When my pastor speaks of "free will" those words mean something
very specific to me. God created man with free will; that is the
capacity to accept or reject God. After the fall of man free will was
one of the things taken from mankind. My God has the power
to cast someone into hell. That he chose to drive Adam and Eve out of
the Garden of Eden instead of damning them for eternity shows me that
his capacity for mercy is great. My God is a just God. He demands
payment for sins yet nothing I do is acceptable to him for everything I
think, do and say is steeped in sin. Only the innocent blood of Christ
shed on the cross can atone for my sins.
While the passage "be fruitful and multiply" implies that God has
given mankind the capacity to reproduce I believe that the word fruitful
has a larger meaning beyond that of procreation. Genesis speaks of
sacrifices offered by Cain and Abel. One was acceptable to God while
the other repulsed him. Faith is not a static commodity. Either your
faith is growing and you will produce fruit or your faith is dying and
you will wither on the vine. While misinterpretation of the Bible by
Christian fundamentalists is common I do not believe that God demands
people have children nor do I believe that those who use contraception
are wrong. I am not a theologian however this is what I believe about
the words "be fruitful and multiply".