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Gramps, I have been reading your answers to other peoples questions and I am enjoying them a lot but I just read one about taking some sort of birth control. And you read quotes about how it’s not good. But me and my fiancé are about to get married, and we are young, only 19. And we don’t feel we are mentally ready or financially ready for children. We don’t plan on having children for a few years after our marriage so we can enjoy the married life for a bit, become more mature, get used to each other, and get some money saved up. Plus my parents had a child right off and my father wasn’t ready for one and he ended up not knowing how to treat it and felt like my mother was loving the child more than him. They didn’t have time to grow into one another yet. We really want to have children, just not yet. Is it okay for us to use birth control? Miranda from KS |
Dear Miranda,
Young people tend to live pretty much in the present, without a full appreciation for the impact of their present actions, attitudes and interests on their own future. Further, they tend to discount the advice of older people that has been born of the results of their own experiences. Since young people tend to live in the present they cannot visualize older people not being confined to their own present and feel that they have not had experiences that could relate to their own current experience.
I feel that you already know the answers to your questions. You know what I would say, you know what the prophets have said. You seem to be casting about for some excuse to follow your own lusts and indefinitely postpone any attempt at dominating the flesh by the spirit, perhaps thinking that there is plenty of time for that sort of thing, or perhaps thinking “Sometime I’ll try, but not today.”
Well, I’ve got news for you, which of course you will discount. But the discounting will be on your own shoulders, and you will remain forever responsible for your own decisions. As you have heard but very likely have not internalized and cannot appreciate the implications, we are always free to make our own decisions, but we are never free from the consequences of those decisions. The news I have for you is this: older people have walked in your shoes, they have felt your emotions, they have been concerned by the very problems that perplex you. Further, they have an uncanny ability to relate those experiences to your particular circumstances with full understanding–that you yet lack–of the consequences of your behavior because they have traveled the very path that you are just beginning. Few young people have the maturity and judgment to benefit from the experiences of others, and therefore unfortunately must repeat the same mistakes and learn the hard, hard way from their own bitter experiences. It is said that good judgment results from experience and that experience results from bad judgment. One would hope that you would learn to understand and appreciate the purpose of life and the opportunities for that type of joy and happiness that cannot even be understood by those who put self interest ahead of the will of the Father. And that by so doing, you would find more interest and value in following the will of God rather than giving in to and pandering to your own carnal self satisfaction.
—Gramps