Chief Executive Mom

Visit me at my new website - anniecrawford.com In summary, I am wrestling between two options when approaching the bearing of children: 1 - we are to trust God completely as the sole author of life and, withing marriage, we are to allow Him to give as many or as few children as He would like. 2 - God invites us to participate in the formation of life and therefore there is a licit form of birth control and family planning. In otherwords, God gives a couple some "say" in not only how they parent, discipline, eat, teach, etc, but also in how many children they parent. Either God wants us to participate in the planning of children or He doesn't. That is the main issue; one parallel to euthenasia. If God is alone to decide when to end a life, ought He be the only one to decide when to begin it?

Theoretically, it seems easier to say that God, the all-knowing, all wise creator, ought to be the one to decide when to create a new life. However, we do inevitably participate in the decision to create life. God made it that way by beginning life through the sexual act. (I don't care what your average teenager says; "it" doesn't "just happen"!) Full Quiver proponents often begin with the Genesis command to "be fruitful and multiply". If God is to be the sole author of life, if we are to by faith, leave all family planning to Him, then would we not need to have sex every possibly fertile day? Ought we then have sex several times an ovulation day just to make sure that we are not attempting birth control of any kind? But then aren't we trying to get pregnant? Is that leaving it to God alone?

Our participation in family planning seems inevitable. A married couple is either avoiding conception somehow or seeking it. By devine design, there is no neutral - leave it all up to God - ground to walk on. Consider a couple who does not employ any of the normally recognized methods of "birth control". They are just going about life and having sex when one or the other feels like it. What if they just happen to not feel like having sex durring the wife's fertile period one month. Is that not birth control? They didn't follow the command to be fruitful and multiply that month. They did not engage in the act which creates birth. How is that not birth control? Is birth control then determined by intent? If it is wrong not to trust God for all the children He wants to give you, are you only violating your call when you abstain with the intent of preventing pregnancy? Can you abstain for some other reason, even though the technical result will be the prevention of pregnancy and a failure to that month fulfill the Genesis mandate? Does sex then become a reproductive duty? I do not see how you can avoid living under the scrutiny of law without recognizing a "lawful" human freedom to be in some degree of control over pregnancy.

Did God invite our participation in the creation of life in order to test us against a law, or to give us genuine choice in the planning and creation of our family? Any argument from scripture that seeks to establish a law against non-abortive birth control is legalism. No where does scripture directly establish such a regulation. To go beyond scripture in establishing a law is clearly stepping into man-made religion and legalism.

I know that the Lord is good and His lovingkindness towards His children is immeasurable. I know that He sent His Son to free us from the law. Then perhaps, did He invite our participation in order to give us an active way of expressing trust in His soverign hand? That is the question that haunts me. As Paul said, all things are lawful, but not all things are profitable.

Coming up in the next post: 1 Cor. 7, faith, control and calling.