Well, my dear friend, this is a very difficult question to answer. I will try to share Scriptures as best I can which might give insight, but I must tell you going into this that Scripture is not specific to every individual issue that folks might encounter regarding this topic. So, my quick response to your question is: No indeed, I cannot affirm to you that family planning in the way that I understand it is consistent with Scripture. To my mind, family planning is often an attempt by people to make the decision to have children or not to have them using human reasoning and logic, rather than to base this decision entirely on faith in God’s loving kindness and will as revealed in His Word.  As a personal example of what I mean, I am blind due to an inherited disease which my mother and father were not aware of. My mother once told me, though, that she is glad she did not know lest she might have been tempted not to try to become pregnant at all. But, after she had delivered me, she felt strongly that the decision not to give me the opportunity to live would have been a tragic mistake. As another personal example, my wife was pregnant with our second child where the fetus was discovered in utero to have serious birth defects. Still, knowing this about halfway into the pregnancy, we made the decision to carry the baby to term, and to just trust the Lord for whatever happened. Thus, trusting that God had allowed this into our lives for His own divine purpose, the child was carried to term and delivered with the full expectation that we would care for the child in the best way we could by God’s Grace. Well, the child died just after birth, and though this was very painful to us then, and 31 years later still is, we acknowledge that it was God’s will for us, and in the glory, we may better understand these things.

Now, family planning, in my opinion, may take on a lot of forms—in Abraham’s case, God had promised Abraham that he would have many children (see Genesis 15); however, when he and his wife Sarai got old and were yet childless, with Sarai being beyond childbearing years, she offered in lieu of herself her handmaid Hagar. So Abraham had a son with Hagar, but this son was not the one that God had promised; Abraham and Sarai went ahead with their own plan rather than to wait on the Lord who did work a miracle in Sarai’s life in Genesis 18. Now, God had his own purposes in making Abraham and Sarai wait—Israel, and the line of the Messiah, would come through Isaac’s and Jacob’s line, and not through that of Ishmael. Ishmael’s line became the Arab nations which have vexed Israel all these years, so it would have been much better for Israel had Abraham and Sarah simply waited on the Lord.

Now, there are many forms of family planning, and many reasons why people try to limit the size of their families.  I will not say that people are sinning when they try to delay births due to health or financial reasons; however, I often think that the various forms of birth control are used more in America to stop unwanted pregnancies, and sometimes with non-married partners. I’m sure you’ll agree that sexual relationships outside of marriage are clearly sin as we are told in the Bible.

Now, the first Scriptural guidance I believe that we see on this topic that you have brought up is found in Genesis 1:28 where we read: “And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth…” In this passage, I see God telling Adam and Eve to have children, and to replenish the earth; but, I admit, no precise number is suggested. Still, I think the idea here was to have as many children as God might bless them with. I see no thought at all to man seeking to limit the number that God might bless a couple with. Going on, I believe that children are to be seen as a blessing as we see in Psalm 127:3-5, “Lo, children are an heritage of the LORD: and the fruit of the womb is his reward. As arrows are in the hand of a mighty man; so are children of the youth. Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them…”

My dear friend, I shrink from trying to make a rigid rule that would apply to family planning in total, but suffice it to say, the decisions we make must be driven by a desire to seek and follow through with the will of God. And how do we know the will of God?  Well, I believe that we have prayer where we talk to God, and we have God’s Word where He talks to us. And even if we cannot find a specific verse to respond to the particular question we may have, we can trust that God will let us know the way in which we should go as we prayerfully consider His Word (Psalms 32:8; John 7:17).  (SF)  (581.4)