That Awkward Moment When You Confuse Natural Order with Fallen Reality

In my last post—I’m No Feminist, But…—I responded to a recent TGC article about the Pill, sex and procreation written by Peter Gurry. After Peter and I had a friendly follow-up conversation on Twitter, I thought that would be the end of my present musings on the simultaneously simple but also incredibly complex matters of men, women, procreation, sex, contraception, pregnancy and so on.

Alas, Twitter had other plans.

In the following 36 hours, two different Twitter commentators posted two different tweets, the combined force of which had me pulling my pen and paper back out of the drawer (or, in reality, logging back into my Substack dashboard).

So here we are, ready for round two of talking about how babies are made, and not made, and who amongst men and women is apparently more naturally oriented towards or tethered to the babies that are made or not made and why exactly that is and is not.

Put more simply, we are going to consider the importance of why it is never a good idea to confuse God’s natural order with humanity’s fallen reality, particularly when it comes to sex, babies and being the one who made a baby because you had sex.

(Just in case you were wondering, the image below is the closest I could get to some sort of abstract representation of confusion—or, alternatively, the aftermath of a visit to a very confused hairstylist. May you enjoy it either way.)

So, about those tweets…

(A note for newish readers: it is my normal practice to redact names/handles/photos of those whose social media comments I engage with in my Substack articles. This enables the focus to remain on the content rather than the person. However, since both of these tweets are from evangelical leaders who make significant contributions in the area of theological anthropology, I think it is appropriate, even important, for me to leave them unredacted on this occasion.)

On Being Oriented (or Not So Oriented)

Here is a series of tweets from a Twitter thread Michael Clary recently posted about the vocations of women (a thread that, for the record, I have not engaged in at all). Michael is a current nominee for SBC first vice president and author of God's Good Design: A Biblical, Theological, and Practical Guide to Human Sexuality and

Did you get that?

A woman’s body is obviously far more oriented toward potential motherhood than a man’s body is towards potential fatherhood. It is absurd to think that a man’s body is biologically designed for fatherhood to the same degree a woman’s body is biologically designed for motherhood.

My first thought was that perhaps someone could tell the (on average) 180 million sperm that is contained in every single male ejaculation and who are all competing to fertilise that one solitary egg that their originating male body is not biologically designed for fatherhood to the same degree or extent that a women is biologically oriented towards motherhood?

Ok. Yes, that is somewhat facetious. But, really?!

While I didn’t engage on that thread, I did reshare Michael’s first tweet, asking if this passes for commonplace evangelical teaching about men, women and procreation. It garnered quite a few “Ummmm. No. No it is not” responses. Michael then replied:

Note what Michael does in his response. He takes his initial statement made about what is natural, biologically designed and divinely ordered and, when pushed back on it, turns that into a statement about the consequences that are brought about because of sinfully distorted behaviour. Hold that thought, OK?

On Being Tethered (or Not So Tethered)

The second of the two tweets that captured my attention was made by Colin Smothers, (executive director of CBMW). It was posted as part of the Twitter discussion between Peter and I about his article. The last tweet (marked with a red *) is the one I want to draw your particular attention. The rest are provided for context:

So, to recap:

• Colin said Peter’s article is great, which presumably meant that he agreed with Peter’s key premise laid out in the article’s title: namely that the Pill is the main contraceptive technology that has obscured God’s truth (i.e., that which we would say is natural) about the sexual differentiation between men and women.

• He said the article pushes back on the worldly (“spirit of the age” i.e., unnatural) idea of interchangeability between men and women in the arena of sex and procreation.

• I said I was unsure how the Pill has singularly fostered this (worldly) interchangeability and so singularly thwarted God’s distinct design for men and women.

• Colin replied: “Men are naturally “untethered” from the possible outcome of their own sexuality (children) in a way women are obviously not. The Pill, more than any other technology, radically altered that picture, with abortion as its backstop — thus accelerating interchangeability.”

Now, just take a moment to appreciate what he is saying here.

Men are naturally untethered from the possible outcome of their sexual actions (i.e. becoming a father through the conception of a child). This untethering is part of their natural (ie. divinely ordained and intended) design. The problem with the Pill is it allowed women to emulate men by untethering themselves from the consequences of their sexual actions. This is bad because it is part of the androgynous agenda of the spirit of this age, which stands opposed to God’s created purpose. To put it another way:

• Men being untethered from the consequences of their sexual actions = being men = natural = good.

• Women trying to do the same = trying to be men = worldly = bad.

Now, to be fair to Colin, he has said that he “didn’t know how you got that out of what I wrote. It seems willfully obtuse”. He said all he meant was that:

“But because of the unique role differentiation in the process — women gestate the baby for nine months while men do not — sin has distorted that reality to subsidize men a level of promiscuity not possible for women, apart from the Pill, abortion, etc.”

But no, that is not what he originally said. He agreed with Peter’s claim that women’s use of the Pill to untether sex from conception has obscured God’s truth about sexual differentiation because it makes her more like a man who has the ability “to engage in sex without necessarily considering procreation” (a quote from Peter’s article).

Colin’s initial comment was about the natural tethering/untethering about what is true (or ought to be true) within the created order, not what is the result of sin’s distortion. He’s made the same move that Michael Clary did: Make a statement about what is part of the “natural” order, and when critiqued, double down that all you meant is that we live in a sinful world.

Conflating Natural Order with Fallen Reality

For the record, I don’t believe Colin Smothers or Michael Clary intentionally set out to confuse or conflate natural order with fallen reality. Unfortunately, neither of them have acknowledged that this is precisely what they have done.

They essentially say the same thing, albeit with a slightly different focus. Because women are the ones who fall pregnant, their bodies have a more natural (i.e., divinely ordered) orientation towards reproductive realities than men’s bodies do. Because women are the ones who fall pregnant, they were designed with a more natural link or tether between their sexual actions and its procreative consequences.

Let me be clear. Nurturing a child in your womb and then birthing that child in the world is an enormous, distinctive, wonderful privilege that only women experience. It is a fundamental part of God’s good design for women, and women only, in this creation. I expect I will grieve for the rest of my life that I was not blessed with experiencing it myself. I fully endorse that it brings into focus the magnificently unique relationship between mother and child and the magnificently unique beauty of motherhood.

But…

Being the one who falls pregnant does not mean that God designed a woman’s sexual actions to be more “naturally tethered” to the possible consequences of those actions than a man’s.

Being the one who falls pregnant does not mean that a woman’s biology is more naturally oriented towards conception than a man’s.

Being the one who falls pregnant does not mean a woman is more naturally designed for parenthood than a man.

In God’s good, pre-Fall, “natural” design, he created both men and women (and, indeed. child!) to be equally bound and blessed by the link between sex and procreation. That men and women experience that link differently does not mean they are more or less tethered by the link, or more or less oriented towards its potential outcome.

Yes, the reality of carrying (or potentially carrying) a child in your body is a wonderfully distinctive experience of that binding and blessing link. Women are not only reminded of that when they are actually pregnant but, indeed, every time they menstruate.

But so, too, is the experience of a man who looks at that positive pregnancy test that confirms he and she have together conceived a child, who marvels at the growth of her belly as it nurtures and protects their child, who waits in sheer anticipation for that moment when he finally gets to meet and hold and welcome and know their child. The reality that he is and always will be the one who fathered this child.

That is God’s “natural” design for women, men and children. That is how he has naturally tethered them to one another and how he has naturally designed their biology to orient towards parenthood.

Equal Opportunity Sinners

Whenever men recklessly exploit their sexuality to untether, sever or disorient themselves away from their procreative potential and purpose it is a result of their self-serving fallen flesh, not how they were “naturally” created. That they were made with the capacity to father countless babies to countless women does not make the sinful exercise of such a capacity “natural” (any more than the person born with strong biceps “naturally” exercises that capacity by sinfully knocking people out according to their whim).

That the Pill allows women to engage in sex without necessarily considering the consequences of their sexual action is not primarily problematic because it artificially makes them more like men. No, it’s (potentially) problematic because it is (potential) evidence of their own self-serving sinful nature. It (potentially) demonstrates the woman’s intent to sever the natural link between sex and conception, just as men have merrily been doing for millennia. (I use the word “potentially” because not all women take the Pill for contraceptive purposes alone.)

Sin is what singularly severs the link between sex and procreation. Sin is what singularly obscures the truth of God’s created differentiation of the sexes. And tragically, sin is what makes men and women into equally self-serving opportunists.

How wonderful that the gospel brings redemption, forgiveness and hope to all sinners alike!

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I don’t know how prevalent this particular confusion and conflating of natural order and fallen reality is. I don’t think I have ever seen it vocalised before—at least not so directly or specifically. So perhaps these two comments reflect nothing other than these two men’s isolated opinions (though I have privately communicated to Peter that I believe the premise of his article lies downstream from it. He rejects this). But I also recognise that these two men occupy positions of prominence and influence (especially when it comes to the areas of men, women and sexuality in the church) and that their separate comments bubbled to the surface in entirely unrelated discussions. Both of these factors make me slightly nervous that this particular conflation and confusion may be more widespread than I had ever thought it could be.

Ultimately, what matters is that we eradicate any such conflation and confusion quick-smart. If there was ever a good time to “naturally” exercise some strong theological biceps for a knock-out punch, then, for the sake of men, women and (so, so, importantly) children, this here is it.