Modern Eugenics

This past Sunday my husband and I were watching the show, 60 Minutes. The story that caught my attention was that of a young couple who had chosen in vitro fertilization not because they have fertility problems, but because they wanted to be able to select an embryo that did not have a particular gene.

It turns out that the woman being interviewed carries a breast cancer gene that can cause a particular aggressive form of breast cancer, a cancer she herself had been diagnosed with at age 27. Although she has recovered, she did not want her children to be faced with that prospect. “Breast cancer will stop with me,” she said.

While her concern is understandable, this practice raises, or should raise, numerous red flags.

In the interest of full disclosure, I should note that I am not particularly morally comfortable with in vitro fertilization in any case. But the use of this technology to select for or against particular deficiencies is even more fraught with moral and ethical questions than the general practice itself.

The report suggests that couples – only wealthy couples however, given the cost of the procedure – have the capacity to choose in vitro fertilization in order to design a child that might be more to their liking than whatever the normal means might yield. Are you an older mother who might be worried about Down’s Syndrome? Use in vitro and select only the embryo with a “healthy” genome. Family history of Tay Sach’s, Muscular Dystrophy, or Cystic Fibrosis? No problem.

The report noted that at some point in time, couples could use this technology to select for intelligence, hair color, eye color, physique, or any other characteristic. In fact, one researcher suggested that he predicts the best way forward is to completely disconnect human reproduction from the sex act to ensure the best outcome.

I am wondering how all of this is not simply modern eugenics, the science of improving a human population by controlled breeding to increase the occurrence of desirable heritable characteristics.

But I am also asking the rather obvious question about what this sort of selection says about persons who have these diseases. If an embryo is deemed disposable because of some genetic condition, what might that say about the relative worth and dignity of persons in our communities who have that condition?

From a Christian perspective, is it even true that this sort of selection actually improves humanity? What about the Christian claim of power made perfect in weakness, and the weak in our midst shaming the strong? What do we learn from weakness?

All of this generates a certain level of sadness in me.

But perhaps the greatest sadness I feel has even more to do with the sense that children are more and more becoming commodities to be selected and purchased, rather than gifts to be received with gratitude from the Giver of life, who does not make mistakes.

Missional Prayer

Do you ever have one of those moments where you are reading along in a familiar text and suddenly you think, ‘hmmm, I’m not sure I thought much about this before’?

Well, I had one of those moments as I was reading 1 Kings 18 a few days ago. This text is the well-known story of the confrontation between Elijah and the prophets of Baal on Mt. Carmel. It’s a classic underdog story and one of my favorites. Elijah, the lone prophet of YHWH, is up against 400 prophets of Baal who just happen to be backed by King Ahab and his foreign queen and Baal high-priestess, Jezebel. It’s pretty clear that if Elijah loses this battle, he is in big trouble.

But it is Elijah, at the direction of YHWH, who initiated this. In essence, he challenged the Baal-followers to a duel. If they win, Baal will be acknowledged as God. But if Elijah wins, YHWH will be the God of Israel – which he is anyway, a fact Israel seems to have forgotten.

The bulls are brought. The prophets of Baal sacrifice their bull, place it on the altar. They proceed to pray, dance, shout, cut themselves with knives, and in general, make so much noise that the only way Baal couldn’t hear them is if he was otherwise occupied. Elijah says as much, even suggesting that perhaps Baal is in the bathroom.

Pretty gutsy.

After most of the day has passed and Baal, the god of lighting, has not yet lit the sacrifice with fire, Elijah calls the people of Israel to his side of the mountain. He quietly repairs the altar of YHWH, digs a trench around the altar, sacrifices the bull, lays it on the altar, and has the people pour enough water over the altar to soak the bull, the wood, and fill the trench.

Then Elijah stepped forward and prayed. No screaming.  No shouting. Just a simple prayer. And “the fire of the LORD fell and burned up the sacrifice, the wood, the stones, and the soil, and also licked up the water in the trench.”

Now that is a consuming fire!

But the fire is not what caught my attention. It was Elijah’s prayer. In an age where we seemed focused on comfort, on what we want or think we need, all of which might be very good, Elijah’s prayer is quite different.

Elijah doesn’t pray, “O YHWH, save me from this situation.” I think we would all agree that a prayer like that would have been reasonable, given his circumstances. He also doesn’t pray “Please send fire and burn up this bull.” Also a reasonable thing to ask. He also doesn’t pray “Please strike down these false prophets who are leading Israel astray.” I think that might have been reasonable as well.

No, Elijah prays that God will make himself known. “Let it be known today,” Elijah prays, “that you are God in Israel.” Furthermore, the reason Elijah asks God to make himself known is “so these people will know that you, O LORD, are God.”

I wonder how often we think about the answers to our requests as missional. How often do we even pray with that in mind? I know that my own answer to that is ‘not often enough.’ And I wonder how God might work in us if our prayers were focused less on a particular situation, and more on God making himself known as we humbly submit to his will.