If any of our Christian forebears from more than forty or fifty years ago could project forward in time to our era, they would look at our views on sex and conception and think we are one weird, freaked out bunch of folks.
Why, we actually talk about "trying to conceive"!
Don't get me wrong. I recognize that part of the meaning behind that phrase is the recognition that conception, even under the most ideal of circumstances, can sometimes be a chancy thing. One act of marital coitus does not automatically result in procreation.
However, in modern understanding, that's not the main idea behind the phrase. Rather, behind the "we're trying to conceive" is the notion that we are actually intending to get pregnant. Gone the contraceptive pills and/or devices. Doggone it, we're going to let nature take it's course.
What a weird way to look at it.
There are many components to sex: marital intimacy, pleasure-giving and -receiving, joy and fun, as well as procreation. But only in our era have these components been compartmentalized and separated off into one another. Especially segregated is the notion--and reality--of procreation.
This is not the biblical, or, dare I say it, the Christian way. I say this not to cast stones, because for the first decade of our relationship, Anna and I did this very segregating off of procreation from sex.
Since the birth of our daughter, however, God has been working on my heart. I'm rethinking these matters. I want to think about it, to live this matter, just as Christ would have me think about and live it.
I cannot tell you the dimensions that this "holistic" understanding of sex and its place within marriage has opened up in my mind. I've expressed before the difference Anna's pregnancy made in my own love for her and our daughter. I found new depths and variations of the love I had for her, and a new expansion of my love in adding Sofie to the circle of our family. It was like I grew another heart, or that this imperfect man's heart expanded to not only pour out more love for my wife, but draw within it's confines my daughter as well. I can't even begin to imagine, let alone understand, what a new life in our home would do to me.
Though with all my failings, one may well wonder what, if anything, it has done for me.
In the end, it is unnatural to seperate procreation from sex, and therefore the biblical strictures limiting sex to the marital union of husband and wife not only make eminent sense, but can only be self-evident. They are also a most mystical inroad to an understanding of the Faith, most expecially the Holy Trinity.
So, Anna and I have been "trying to conceive." Pray God from now on that that phrase will mean in my own mind, heart and strength, not a separation of God-given procreation from equally God-given sex, but a full union of the whole of life and marriage in us.
Posted by Clifton at November 10, 2004 02:37 PM | TrackBack