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What the Future Could Hold
Unless things change, look at this scenario:

1. Economic conservatives and libertarians press for "enhancement" as a right—against any regulation of the bio business that would prevent it.
   
   
2. At the same time, many pro-lifers can't see the problem with having "better babies": Enhancers don't want to kill anyone, they just want us all to be the best we can be. And don't we all want the best for our babies?
   
   
3. Christians slide down the slope into the view that God wants the best for us. So often we have been told that God wants us healthy and wealthy—what could be better than to use our wealth to create super-health, and use the super-health to create yet more wealth? For there is no doubt that "enhancement" will be for the haves, and it will dig deeper the ditch between them and the have-nots.
   
   

So let's have better babies, babies by design, and let's move on to redesign ourselves, using drugs and surgeries and finally reinventing ourselves from the genes and neurons up.

Can't see the problem? Well, when Jesus returns—Jesus the incarnate Son of God, the first-century Palestinian Jew, his flesh and blood glorified but still his own—when he returns in power and glory to call us to account, what will he find? Will he find faith upon the earth? Will he even find men and women? Or will he say, as he searches for fellow members of homo sapiens, the species he made in his image and took to be his own, and meets self-invented, designer beings, quite literally, "I never knew you"?

Copyright © 2006 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Previous Life Matters columns include:

Poaching Eggs | The latest sad story from the Korean soap opera—and a lack of Talent in Missouri (Feb. 17, 2006)

The State of the Human | President Bush sets out a vital agenda for ethics. (Feb. 2, 2006)

Are You My Sperm Donor? | Plus: Another Hwang turn, more small surprises, and other life ethics stories. (Jan. 26, 2006)

Breeding Humans Like Rabbits? | From the frying pan into the fire. (Jan. 20, 2006)

The Prospects for 2006 | Deeper into the (Christian?) biotech century. (Jan. 9, 2006)

Peter Singer Meets Dr. Hwang | The ethics of the Brave New World. (Jan. 5, 2006)

Bethlehem's Bioethics | Christmas in the early 21st century. (Dec. 22, 2005)

A Common Cause for Our Common Humanity | Left and right come together in defense of us. (Dec. 14, 2005)

More CT articles on bioethics are available on our Life Ethics page.

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February (Web-only) 2006, Vol. 50