Sermon from November 21, 2004

I have always been comfortable with old people. I grew up with an old person. My maternal grandmother, Mollie Caroline Parker Freeman, was 70 when I was born. She lived in our family everyday until she died in her 93rd year. I learned my first lessons in the book of Revelation from her Bible. She bought me my first car out of her meager savings. She frightened me with her nightmares, and she made me laugh to see her bare feet sticking out from under the covers, even on a cold winter’s night.

Her daily presence in our home made old age seem unexceptional. I never thought of her as old; I simply thought of her as there. I assumed every household had a resident octogenarian the way every household had a hot water heater or a pet.

Of course, I never pictured myself as an octogenarian. Subconsciously, I pictured myself as perpetually young, my grandmother as perpetually there, and my parents as perpetually going in and out and doing those mysterious things that parents do. It was a shock and surprise, when my mother called me at Dallas Seminary to tell me that my grandmother had had a stroke. For the first time in her life she was in a hospital. She died there five weeks later.

Still, I was only 22, and the fit of immortality was upon me. It was in my late twenties that the idea of being old myself made its emotional presence felt, when Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel sang their remarkably sensitive song, Old Friends. One line from that song in combination with other events in my life at the time brought home to me my own mortality: “How terribly strange to be seventy.”

And now comes news that "along with the growth of the general elderly population has come a remarkable increase in the number of Americans reaching age 100. The 1990 census found that there were 37,306 centenarians in the U.S. Current projections estimate that the number will reach 131,000 in the year 2010 and as many 834,000 by 2050." (http://www.usinfo.pl/aboutusa/society/demographics.htm) The trustees of creation are subduing the earth in remarkable, biological ways.

The Biological Revolution
Last month, we noted a powerful reality. Mathematics is the language of nature. But math comes out of the human mind. Why should this purely mental activity capture with such precision the underlying order and structure of physical reality? The Christian doctrine of creation offers an explanation. God made both. He created the underlying order and structure of physical reality. And then He created the human mind to match so that it could grasp and express this underlying order and structure, and then control it for human benefit. That is the witness of reason to the image of God in man.

The harmony between the human mind and the physical world also applies to the life sciences. Scientists have uncovered the underlying order and structure of biological reality, and they are applying that knowledge in ways that fill the human worry box with new hopes and new dangers. It is no exaggeration to call it a biological revolution. Let me tick off a few examples.

First, Daniel Callahan, a senior lecturer at Harvard Medical School, sees three goals for research into extending life expectancy. One is to normalize aging, i.e., bringing life expectancy in this country up to that of Japanese women, which is 85 years. A second he calls optimalization of aging, which would be to bring everyone up to a life expectancy of about 120 years. The third research goal is maximizing life expectancy. This goal aims for life spans of 150 and above. ("Visions of Eternity," First Things, May 2003, 30).

On March 5-6, 2000 at the University of PA, The Bioethics Department of the university and the John Templeton Foundation sponsored a symposium called "Extended Life, Eternal Life." Top researchers and thinkers in their fields of science, theology, or related endeavors took part in thought-provoking discussions from multiple points of view about the possibility of indefinitely postponing – or even "conquering" – death.

Second are therapies using stem cells. "Stem cells derived from umbilical cord blood can help reduce stroke damage, claims a study by scientists at the Medical College of Georgia and the University of South Florida. In research with laboratory animals, the scientists found that when the umbilical cord-derived stem cells were given intravenously along with the drug mannitol, stroke size was reduced by 40 percent." (http://health.myway.com/art/id/521444.html)

Recently, a Johns Hopkins University lab converted bone-marrow stem cells from animal donors into healthy liver cells for humans. "It’s mind-blowing stuff," the head of this lab told The Washington Post. "I never would have thought this would be possible. Preposterous. Not possible. No way." (http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2004/010/23.27.html)

A third example is in vitro fertilization (IVF). It is expensive, and there is no guarantee that implanted embryos will survive. When they do survive, there is a troubling consequence. A couple might have a dozen fertilized eggs. Maybe three are implanted. What happens to the other nine? They are frozen near absolute zero at fertility clinics until the parents or the courts decide what to do with them.

There may be half a million frozen embryos in the U.S., about the population of New Castle County. A robust Christian doctrine of creation says that biologically, these frozen embryos are not potential human life; they are human life with potential. To destroy them is to destroy the only God-ordained way by which humanity is fruitful and fills the earth. So, what should couples do with them?

They can implant the others and have more babies. They can allow them to stay frozen indefinitely, give the clinic permission to destroy them and use them in embryonic stem cell research, or donate them. The National Embryo Donation Center at Knoxville’s Baptist Hospital for Women is a nonprofit center assisting both embryo donors and recipients. Couples who don’t want more children can donate their remaining embryos to other couples who are unable to conceive. (www.embryodonation.org)

I have no intention of pontificating on the genetic revolution, but as your pastor, I’d like to reflect on this proposal to take in hand the thread of life and weave a new human future. My reflection begins with one of the four foundational statements in our Christian doctrine of creation.

What Is Nature?
In September I asked, what is nature? One person talks about nature as a victim of human folly or a threat to human life; another talks about it as a machine or a mother. Which is it, and which idea should govern the others? It depends on the person’s point of view. We should never hear the word nature without asking what the person means by it.

We Christians view nature as God’s creation. Where other people say, "nature," we think, "creation." When we say, "nature," we mean, "creation." And we say that this meaning governs all the others. And we say our view should be head in the public square.

Some people will say, "But that’s a faith statement." Yes, but so is the statement that nature is innocent, or nature is savage, or nature is a machine, or nature is a mother. They are all points of view, all interpretations of nature. The Christian point of view has just as much right in public discussions as any other point of view.

From that point of view I would like to inject several questions into the public debate about frozen embryos, stem cell research and the extension of human life. First: “What right do scientists have to treat the human organism like nothing but wax in their hands to be shaped any way they wish?” Creation is a trust that God has given into our hands, and we must protect and preserve it or else pay dearly for abusing it.

Even from a secular point of view, isn’t that how we have now agreed to treat the environment? We have enormous respect for the spotted owl, the grizzly bear and the rain forest. We’ve seen the danger of treating the environment like wax in our hands to be shaped any way we wish. Do we have to face a catastrophic, human situation before we introduce restraint into our genetic manipulations of man and beast?

That brings me to a second question. Because they bear God’s image, many people, not just Christians, are uneasy about in vitro fertilization, the storage, sale and destruction of human embryos for research purposes, and even the indefinite extension of biological life. What makes them uneasy is that only The promise of longer life and better health justifies the treatment of the human organism as nothing but wax in scientific hands to be shaped any way they wish. No consistent religious or moral framework helps define what “better quality of life” means.

So, my second question asks: why should people made in the image of God be satisfied to define quality of life as longer life and better health and nothing more? Thomas à Kempis famously said, "It is folly to wish to live long and fail to live well," by which he meant not a higher standard of living but greater holiness. "Theologian Carol Zaleski has noted, 'To be given everlasting longevity without being remade for eternal life is to live under a curse.'" (quoted in Daniel Callahan, "Visions of Eternity," First Things, May 2003, 31)

Do those who push the genetic agenda ever think that extending life indefinitely might be extending misery indefinitely? A thoughtful and lengthy public discussion about what constitutes the good life would introduce a welcome restraint into our genetic manipulations of man and beast.

The thing I fear is for scientists and others to hear my questions and say, "You are obstructing progress. Religion has always been afraid of the courageous risks of Science, and it always will be. If religionists had their way, humanity would still be riding donkeys and dying at age 40."

I fear that criticism, because there is truth in it; but I and many others have learned from past mistakes. We do not want to obstruct science. We appreciate deeply how much better it has made human life. But on behalf of many others, I want to ask my third question. Is our civilization sure that what advocates of embryonic stem cell research, cloning, and the "Immortality Project" propose to do is really progress? Or is the promise of progress propaganda by which we hide from each other realities we don’t want to face?

The Pastoral Center of Gravity
To appreciate what lies behind that question, walk with me one more step. In Genesis 2:17 God had told Adam that he could eat of every other tree in the Garden of Eden, but not from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. If he ate from that tree, he would die. When the serpent (Satan) tempts Eve, he appeals to her with a most seductive promise in verses 4-5: "You will not die; for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."

The subtlety of Genesis shines through here, because it allows the devil to speak words that are true. Look down at verse 22: And the LORD God said, "The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil." However, the rest of the verse points out that the devil didn’t speak the whole truth. "He (the man) must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever." In other words, the devil lied when he said that Adam and Eve would not die, if they ate the forbidden fruit. But now the questions begin.

If eating the forbidden fruit made Adam and Eve like God, why is that not a good thing? I thought being like God would be the greatest human achievement. And God knows good and evil, and he doesn’t die. What’s the difference?

The difference is how the knowledge was acquired. Adam and Eve acquired the knowledge of good and evil by disobedience. They sought something good, but they sought it in a way that rejected God.

However you understand the opening chapters of Genesis, you have to know that they do not tell an isolated story of two people, who had a bad day in Paradise many millennia ago. The wisdom of Genesis, it seems to me, lies in how perfectly this story captures the common experience of humanity. Creation is good. We have an appetite for the good, but we reject the Source of life in order to get the good we want. And we get it, and it really is good – so good that we forget or try to forget how we transgressed to get it, and we try to rationalize the nagging consequences of our transgressions.

The drama of Genesis three is being played out again in the biological revolution that gathers momentum daily in research labs, political debate and cultural trends. Adam’s old habits make it likely that some “bold, fearless” band of scientists will defy the religious and even the scientific establishments and clone human beings and turn human embryos into a commodity.

Good will come from the biological revolution. Evil will also come from it, not least at the hand of brilliant people who are taking the thread of human life in their hands, who view human beings as wax in their hands to be shaped any way they wish, and who have no community of religious and moral restraint on their actions.

Good will come from it, but Paradise will prove to be further away than ever. The Lord God will once again place cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life. Will the good outweigh the evil? In other words, will this reshaping of the human future be real progress?

Environmental pollution, a by-product of the Industrial Revolution now takes place on a global scale. The threat of dirty bombs in the hands of terrorists and the prospect of nuclear weapons in the hands of Iran can make talk of progress seem like a fool’s dream. The cautionary words of C. S. Lewis questioned progress in the life sciences. He said: "The regenerate science which I have in mind would not do even to minerals and vegetables what modern science threatens to do to man himself" (The Abolition of Man, 89-90).

There is no need to hurry with cloning or embryonic stem cell research. We have much to gain by reticence and much to lose by haste. The public discussion needs to be long and thoughtful, and Christians need a place at the table. Let us not be silent.