFP) week as led by the catholic church. I also don't know if any of you know this but I am not a catholic. I agree with some of the things that the catholic church stands for and says because I am a Christian but, for the most part, we don't see eye to eye.
This point is no clearer illustrated than with NFP. The whole point of NFP can be set up with this quote: "At its core, Natural Family Planning (NFP) is really learning about this language of the sexual powers by observing, recording and interpreting the bodily signs of human fertility. In other words, NFP is fertility awareness, the knowledge of a couple’s fertility, and is a means of reading the body’s signs of fertility and infertility" (http://www.ccli.org/nfp/).
Now I don't have a problem with this at face value, it even seems like something that a newly married couple would want to do if it really is about learning the human body in a sexual way and exploring that to create oneness. However, I don't know a single couple who hasn't had a hard first year of marriage that wasn't made exponential harder by being pregnant and having a child in the first year.
NFP is suppose to help you plan when you have children but, the whole point is that if you are meant to get pregnant you will. The original purpose of the method that NFP uses to help you not get pregnant was meant to get you pregnant. It was to look at when a woman was most fertile and have sex in that period with the highest percent chance of conception. This is not what I want to use as my birth control, something that was originally engineered to achieve a pregnancy.
Furthermore, this is not how I want to get pregnant in the first place. I want to know that if I get pregnant I am ready to support a child. I think that it is irresponsible to have children without knowing how you are going to feed them, buy them clothing and have a plan for college. I mean come on, have you seen how much money it takes to put a kid through college in the states!?
To let this point go lets look at one more point, the underlying purpose of this plan is to have children because they are the point and natural extension of marriage. This is crap. The point of marriage is not children because the point if a Christian's life is not to have children. The purpose of a Christian's life is to love the Lord and serve Him with all your life. Before you get married, before that ring ever goes on your finger, you are to ask yourself will I serve God better being married to this person or not? If the answer is no or I don't know then you don't get married.
This idea does not end with having children in any way, shape, or form that you might get them (i.e. natural birth, adoption, fostering and so on). When you think about the idea of having children you should ask yourself the same question will I serve God better being a parent or not? if not then don't have children. I think this is a simple way to break down choices in life.
Look at your ending goal and purpose on this earth, if being married helps you fulfill that purpose get married, if having children helps you fulfill that purpose, have children but don't do anything just because culture says you should or someone else is pressuring you to. If that pressure is not from the Holy Spirit say, Get behind me Satan and move on.
I have so much more to say about this but not nearly enough time. Let's just say I'll come back to this in a few weeks when I've calmed down.
Thanks for reading!
