Instruct the ignorant

This is one of the spiritual works of mercy and many times it is out of ignorance that people speak, admonishing the sinner and instructing the ignorant are two works of mercy that society has fallen away from so I figured I would give you an example from yesterday that I had. Someone wrote and said.

I personally, am not a Christian, nor do I believe that oral contraception is bad. But I have Christian friends, I have gone to Christian churches, I have attended Christian youth groups and such. One of the overarching themes I have gathered from my experience was this idea of "free will," or, as C.S. Lewis put it, "God cannot rape, only woo." That we, as humans, have free will to guide our lives and such. So my question (or maybe an observation) is doesn't your thesis (being anti-birth control) fly in the face of our God-given free will to come to Christ (for example) as it is to control how many kids we have?

That was the question he posed and it can be easy to just blow off those question but better to address them in an ordered fashion here is what I responded with.

That is a good question. I like how you look at freedom and free will. It does make sense and the problem is the idea of freedom. What is freedom and free will? First we say that we are free in the US, but that does not mean that if I get upset with someone I can kill them. I can, but first it would be illegal and second there are consequences for that action because I did not do the correct thing. So all freedom, both natural and supernatural, has some limits. I am free to jump off a cliff but if that cliff is high enough and I don’t have anything to bring me down slowly… is call suicide. Now true freedom is the ability to do God’s Will. So I am free when I am able to do what God wants me to do. This freedom is truly freeing because when we follow God’s will – we do not have regrets with it. I never regretted doing anything God asked me, but since you don’t believe in God I won’t force this part of freedom on you. This is just to explain how we look at freedom, and looking at free will... So even though it might not be what you believe - I am just trying to explain it to you to help you understand what we are saying.Next part is free will. What is free will? Free will is the ability to choose God’s will or the ability to not (which we call sin). Now we know that if we choose God’s will that we will go to heaven and if we do not choose God’s will and turn completely away from Him, we will go to hell. As Christians we are called first and foremost to love our neighbor. If I truly love you, which I do, otherwise I would not bother explaining this, I will help you get to heaven. Love also has two aspects for it - to love, not lust.First you love the other as a person- not use them as an object. You want to see them reach their greatest good. Their greatest good is heaven. So I do not want you to do anything that would cause you to sin. So even though you have the freedom to choose, I will do my best to show you the way to heaven because I love you. If I did not love you I would just tell you to go ahead and sin because I don’t want you to go to heaven - I want to see you burn in hell. Hopefully this helps. The other part of your question is about how many kids we have...Did you know that NFP (Natural Family Planning) provides the only truly safe and effective methods with a better success rate than contraception? And best of all it does not put the woman’s health in danger or kill a child. But to be truly open to God’s Will means we will be open to Him if God decides to bless us with a child. Contraception takes God out of the picture and says we don't want God in my relationship. I hope this helps.