The Contraceptive Mentality: The Attack On Human Dignity
Spiritual Warfare (Pt 3)
By Jack Rigert
Then Jesus said, “If you continue in my word, you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free” …but “you cannot bear to hear my word. You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and has nothing to do with the truth, because there is no truth in him” (John 8:31,32, 43,44).
The very first lie ever told was the one that Eve fell for in the garden. “But the serpent said, ‘You certainly will not die! No, God knows well that the moment you eat of it you will be like gods who know what is good and what is evil’” (Gen 3:4-5).
But death, through sin, did enter the world. The truth is that the default position of humanity after the fall is sin and death. If you have an opposing opinion on this truth, I encourage patience—you will prove my point. Despite the illusionary dream of transhumanists, there is a six-foot hole, chisel poised, waiting for you.
What should sadden us more than the death of the body is the darkness of the soul in those who, while still living in the body, reject God. This is the contraceptive mentality: the barrier erected in one’s heart, a hardness that separates one from life-giving union with God. “For your hardness of heart (sin and death entered the world) …but from the beginning it was not so!” (Cf. Matt 19:8).
This is ground zero in spiritual warfare, fought on the battlefield of the human heart. The battle is between the man of pride, who would be like God and decide for himself what is good and evil, and the man “being found in human form humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross” (Phil 2:8).
In a sense, each of us stands before the primordial tree and must decide. This decision is crucial for it has eternal consequences and creates ripples, even tsunamis, in the lives of those God places on our path. Today humanities decisions have infected “every institution that once provided psychological and moral stability and they are crumbling—marriage, families, Church allegiances. Our Universities have rotted from within as have our political leaders, government bureaucrats, financial institutions and many in our religious hierarchies. Who trusts them anymore??”
Yet despite modern man’s rejection of God there is an ‘echo’ in the human heart for ‘something more’ then this world offers and a “famished craving haunts each of us. We were created for utter happiness, joy, and life. But ever since we lost Eden, we have never enjoyed a day of total fullness; we are never filled in any lasting way. People have become like cut flowers—severed from the vine. Grasping to fill the vacuum in their hearts, they have become desperate, lustful creatures.” We look for marriage (or its hope), children, food, sex, alcohol, a new label (LGBTQIASS+), the next dinner out, the latest phone, a new car—anything to touch the ache inside us.
Picking up on this theme, Saint John writes: “For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the PRIDE of life, is not of the Father but is of the world. And the world passes away, and the lust of it; but he who does the will of God abides forever” (1 John 2:16-17).
How do we regain our human dignity and escape the default position of sin and death that has entered human history? The Father of Truth, Mercy, and Love sends His Son, Jesus Christ, who takes on a human body. “By His incarnation, the Son of God has united Himself in some fashion with every person. He worked with human hands, thought with a human mind, acted by human choice, and loved with a human heart. Born of the Virgin Mary, He has truly been made one of us, like us in all things except sin” (Gaudium et Spes, 22).
Jesus conquered sin and death and, as an innocent lamb, merited life for us by the free shedding of His own Blood. In Him God reconciled us to Himself and to one another. From bondage to the devil and sin, He delivered us so that each one of us can say with the Apostle: The Son of God “loved me and gave Himself up for me” (Cf. Gal 2:20, GS 22).
This is the Good News of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. But man is free and must decide. As Saint Augustine profoundly exclaimed, “God created us without us, but He will not save us without us.”
In an astounding scene after His resurrection, Jesus appeared to the disciples in the upper room. On the evening of that day, the first day of the week, the doors being shut where the disciples were, for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you.’ When he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side…again, ‘Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I send you.’ And when he had said this, He breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit’ (John 20:19-22).
Here once again, “as it was in the beginning,” the Breath of the Holy Spirit is infused in them. In rejecting God at the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, Adam and Eve, in a sense, exhaled the Spirit given in Genesis 2:7, when “the Lord God formed man out of the clay of the ground and blew into him the breath of life.”
When Adam and Eve fell for the lie they breathed out the Spirit and took on the default position of sin and death. In the upper room and again at Pentecost, the Spirit is breathed back into them. Now once again, as it was in the beginning, Body and Soul + Grace (Breath/Ruah) = the Potential for Human Freedom, the Potential for Human Flourishing. But man, created free in the Image of God, must choose to “Receive” the gift of grace. Man’s fiat, his yes, to the gift that Jesus Christ offers on the cross, redeems, saves, and sets his freedom free in the truth that restores human dignity.
But for this potential to become efficacious man must put into action what he has freely “received” and “become” the likeness of God by loving one’s neighbor in the truth. “Whoever knows what is right to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin” (James 4:17). Knowledge of the truth makes one responsible for acting in accord with it! This is human dignity in action, and man’s choice to pursue what is true, good, and beautiful, through the power of grace, makes him fully alive.
Saint John Paul, in his philosophical work Person and Community, describes this power as “Self-Determination”: through our “acts,” whether good or evil, we become, in some sense, the ‘creator’ of ourselves. If the action is good, we fulfill the meaning and purpose of our lives and become good. Conversely, if we choose morally evil actions, such as the murder of a child, we become agents of evil.
Saint Catherine of Siena, stigmatist, mystic, and Doctor of the Church, responded to the threat posed by “contrary winds” and the lies of Satan by declaring that human free will is an enormous strength—a “treasure.” She writes, “What is this thing that is ours, given by God, that neither the devil nor anyone else can take from us?” She answers: “It is our will.” Conscious of the difficulty of “activating” the will, she emphasizes the need to experience the tenderness of God’s love. Without that knowledge, we lose heart and inevitably fall.
She concludes: “In recognizing that we are nothing, we humble ourselves. And in humbling ourselves, we enter that flaming, consumed heart, opened like a window without shutters, never to be closed.”
