Monsters from the Id: How Couples That Contracept Reject God's Greatest Gift

Monsters from the Id: How Couples That Contracept Reject God's Greatest Gift

by Terence J. Hughes

The best science fiction movies are variations of themes in salvation history, as recorded in the Bible. In , a 1956 MGM movie, a spaceship from Earth arrives on a planet to evacuate a scientist and his daughter. The scientist, played by Walter Pidgeon, had been studying the lost civilization of the Krell, a race of superior beings that had suddenly become extinct. Or so it seemed.

Walter Pidgeon had discovered how to use their 19-booster machine. This gave him the ability to decipher and understand the language and technology of the Krell. The Krell had constructed shafts deep into the interior of their planet that tapped its energy and therefore gave them almost limitless power. Their last act was to use this power to free their minds from their bodies, so they could explore the universe by mind-travel alone, not bound by the limitations of time and space. The record of their achievements stopped on the verge of launching this enterprise.

Shortly after the spaceship's captain and doctor (forerunners of Captain Kirk and Doctor McCoy of ) took a romantic interest in Walter Pidgeon's daughter, they and the crew came under repeated attacks by an invisible destructive force that could only be held at bay by diverting the entire energy supply of the spaceship to maintain an energy shield around it. The spaceship's power was rapidly depleted during these attacks, and it quickly became clear that the next attack could not be repelled.

In desperation, the captain and doctor hooked up to the IQ machine to see if that would enable them to understand and neutralize the attacking force. The doctor gave himself the highest boost, one that left him dying, but which also gave him the answer. The Krell had never left the planet. When they began their experiment to free their minds, what they freed instead were "Monsters from the Id" that were buried in their subconscious. The Krell savagely attacked each other, instantly becoming extinct. They never knew what hit them.

Walter Pidgeon realized at once that his Id, drawing energy from the whole power supply of the planet while he slept, had been attacking the men in the spaceship because subconsciously he was jealous of the attention they paid to his daughter. Only now his Id was attacking them even when he was awake. In his last conscious moment, he activates a timing device that uses the energy supply to destroy the forbidden planet soon after the spaceship left with his daughter.

Our Monsters from the Id are known to us from the revealed Word of God. They are pride, greed, lust, anger, gluttony, envy and sloth- the Seven Deadly Sins. We try to bury them in our subconscious, and our rational minds often deny that they lurk within us. We, like the Krell, have outgrown them. So we say.

The necessity of chastity

It has been said that, among men, our only sin of the spirit is pride. All others are sins of the flesh. If that is the case, one virtue is supreme in its ability to hold these in check. That virtue is chastity.

Even pride was humbled by chastity. After Satan tempted Adam and Eve to repeat his sin of pride in the Garden of Eden, they discovered that they were naked and covered themselves. Chastity, with an assist from modesty, had begun their redemption.

Chastity protects us from abusing the greatest gift God has given to us, the ability to cooperate with Him in creating new life. It is a gift He denied even to His angels. That is why Satan rebelled against God and wants to destroy us; we are to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. But the power to create is also the power to destroy: "I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. Choose you therefore life, that you and your seed might live" (Deuteronomy 30:19).

Chastity stands between life and death, Heaven and Hell. Our power to create is driven by the sexual urge. It is awesome, and it can only be controlled by chastity. The only way to use our power to create, without unleashing the power to destroy, is to yield to the sexual urge only in marriage, only out of love and respect for our spouse, and only in obedience to God, the Author of all life.

This is why the Church, the Body of Christ, teaches Natural Family Planning. It compels the husband to respect the natural biological rhythms of his wife so that he will subordinate his sexual needs to her ability to bring forth new life.

Therefore, he must love his wife so much that he will deny himself. Then it becomes possible for her to submit to him freely. As Christ loves the Church and sacrifices for her, and the Church submits to Christ out of love, so it should be between husband and wife (Ephesians, 5:24-25).

In this way, husband and wife become truly one in the act of love, and they open the possibility that the fruit of their love will be a third person, a child. Love then becomes one in a marriage just as Love is One in the Blessed Trinity. The Father loves His Son, the Son obeys His Father out of love, and the fruit of that Divine Love is the Holy Spirit, Who binds them together in one God.

God's gift of love to husband and wife

This is chastity at work within marriage. It is the submission of both the husband and wife to their Heavenly Father, out of love for Him, allowing Him to remain the Author of Life and trusting Him to care for them and their children. At the same time, they remain faithful stewards by using their bodies, not abusing them, in obedience to the natural laws He established. This is Natural Family Planning. It is God's gift of love to a husband and wife.

There are only two alternatives to Natural Family Planning. One is lifelong celibacy, expressed heroically in a religious vocation and in the sacred vocation to remain single. These vocations honor the celibacy of Jesus Christ, and they seek holiness by imitating His chastity. These vocations are paths to salvation.

The other alternative is artificial contraception. It is the path leading to destruction. Using artificial contraceptives is a willful decision to not submit to God the Father in His act of creating new life. It uses our technology to deny His power over His own creation, and to usurp that power to ourselves, to be used only for our own selfish purposes. It is, therefore, the sin of Satan, the Original Sin of Adam and Eve, and a violation of the First Commandment:

I AM, the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt have no other gods before me (Exodus 20:2-3).

With artificial contraception, we take the Holy Name of God, I AM, unto ourselves, saying to Him, "I AM the Lord my God. You are the strange god, and I know you not! I have eaten the fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and I have become God, just as the serpent promised (Genesis 3:4-5)." But in denying Him, we have re-entered the house of bondage. God cannot dwell in that house. A Trinity of Love only gives, never takes.

Thus, in artificial contraception, the spiritual sin of pride become one with the sins of the flesh. Chastity is jettisoned along with obedience to God. Without chastity, there is no distinction between love and lust, between husband and wife, or between anyone and anything. Adultery, fornication, sodomy, masturbation, incest, bestiality and necrophilia all become one. All exchange the birthright of cooperating with God in His creation for the pottage of a cheap thrill, a quick orgasm.

It is no accident that the Original Sin of Adam and Eve was quickly followed by the sin of murder, when Cain killed Abel. It is no accident that only eight years after the U.S. Supreme Court legalized artificial contraception, it legalized abortion. It is no accident that divorce rates soared, that families stopped even forming, and that homosexuals began flaunting their perversions. It is no accident that children enter puberty as lost souls wandering our streets, falling into crime, violence and prostitution as loveless substitutes for the parents and families they never had.

In breaking the First Commandment, we have violated them all. We take the Name of the Lord in vain out of anger, we violate His Sabbath out of greed, we dishonor our parents as we dishonor Him, we kill our children out of pride, we commit adultery out of lust, we steal His power to create, we glut ourselves with the world's pleasures, we covet our neighbor's wife out of envy, and we covet everything while not laboring to earn anything, preferring crime or welfare.

It is the Monsters from the Id unleashed in our midst, destroying us; destroying us utterly. As we are swept away we ask what hit us; as we topple over the abyss and plunge through the gates of Hell, disappearing into oblivion, we cry out, "This isn't what I wanted! This isn't what I wanted at all!"

Terence J. Hughes, Ph.D., is a professor of geological sciences and quaternary studies at the University of Maine.

Taken from the February 1996 issue of "HLI Reports."

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Copyright (c) 1996 EWTN

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