How Does the Push for Perfect Babies Reveal Our Broken Moral Compass?
American startup company Heliospect Genomics is offering to help wealthy couples screen their embryos for IQ, marketing their services at up to $50,000. While scientists warn that such genetic screenings are currently inconsistent and not technologically reliable, the story raises the question: If you could use genetic testing to select a baby based on IQ or other traits, would you?
Should you?
“Pre-implantation genetic diagnosis” is currently being used in conjunction with in vitro fertilization (IVF) to reduce the risk of passing on inherited conditions. Embryos created through IVF are tested for single-gene disorders such as cystic fibrosis, sickle cell anemia, or polycystic kidney disease. The healthiest embryos are implanted in the mother; the others are frozen or discarded.
This practice raises enormous ethical issues of its own, especially for those of us who believe life begins at conception. However, in my work as an ethics consultant with a major healthcare system, I have also been anticipating the day when such testing could be used to select embryos based on IQ and a variety of other attributes. Such eugenic practices would clearly be attractive to many who could afford them.
This issue points to an even more fundamental cultural question that affects every one of us, regardless of our age or station in life.
“We No Longer Worship Anything”
There was a day when couples could know little about their babies prior to birth. Ultrasound scanners were not widely available until the 1970s; the same was true for prenatal screening for Down syndrome.
Prior to this time, sex-selective abortions were obviously not possible; today, millions of babies (usually females) have been aborted on the basis of their gender. Down syndrome babies were not detectable in utero and thus not aborted; today, 90 percent of women whose unborn babies are diagnosed with Down choose to abort them.
We could have a similar discussion of nearly any ethical issue of our time. For example:
- There was a day when parents could more easily protect their children from pornography distributed by magazines and movies. Today, hard-core porn is available to anyone with internet access. And virtual reality is making porn more immersive and addictive than ever.
- Euthanasia was once illegal and difficult to obtain; now, “suicide pods” are making it easier than ever for people to take their own lives.
- Mass media was once distributed through platforms and networks that enforced editorial standards and ethical accountability. Today, anyone can broadcast and consume nearly any message through nearly any digital device, enabling “fake news” and “deep fake videos” to proliferate.
While we are facing unprecedented ethical challenges, our culture is jettisoning the resources it needs to face them. Richard Rorty, heralded on his death in 2007 by the New York Times as “one of the world’s most influential contemporary thinkers,” summarized our cultural worldview:
Once upon a time, we felt a need to worship something which lay beyond the visible world. Beginning in the seventeenth century, we tried to substitute a love of truth for a love of God, treating the world described by science as a quasi-divinity. Beginning at the end of the eighteenth century, we tried to substitute a love of ourselves for a love of scientific truth, a worship of our own deep spiritual or poetic nature, treated as one more quasi-divinity.
Now, according to Rorty, we have come to a place “where we no longer worship anything, where we treat nothing as a quasi-divinity, where we treat everything—our language, our conscience, our community—as products of time and chance.”
How’s that working for us?
“Jesus Christ Rehabilitated the Human Race”
My obvious response is to urge you to love your Lord with all of your being and to love your neighbor as yourself (Matthew 22:37–39). The first returns God to his rightful place on the throne of our lives and world; the second causes us to venerate life from natural conception to natural death.
But for flawed and fallen people like you and me, both are easier said than done. Otherwise, why would abortion and pornography (as examples) be so prevalent among Christians? To this end, let’s close by pointing to a source of hope that transcends all our aspirations and efforts.
Oswald Chambers noted, “Sin is a fundamental relationship; it is not wrongdoing, it is wrong being, deliberate and emphatic independence of God” (his emphasis). He added that, unlike other religions that deal with various sins, Christianity uniquely deals with our sinful nature at the cross.
We often say that Jesus died for our sins, but Chambers explains that, in fact, “he took upon himself the heredity of sin which no man can touch. God made his own Son to be sin that he might make the sinner a saint.” Scripture agrees:
“For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21).
Note that the text does not say that God made Jesus “to bear sins” but “to be sin.”
According to Chambers, “In so doing, he put the whole human race on the basis of redemption. Jesus Christ rehabilitated the human race; he put it back to where God designed it to be, and anyone can enter into union with God on the ground of what our Lord has done on the cross.”
Now, the choice is with us. Will we submit our lives this day to God’s Spirit (Ephesians 5:18), asking him to recreate the character of Christ in us (Romans 8:29), empower us to defeat any temptation (1 Corinthians 10:13), and transform us to be “more than conquerors through him who loved us” (Romans 8:37)?
Will you?
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*Denison Forum does not necessarily endorse the views expressed in these stories.
Quote for the Day:
“The Bible was not given for our information but for our transformation.” —Dwight L. Moody
Image created using DALL.E 2024 AI technology and subsequently edited and reviewed by our editorial team.
Published Date: October 22, 2024
Jim Denison, PhD, is a cultural theologian and the founder and CEO of Denison Ministries. Denison Ministries includes DenisonForum.org, First15.org, ChristianParenting.org, and FoundationsWithJanet.org. Jim speaks biblically into significant cultural issues at Denison Forum. He is the chief author of The Daily Article and has written more than 30 books, including The Coming Tsunami, the Biblical Insight to Tough Questions series, and The Fifth Great Awakening.
The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of CrosswalkHeadlines.
For more from the Denison Forum, please visit www.denisonforum.org.
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