On more than one occasion here I have lamented the difficulties of being the way I am while acknowledging that I must be true to myself, that I must follow my own path.
My verse-a-day calendar brought me an encouraging reminder from Paul: "But by the grace of God I am what I am." (I Cor. 15:10a) Though obviously Paul's context was different from my own, I believe the sentiment rings true for me too.
Great verse. It reminds us to be true unto ourselves first. Tammy
ReplyDeleteFrankly I am fascinated. I was browsing and stumbled across your blog.I grew up in the a very conservitive household that considered birth control of any kind an expression of a lack of faith in God. I disagree with that particular train of thought but I have never met a christian that didn't want kids to the point of creating there own community.Its very interesting. It was the phrase "obsession with procreation" ( or something in that vain ) that grabbed my attention. I found it an interesting point of view. I suppose as a people we are "obsessed" with procreation,after all it was the first command God gave to his creation ( Gen. 1:28) and man was included in that command seeing that he had already been created along with woman ( Gen. 1:26-27). New life being created was important enough to God that he made a law that if your brothers wife was left widowed without children, the brother was then responsible to see that she was given a child.( Luke 20:28, Deut.25:5). Please understand, I am not criticizing. I dont believe ( and it says no where in the bible) that you have to have children to go to heaven. I simply find it amusing that you find the obsession to procreate annoying given that it is one of the basic drives of mankind put into them by the creator himself. I am sorry for the persecution you have suffered because of your choice. Make no mistake there is a right way and a wrong way but all to often we as a christian people make law out of perception or opinion. I applaud you for reaching out and creating a ministry for others who are in the same place. God Bless.
ReplyDeleteAshlyn, thank you for your thoughtful ideas and kind words. Bear in mind that the requirement for a brother-in-law to impregnate his brother's widow (with a son) was not exactly about the importance of new life but rather about the cultural need for the brother to have an heir, since women did not have property rights.
ReplyDeleteI feel that I should also clarify my use of the word obsession. Simply feeling a drive for sex or wanting to have a child does not constitute an obsession any more than eating a meal because you feel the drive of hunger would constitute an obsession with food. To continue the food analogy, imagine someone whose life was completely ruled by that hunger drive. Constant thoughts of eating, talking about nothing besides eating, watching what everyone else is eating, making it their business to tell others how, what, where to eat, caring about little besides eating. We would probably all consider this person to have a problem; we would think s/he took a natural drive and turned it into an obsession. (In fact, this reminds me of some of the symptoms of anorexia, as people obsess about controlling their hunger drive and their eating in order to control weight, often constantly thinking or talking about food.)
This is similar to what I'm talking about with procreation*. Not everyone has fallen prey to the obsession, but sometimes it seems as if the culture at large has become as single-minded as the person I described above.
*There are some issues with the analogy; the hunger drive is probably more analogous to the sex drive, and I think people often confuse the drive for sex with a drive for the consequence of sex -- just as the hunger drive is not a drive for nutrition (otherwise we would only eat healthful foods) nor a drive to produce bodily waste, though those are the consequences. I say this because about 40% of pregnancies in the US are unplanned (Guttmacher Institute, 2011), so a high percentage of people are not having children out of a drive to have children per se, but rather as a consequence of the drive for sex.