By Prof.
Martin J. Naumann, D.D.
It is difficult to convince people of right and wrong concerning something universally accepted. There is therefore a point of no return in the morals of a people or individual where it seems senseless to call to attention that something is radically wrong. As, for instance, in the case of birth control. The discussion is not anymore whether it is right or wrong to practice birth control, but only how it might best and most efficiently be done and whether or not the state or the schools engage in furthering it.
It is therefore only to the person that still is bound by the Word of God that we can address ourselves in regard to this question. Nor will it be possible to talk of this matter before establishing the basis for a judgment of right and wrong in all matters of right and wrong. In the area of birth control there are a number of Scriptural principles that must be stated and confirmed on the basis of study of God's Word.
The area basic to all considerations involving the life of men in general and in particular is anthropology. What is man? Man is a creature of God created in His image. What is the image of God? At least a part of God's original creation is still precious even after the fall. Man lost righteousness and holiness and yet God gives His Son for man's rescue. What is man? He is a creature responsible to God for his life and living. What is Life? Here we must speak of it not biologically but theologically. Man has a Life in God from eternity to eternity. God and man stand in relation as individuals. Man is alone responsible to God. God sees each man alone.
Being created in God's image is to be able to speak to God when spoken to by God. Responsibility is the ability to answer and the duty to answer. Man answerable to God is man in the image of God. There is no person that God has not seen or planned in His providence from eternity and whom God does not want in eternity. The free will of man cannot inhibit God's plans, but God's providence does not inhibit man's free will in external matters and in matters leading him away from God to hell. The fact that we are not able to harmonize in our mind the relation between the providence of God and the free will of man does not give us a right to act as if we were not responsible or as if God could be blamed for our mistakes. We simply and in faith accept both realities: the providence of God and the free decisions of man.
The dilemma of man is that he cannot see God in the framework of his own logic. The problem is expressed in the familiar question of election:
Cur alii prae aliis? Why (are) some (saved and) not others?
If man is fully responsible, and if man's life is one bounded by God's eternity, and if potentially every person born into this world is an heir of everlasting life, and if this is true of all children born into this world, where does man get the authority to decide which of his children (potentially speaking) is to be born into this chance of everlasting life God intends for all men?
We realize that modern man decides right and wrong mainly on the basis of utilitarian and pragmatic thinking. Man does not consider moral right and wrong. For man today everything is either useful or useless, good or harmful, beautiful or ugly, but never right and wrong in the moral sense. This is the ethic of man in general and in particular in our day. This is situation ethics.
All the arguments for birth control, even those brought by the "churches" are on the basis of self-service, i.e. self-preservation. Even the talk of love and service to mankind is only a pretense of love, a sham, a shield for self-service.
Count all the reasons given for bith control: Health, life, education, fortune, room to live, better facilities for man, etc., not to speak at all of the refusal to undergo the rigors of bearing and raising children.
All the sad state of humanity, the starvation in over-populated portions of the world, etc., are nothing else but the result of the sins of mankind. Poverty in one spot accuses the prosperity of another. Lack of food and clothing is an accusation against the profligacy of the over-dressed and over-fed.
It is in the Christian congregation if at no other spot of the world that the truth of God's will and commandment must be clearly seen. All children are souls intended for God's kingdom. Any drive for missions is made ridiculous by the talk of birth control. As the church is to propagate itself by the power of the Gospel so are Christians to increase the family of God by increasing in the place where love and missions should start—in the family. Raise the average of the Lutheran family and you would have a natural and God-given increase of the church without counting the souls won by the preaching of the testimony among unbelievers.
On the other hand, neglect the doctrine of God's will and the immorality of man and you will not only make mission work ridiculous (except in a social sense) but will cause offense among those who are to learn responsibility to God above all.
Any method or way of birth control and abortion is immoral no matter what the circumstances might be, except where man must weigh in a responsible way one life against another. Only the gravest concern for the life of a living soul can justify a Christian's contemplation of bith control as a good way of serving mankind.
The extreme result of utilitarian thinking are evident in the attempted extermination of useless, harmful, burdensome existences as practised [
sic] by the NAZI government that not only killed many Jews but many incurably ill, insane, etc.
The duty of one human to the other is to provide an environment in which all may have life. It is not for us to limit life in order to make the enjoyment of the environment more pleasant for the fewer number. (E.g. U.S. surplus foods could keep alive any increase in the world population; besides this it would be good for a civilization like ours whose two major problems seem to be overweight and lack of parking space!)
(This unpublished editorial was transcribed from the personal notes of Dr. Naumann by the Rev. Jeffrey C. Kinery, Pastor of Grace Evangelical Lutheran Church, Brownwood, Texas.)
