OK! One of my two major writing projects is completed and I now have time to dedicate to the blog and website again. I have probably by now lost all of my readers and will need to start from scratch. However, being me, instead of starting something new I’m going to continue the thread of thought that I left off with in my review of The Shack, even though most of you may not remember what that thread was.

So, a quick review: one problem I have with The Shack is the idea that it makes it appear that God wants us to completely surrender our self-will to God and rely on His will alone. While I agree that the main goal of the Christian’s life is to submit his will to the will of God, in the fullness of truth is ever-paradoxical. God calls us to submit our wills to His by exercising our free will – by freely choosing to make His will our will rather than passively surrendering ourselves to God’s will. As C.S. Lewis puts it in the Screwtape Letters, God wants us to surrender our will to His, only to give it back to us in ultimate freedom.

Do I sound like I’m splitting hairs here? An illustration will make my point clearer.

I have been reading / reviewing used books for the Bookstore. I came across Journey Without End by Carlo Carretto, an insightful mixture of pro-life teaching, mystical experience and spiritual direction. The only real problem I have with the book is that the author takes a strong stance against Natural Family Planning. Fortunately, the author is not in favor of contraception. Rather, he is opposed to any attempt to regulate births within a marriage. However, his position on NFP has many of the same problems as the anti-institution arguments made in The Shack.

This quotation reflects the core of his position.

‘I don’t hold with the Billings meth~d, I don’t hold with those who exclusively study the method but neglect reading
the Bible – which teaches how much God loves life and wants o ~r~pagate it and how his providence lovingly watches over each life, over every human being – and so contrive by artifice and selfishness to frustrate the programming done by God. My mother, I heard it said at home, w~s very regular in her cycles and always had her temperature just right.

‘In a word then, with this well-tried method, I should never have come into the world at all.

‘Morality would have been intact, but the divine programming designed to bring me to birth would have been mocked by my mother’s scheming and selfishness.

· cAs luck would have it, she got her sums wrong and 1 was born all the same; yes, I was born.

‘I was lucky enough to be born, though entirely by mistake, with the full consecration of ~morali;y.

cy ou can see these methods aren’t any good, since they get believers used to paying more attention to morality than to love, more to the act than to the intention.

‘In a word, the methods make them self-centred.

‘Wouldn’t it be better to promote faith in God, the hope that he is the true Father, that there’s no need to be afraid of babies, that food won’t run out since God is almighty?

. . .

‘When God programmes the birth of a baby, it’s better to trust absolutely and totally in him.

Like The Shack, this book sets up a false dichotomy between morality and love. Legalism is the error of following the moral law without love, but properly understood morality and love are one and the same thing. The Church is the way the Holy Spirit now guides us to moral truth, which guides us to love. The Church says that Natural Family Planning is in harmony with selfless love, as long as it is used for the proper (unselfish) reasons. Those proper (unselfish) reasons fall under the realm of responsible parenthood.

Yes, we are called to trust in God’s providence. That is where morality calls us to generosity in love. However, God always deals with us as free beings – not seeing freedom as a necessary evil, but seeing it as the way He created us to reflect His image. We are to seek God’s will by use of our free will to pray, discern, and reason what the greatest good is in each situation.

God, should we have another child right now?

• Pray about it and be open to God’s voice
• Evaluate your physical resources – finances, physical space, etc. – with consideration of the good of your family (not selfish desires to hoard physical goods for yourself)
• Evaluate your psychological resources – stress levels, etc
• Remind yourself that you are called to self-sacrifice and generosity in love
• Make a reasoned, prayerful decision based on what is good for your family

It’s not either free will or God’s will; it’s not either morality or love. Truth is most often both and. We are created and called to use our intellect and our will to seek God’s will and to follow Him as free, loving persons.

Check out the Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis! Highly recommended! Click on the image to go to the bookstore.

Despite my disagreement with the author about NFP, I do recommend this book as a wonderful perspective on abortion. Only one available (used). Click on the image to go to the store.

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