Wednesday, November 20, 2013

Designer Babies vs. The Designer Baby


The Huffington Post reports that "23 and Me" was awarded a patent for at at home DNA kit called "gamete donor selection."  These would "enable prospective parents to handpick a sperm or egg donor with whom they would be likely to produce a child born with certain traits that they desire."


The idea of doing this is not entirely new, but the fact that a company has a patent for something like this is.

This got me to think this morning.  How should Christians think about this.  How should we confront this in our culture.  We should certainly actively oppose all actions which endanger human life which begins at conception (Psalm 139:13-16).  But I think we also need to confront the
larger heart issues behind all of this.  

This issue is embracing our role as "receivers."

Life is a gift from God (Psalm 127).  We receive it from His hand.  The Bible often speaks of God "opening the womb" or "closing the womb."  So then when God grants conception and eventually birth those are given these gifts are in a place to receive them from God's hands.  These children then are meant to be a stewardship entrusted by God to the recipients for a period of time.  Psalm 78:1-8 tells Christians that our job during this time is to rehearse God's truth and faith in Him to them in word and deed so that they become those who hope in God.  

Too often even believers are tempted to have a "designer" plan for our children.  We need to be those who receive our children as a gift from God.  We accept their strengths and their weaknesses.  We do not try to shape them into our image but we point to the image of God with in them.  We are not shapers of their destiny, but stewards of God's design.  We receive His design for them in His Word.   

The world needs to see believers once again embracing children as gift from God and embracing the stewardship of pointing them to Christ and His will and not to us an our will.  Then Christians need to help the world see that they are wrong to try to play God in the conception of children and also in their upbringing.  

The gospel teaches us that we are all flawed from birth and in need of the salvation from the only one who was not flawed from birth:  Jesus Christ (Romans 5).  

Rather than seeking inherent perfection which is impossible in the stream of human genetics, we ought to accept our condition and seek perfection in an alien form:  through the righteousness of Jesus.  

He died to take away or sin and to make us righteous in Him.  

So then we as sinners and cursed by sin can accept children who are sinners and cursed by sin and together we can seek hope in the only perfect designer baby:  Jesus.  

Thus we must, most importantly, be receivers of this ultimate gift forgiveness, life and perfection in Him. 

Galatians 4:4–5 (NASB95)
 But when the fullness of the time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law,
 so that He might redeem those who were under the Law, that we might receive the adoption as sons.