As Friday approaches, and the day Imago Dei turns 1, I thought I’d return from my blogging absence with a post that actually fits the theme and reason for this blog.
Someone left the January issue of Christianity Today on our break table yesterday, and I picked it up because it’s usually an interesting, and insightful, read. Besides, it’s not any more biased than where I usually get my news (blogs).
One article in particular stood out to me. As I read it, I found myself thinking What were they thinking? There’s a section called “Where We Stand” and it details the magazine’s views on key issues. The first issue was, of course, embryonic stem cell research. The headline reads: Go Gently into That Good Night. Under that it says: Fear of mortality lies at the root of our bioethics confusion.
The problem is not just the immoral destruction of the embryos from which stem cells are extracted. The larger cultural issue is an ethic of immortality that undergirds the push for embryonic stem-cell research. It’s an ethic that has already warped our culture’s perspective and now threatens to warp our Christian worldview, too.
Quoting Leon Kass, a professor at the University of Chicago, the article says “victory over mortality is the unstated but implicit goal of modern medical science.” He continues, “In parallel with medical progress, a new moral sensibility has developed that serves precisely medicine’s crusade against mortality: Anything is permitted if it saves life, cures disease, prevents death.”
Sherwin Nuland, a surgeon and author of How We Die, agrees with Kass. “The fantasy of controlling nature lies at the very basis of modern science…The ultimate aim of the scientist is not only knowledge for the sake of knowledge, but knowledge with the aim of overcoming that in our environment which he views as hostile. None of the acts of nature (or Nature) is more hostile than death.”
It says that we are “tempted daily by that perfect apple, by promises of youth and immortality.”
The priceless paragraph comes next:
The apple that’s currently tempting our society is the half-million frozen human embryos created in fertility clinics. Our culture so clings to life that it is prepared to legislate taking of life at its earliest stages in order to graft it on at the end.
The solution offered by the magazine?
Preach on death’s inevitability, God’s providence in its timing, and its defeat in Christ. Offer classes on the art of visiting the dying and learn to comfortably converse with those grieving their loss. Post pictures of deceased church members in the church hall.
When we show in our weekly life that we follow the Way that transcends death, the larger culture will begin to see that its obsession with youth is not a celebration of life, but a rejection of the inevitable. Science and medicine, for all the good gifts they provide, will never be sure paths to human happiness.
I’m honestly not sure where to begin here. There are so many things that are wrong with this article.
Seeking cures for disease is not quite so melodramatic as seeking the Fountain of Youth. It’s perfectly normal not to want to die. I’m a Christian, and even knowing what I have to look forward to, I don’t want to die. Does that make me a heathen? No. Not wanting to die is nothing new. Fortunately, we live in an age where most things are treatable. You’re more likely to die in a car accident than from a disease.
From a Christian perspective, life is precious. God ordained each life that’s on the planet. And to try and keep that life as healthy as possible is a good thing!
And I, for one, can tell you that bringing death into full view will not make me more comfortable with the thought of dying. Death is death whether I see it or not.
Stem cell research is not about becoming immortal; it’s about trying to make life as we know it better.
Categories: Christianity, Media and Culture |
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