Against Contraception In All Its Forms
Evil so benign it's everywhere in our age
We live in a contraceptive culture, and the condoms are just a little snowflake on top of the life-hating iceberg.
Wednesday I ran into a group reading Marc Barnes’ lovely piece on counterproductivity. Once upon a time, we cut the grass to feed it to cows - now, we cut it even more frequently with zero productivity. The peasants got hay in return for their workout - in return for our spent gasoline and fertilizer, we get hearing damage.
What is particularly remarkable is that we cut it right before it grows “rank and file” - what Andre Voison would call the blaze of growth, what Joel Salatin would call the “teenage” period, and more scientific minds would call the “middle of the sigmoid curve”. Here’s a generalized growth curve for grass - from when it sprouts to when it puts out seed heads:
As grass grows, it grows in its ability to grow - leaves reaching out to collect more sun, roots sprawling to collect more nutrients.
But you see, we cut our grass before it even gets to the point that it can really express itself. We do not like its appearance, so we nip it in the bud. If we let it get too long - it will get even longer! Such atrocity to the HOAs of the world!
Now - looking at this honestly, there isn’t a problem with killing or pruning things in and of itself. Castration has its benefits: without it, testosterone will run its course and you’ll end up with beef/pork/lamb that has a foul smell to it. It also is a tool for selective breeding, and bringing out the best of a flock. Pruning has a similar effect. Death can lead to life.
But in all these cases, the goal of the suppression of life is actually so that life may be more abundant.
This is in stark contrast to the contraceptive mindset of our age. We suppress life so that we may be in greater “control” - but it’s a farce: the control is always a control over less. We can better direct our children’s lives if they are fewer - but their lives are not as big - not as vibrant - without other children which make the world of the child.
We want “the best” preschooling and schooling (and formation is good) - but in doing so utterly demolish the organic world which produces the raw material which can be formed. Formation is not creation - “I cut it twice and it’s still too short!”
Not all control is contraceptive - I should hope it is obvious I am not of some fertility cult which would demand the smashing of marriage or prudence in favor of unfettered sexual gratification and procreation. Again, the controls of marriage, of pruning, of selective castration of livestock, serve to prevent “burnout” - their aim is full, sustainable expression, not less expression.
What is contraception, anyways? It comes from the Latin, of course. “contra-” means against. “conceptio” derives from “concipere”: “to conceive, to take in, to receive, to grasp, to form, to devise, to understand, or to imagine”.
… and we have a serious failure to imagine-receive-grasp-understand-conceive the ways of God as a culture.
And I may be projecting my own self-doubts onto the world, but it really seems that over and over in our culture today is the inhibition of conception. “I don’t have time to meet with you” (I actually just don’t want to be bothered). “Having people over sounds like a hassle” (I just want to passively watch TV). “It’s just too messy at our place” (Over-image-consciousness, a lack of intimacy, heaven forbid your neighbor find out that you have a life too). There’s a time and a place to say no, of course - prudence. But there’s a time and a place to say yes. And it’s more than our culture lets on.
Of course at the core of this is - to borrow other sexual language - fetish. The desire for a particular niche aspect of something, at the expense of the whole rest of it, and usually to such a degree that it renders the original thing unrecognizable.
Lawns are a fetish: we desire the niche aspect of… softness? Nature? I’m honestly not sure what the appeal of a lawn is, actually: it’s about as interesting as a beige-painted wall. Again, three-inch-tall grass bears no resemblance whatsoever to a prairie, let alone a mature pasture: the original is so obscured, and the merits of what is natural are only present in the new thing insofar as we imagine a connection to the natural.
A two-year-old with an iPad is imagined to be cute and endearing, but as they are castrated (this is colorful language, but it’s not hyperbolic) with the screen plastered to their face, the actual merits of the child vanish into obscurity and general misbehavedness. We want the child “on our terms”, forgetting that the things we really love about the child come about not on our terms.
Okay, so we don’t want to fall into the sin of contraception - what does it mean to be “open to life” beyond the bedroom?
About a year ago I was visiting a good friend’s house. He and his wife unfortunately have no biological children. However, the house is full of life. The two very eagerly put me up in the guest room (gratis) for a few days. They rent out an in-law unit to another young couple - and this isn’t a latchkey situation, they actually share life together. There are ducks (a few of which I helped slaughter) and pigs in the backyard, and a humble garden. They are constantly inviting people over for dinner, for conversation, for mentorship in life - informally it appears to me they have a ministry of hospitality. Their home is open to life; they understand that it can be something beyond what they know it can be - it can be God’s instrument for His will. “Will it be a hassle?” is not a question. (“Will it be fitting, is it God’s will?” is - and genuinely so, not just coded language for “Will it be a hassle?”)
They are open to the life of the spirit.
The good mother and father see their child as something (someone) they cannot ultimately control - something they can only really influence. Something they can only shepherd. How will they turn out? Will they be a blessing? Or a terror? Or both?
I sit watching my pregnant ewes, a few weeks from giving birth - and the uncertainty is palpable. What could come? Twins? Triplets? Will they be healthy? Aborted? I can help them to some degree. But ultimately, I am merely co-operating with God.
There’s only one way for me to have ultimate “control”: shoot ‘em and bury ‘em.
But if I want life,
If I want love,
There will be risk.