I was born 63 years ago Thursday to a mother and father who did things the old-fashioned way.
They fell in love. They got married. They consummated their marriage. They had three children, the last of whom was me. My mother got contractions at an Independence Day party and went to the hospital. I was nearly born on the 4th of July, but labor went on for so long that I wasn’t delivered until the early morning hours of July 6, 1954.
But,according to story this week, that’s not necessarily how these things will be happening in 30 years.
Instead, says Hank Greely, the director of Stanford Law School’s Center for Law and the Biosciences, the reproductive process will begin with parents choosing from a range of embryos created in a lab with their DNA. People will choose this method, he says, because it will become inexpensive and will result in fewer diseases and allow parents to choose eye and hair color of their offspring.
Does this prospect sound exciting to you? Does it sound like progress? Do you welcome the new frontier of designer babies? Or, do you believe as I do, that this is not the way God planned things and that there will be consequences for wholesale violations of His natural order?
It’s not often that we discuss trends like these in the context of the Creator and His plans and desires for our lives. So, in an attempt to perfect our fallen world by reinventing the Garden of Eden, we find ourselves slouching toward Gomorrah.
Some questions come to mind as I ponder the possibilities:
- Why would parents want to choose the sex of their children if their children can choose their own sexual identity for themselves, regardless of what their anatomy suggests, as we’re told by the new sexual revolutionaries?
- This idea strongly suggests that humans in the future will be “bred” with specific desired traits, like animals. Does anyone else find that disturbing?
- Are there moral and ethical questions prompted by notions like this that should be publicly debated, or should we just stumble into this brave new world where everyone does what’s right in his or her own eyes?
- I thought we were all trying to learn to accept one another the way we were created, without regard to superficial matters such as skin, color, eye color, hair color and sex. Doesn’t this plan kick all those loving notions right down the stairs?
I was contemplating all this as I re-read the Pauline prophecies of Romans 1.
Do you believe societies, as well as individuals, are judged by God? It’s something to think about.
Paul tells us in Romans 1:17-32 that God’s natural order cannot be mocked without consequences for individuals and cultures. He suggests there’s plenty of evidence of when, where and how God exercises his wrath and that all of us are without excuse as to knowing this and recognizing right from wrong.
What happens, Paul writes, is that when people knew God, they didn’t worship Him. They weren’t thankful to Him. And they were made vain in their own imaginations. In other words, the apostle says, by not giving God His due, man becomes wise in his own eyes but foolish in the eyes of the all-knowing and all-powerful God.
As man’s turn from God becomes more acute, the judgments of man multiply. And what follows in the progression laid out by Paul sounds a lot like the increasingly ungodly American culture we all see today.
Societies that follow this pattern go from bad to worse, as outlined in Romans 1:26-32: “For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature: And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet. And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient; Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, Backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, Without understanding, covenantbreakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful: Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them.”
As America reaches its 241st year, should we prepare for the future by learning from history?
Or should we permit those who know not God to deliver us into temptation and lead us into rebellion against our Creator?
Media wishing to interview Joseph Farah, please contact [email protected].
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