by Dan Jones
SRN News recently had a news story, which you may very well have heard on Kinship Christian Radio, about how Chinese scientists have successful cloned a couple of monkeys. Now, of course, the scientists say this is all in the name of science so we can have test animals with identical genetics on which to perform various tests for the betterment of humanity.
Scientists successfully cloned a sheep way back in the days when cell phones had antennas and all they could be used for was calling other people (1996), but it’s taken over twenty years to do the same thing with primates. So monkey-cloning is kind of a big deal in the world of science.
Steve Ware and Allen Jones were talking about the cloned monkeys with a certain degree of dread on Monday morning because of the obvious implications for human cloning and the obvious metaphorical tap-dancing where angels fear to tread.
Meanwhile, over at “Blog and Mablog,” by Pastor Dennis Wilson, he was detailing his thoughts on transgenderism and produced this gem of a paragraph:
“The issue therefore is not whether male tissue can ever be changed into female tissue. Of course it can. If nothing can be transformed into cosmos, and dust into man, then a man’s rib can be fashioned into a woman. By God. So the fundamental issue is this: who is God? What are the prerogatives of Deity? And the basic Christian answer to our leaders, and scientists, and politicians, and writers, and poets, and philosophers has to be this. Who is God? Not you. Who has the prerogatives of Deity? Not you.”
Right. Not you.
Not me, not anyone but God.
The older I get, the more incredibly, haltingly, astoundingly obvious it becomes that it’s all the same sin. It’s all the very same sin that flowed from that very same temptation: “…and you will be like God…”
And that’s Wilson’s point as well. There is something deep within the human soul that actually thinks that it can do a better job of being God than God does. We actually want to pick and choose our own rules based on our own thoughts, our own feelings, our own desires.
At it’s core, it’s pride. Deep within each soul, there is this puffed up little kernel of self-importance and self-aggrandizement that actually believes that we know what we are doing.
And, for some reason, it’s utterly clear to me that you have no idea at all of what you are doing, but me, well I know precisely what I am doing and if you would all just listen to me and do it my way, well, we’d have a world so perfect you’d be beside yourself with fulfillment, joy, and happiness.
Fortunately, that puffed up little kernel of self-righteousness has all the structural integrity of a single Rice Krispie (R). It cannot stay crunchy in the milk of reality. It cannot even remain afloat. I am a tiny little puffy grain of rice in a world that eats me for breakfast every day of my life.
In the vast cosmos that God has created, I am a speck on a speck on a grain of rice somewhere off in the corner of the Milky Way galaxy. I am less than insignificant.
And thank God for it!
In the vast scheme of things, thank God that God is God and not me!
Because one of the greatest blessings God gives me when I start in to thinking I am all that and a bag of crisped rice cereal is a nice, relevant, thought-provoking dose of humility. (Yes, underline, italic, bold.)
Anyone who has spent half an hour looking for the reading glasses that have been perched atop their own noggin the entire time doesn’t understand the concepts of irony and humility well enough to be Third Grade Hall Monitor, let alone Supreme Moral Arbiter of the Entire Universe.
The bottom line on why God should get to be God is simply that none of us are qualified for the job. We need God because we are so woefully inept at being our own gods.
We are weak, fallible, infinitely insignificant and tiny beings in this, vast, vast universe. We haven’t a fraction of a fragment in us of all that is or was or could be known.
But the amazing thing is He not only puts up with all of our foolishness and rebellion, he loves us enough to become one of us and die for us. Despite all our flaws, He would do anything to keep us alive with Him forever in a perfect relationship with Him.
Today’s Praise
Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” Luke 23:34a (NIV)