The cover of the May 3, 2010 issue of Time magazine reminds us that it was fifty years ago that the US Food and Drug Administration approved a new oral contraceptive, that is known today as The Pill. What did The Pill enable women to do that they had not been able to do before? The first prescription medication ever created for people who were not sick, The Pill divorced sexual activity from one of its most significant consequences . . . the possibility of pregnancy.
There have always been consequences associated with sexual activity. I once heard an epidemiologist state on the radio that a virgin who has sex with someone who has sex with someone else who has only had sex one previous time (but with someone who is promiscuous) has effectively had sex with Los Angeles County (where I live). That opens sexual activity to a mind boggling set of consequences. However, sexually transmitted diseases are usually private concerns and typically do not result in public humiliation, as was the case with pregnancy for a girl or woman who was not married.
The Pill made it possible for the first time for two people to know that the likelihood of public consequences for sexual activity was very unlikely. The rest is history. However, there is an aspect of this entire scenario that I have not seen anyone draw attention to, the whole matter of consequences.
Think about it for a moment: God is a God of consequences. He created this universe to be a realm of consequences. In the physical universe, every action results in an equal and opposite reaction, the Law of the Conservation of Momentum. In the moral universe, there is the Law of Sowing and Reaping, which some people paraphrase with the words, "What goes around comes around." The Bible version, however, states, "Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap," Galatians 6.7. Thus, God has always guaranteed consequences, with The Pill being a scientific and medical attempt to thwart the consequences of sexual conduct known as pregnancy, leading to the birth of children.
The Pill has no effect on any of the bacterial or viral consequences associated with sexual activity. The Pill only greatly minimizes the conceptions that sometimes result from sexual activity. Thus, while God designed sexual activity to be the pleasurable communion of husbands and wives in their marriage bed, The Pill made it "safer" for people not married, as well as people who are married, to divorce sex from the most beneficial aspect so pleasurable an activity . . . children.
Is that a good thing? Is it in mankind's long term benefit for us to convince ourselves that our decisions and subsequent actions can be divorced from consequences? An article I read some months ago bears on this discussion. It was stated that one previously unanticipated consequence of The Pill was the desensitization of a woman's sense of smell, whereby on an unconscious level she could smell the man she was close to. The article when on to say that a woman's sense of smell served to provide an olfactory analysis of male pheromones, with a man who smelled good to a woman being a man whose genetic material was different from her own, providing a measure of safety against the possibility of genetic inbreeding. Thus, a woman could marry a man she met while taking The Pill, but would find him undesirable once she stopped taking The Pill to fulfill her desire to have children by him. A woman who met and married a man she had never slept with (therefore, having not taken The Pill) would not face the possibility, since her sense of smell had not been chemically neutralized to the smell of the man she was considering for marriage.
Does all of this make as much sense to you as it does to me? God has created a universe, both physical and moral, in which there are consequences. Try as much as you want, you will not succeed in eliminating consequences, you will only change them, sometimes with unpredictable results.
Should a Christian consider taking The Pill? I do not think so, but that question can be dealt with on another occasion. Let me close with this: I think it is best left to God to decide when conception occurs, and I think it is impudent for anyone to think he or she is better qualified to make that determination than God. When you engage in sex (with your spouse) be ready to take what comes from the communion God has blessed you with. If you are not ready for children you are certainly not ready for marriage. And if you are not ready for marriage you are certainly not ready for sex.
