Christianity Faces the Eighties

Headline of the future: May 1983—“Brain Transplant Successful! Scientist Lives on in Borrowed Body.”

A bizarre fantasy? A page from one of Robert Scheckley’s far-out science fiction novels? Definitely not. The date is an educated, conservative guess, and the event is a near certainty. Incredible as it may seem, most of the technical difficulties have already been solved. Evidence from organ research and animal experimentation increasingly indicates that brain transplantation can be performed now—with existing techniques. Only moral inhibition prevents one neurosurgeon from trying it today. Dr. Robert White of Cleveland Metropolitan General Hospital believes that “the Japanese will be first. I will not because I haven’t resolved as yet this dilema: is it right or not?”

Regrettably, Dr. White’s question is not typically asked by scientists. Alvin Toffler sums up the prevailing attitude of the scientific community as “if something can be done, someone, somewhere will do it.” That terrifying doctrine gnaws away at the concept of a society based on appreciation of the individual. It gives short shrift to Thomas Jefferson’s idea that all men are endowed by their creator with inalienable rights. It appears that the 1980s will usher in an era of experimentation on human beings that asks only, “Is it possible?” and “Is it feasible?”

Toffler lays out some stunning prospects: genetically prescribed babies bred in test tubes and purchased by parents in a baby mart; astronauts biologically modified for space travel; cold-war rivalry to breed super-brains to engage in further warfare; “cloning,” physically copying a living organism from its genetic material; and finally, merging of man with machine. “If we assume that the brain is the seat of consciousness and intelligence,” says Toffler, “it may then become possible to combine the human brain with a whole set of artificial sensors, receptors and effectors, and to call that tangle of wires and plastic a human being” (Future Shock, Bantam Books, 1970, p. 209).

Whether we like it or not, we are a part of a kaleidoscopically changing world. Some of these changes appear to bode ill for our way of life, our children, our church. Now is the time for Christians to analyze their position and to prepare a strategy for the future. I have three points of strategy to suggest.

Develop a “last days” mentality. Dr. Jose Delgado of Yale University suggests that our culture move “toward a psychocivilized society.” In this new civilization some persons would be manipulated by electronic brain stimulation. Delgado has already developed the techniques on both animal and human subjects. And what about the ethical considerations? Delgado views them calmly:

The prospect of any degree of physical control of the mind provokes a variety of objections; theological objections because it affects free will; moral objections because it affects individual responsibility; ethical objections because it may block self-defense mechanisms; philosophical objections because it threatens personal identity.

These objections, however, are debatable. A prohibition of scientific advance is obviously naive and unrealistic [The Physical Control of the Mind, Harper Colophon Books, 1969, p. 214].

One suspects that in Delgado’s scheme theology and morality yield to the god of “scientific advance.” Delgado also advocates “governmental intervention in our bodies” for the purpose of “health.” But who defines health?

In the March 19, 1973, issue of Newsweek, Dr. Kenneth Clark, psychology professor at City University of New York, extolled the advantages of “psychotechnological intervention for the control of negatives … in human behavior.” He argued that opposition to this wave of the future is “immoral” on the grounds that without such controls nuclear war is inevitable.

“Human problems are increasingly seen as technological problems” writes Will Herberg, a distinguished Jewish sociologist, “to be dealt with by adjustment and manipulation.… In fact the belief seems to have merged that there is nothing beyond man’s desires, nothing beyond man’s power. His values are his to make or unmake.”

Paul’s warning to Timothy appears to fit the direction of our age: “in the last days perilous times will come.” But we have not yet come to grips with the new perils. We have assumed that the social patterns of the past couple of decades would remain stable until the end of our lives and possibly until the end of the Church’s stay on earth. We have rooted our expectation in permanent democracy and ongoing affluence. We’ve been betting heavily that the future will being us more “normalcy” and a slightly updated, more sumptuous version of the status quo.

With the definition of man greatly blurred, with values up for grabs, with science clamoring for the reins of our biological and neurological future, the next decade appears sinister and perilous indeed. Such times call for a biblical philosophy of crisis.

The Apostle Peter commands us, “Be sober, be vigilant.” We must prepare to discard all that is superfluous to our faith and ready ourselves to defend, perhaps even to suffer for, what we know is essential. We have no more years to relax. If today I am not increasing in wisdom, spiritual understanding, and knowledge of God, I may well be shell-shocked by the explosions of tomorrow. This means I should master the eternal facts and precepts of my faith right now. It means disentangling myself from purely temporary goals. It means grappling with the spiritual errors of today, diagnosing their ungodly heredity, foreseeing their disastrous consequences.

Define a 1980s Christian ethic. The range of ethical decisions confronting mankind will expand rapidly in the 1980s. New biology and ultra-modern genetics will force us to ask many hard new questions. Should we accept brain transplants to save our lives or our children’s? Should we, in unusual circumstances, opt for offspring conceived in the test-tube instead of in the womb? Should women accept a transplanted egg from a donor? Shall men allow their sperm to be stored for possible use in case of premature death?

Even old matters like abortion and euthanasia will become more complex as medical progress creates new life-prolonging drugs, birth-control mechanisms, and life-support systems. A well-known physician was quoted in Time magazine about his basic approach to the act of euthanasia:

There’s no single rule you can apply. For me it is always an intensely personal, highly emotional, quasireligious, largely unconscious battle.… I and most doctors I know have acted in ways which would possibly shorten certain illnesses—without ever verbalizing it to ourselves or anybody else.

This statement underscores the plight of our world. It has no substance. No specifics. No reasoned propositions. The doctor seems to be saying that he makes these life-and-death decisions in a psychological nether-world, not bound by rules or reasons.

This is to be expected from unregenerate man. But Christians who have access to God’s Word sometimes commit the same blunder by ignoring the difficult questions or condemning all change. Such gut-level Christianity will be of little use in dealing with the issues of which we have been speaking. We must define our values—articulately, rationally, dynamically. We must study the array of mind-boggling new issues before us. Which biblical principles apply to these new possibilities? How can we communicate the timeless laws of righteousness in the dialect of the eighties? Keeping good theology in the refrigerator while the world urgently needs its refreshing truth simply won’t do.

Demonstrate reality to our children. Not long ago Dr. James Watson, co-discoverer of the DNA double helix, suggested a new policy that would allow parents and doctors to kill grossly malformed infants conceived in the laboratory: “If a child were not declared alive until three days after birth, then all parents could be allowed the choice.” As Father Richard McCormick of Loyola University of Theology warns, “Once you pass judgment that certain kinds of life are not worth living, the possible sequence is horrifying. In Nazi Germany they went from mental defectives to political enemies to whole races of people.” This may be the shape of the world the next generation will inherit.

Thirty years ago, in his novel That Hideous Strength, C.S. Lewis set down the following prophetic dialogue:

LORD FEVERSTONE: Man has got to take charge of man.… You and I want to be the people who do the taking charge, not the ones who are taken charge of.

MARK STUDDOCK: What sort of things do you have in mind?

FEVERSTONE: Quite simple and obvious things at first—sterilization of the unfit, liquidation of the backward races, selective breeding. Then real education.… It’ll have to be mainly psychological at first. But we’ll get on to biochemical conditioning in the end and direct manipulation of the brain [That Hideous Strength, Macmillan, 1946, p. 42].

The intervening years have breathed the breath of possibility into these ghastly visions. Now it’s all possible, and some of it is being preached as the message of salvation by the apostles of behaviorism and ethology.

We must teach our children who they are and what God intends them to be. They should learn how significant, how special they are—persons, not objects or machines; persons made in the image of God.

At the same time we must instill in them a sense of divine mission: “to show forth the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.” God has apprenticed our sons and daughters to us for a few years not only to absorb our shoptalk but to learn the skills of discipleship. Our job is to show them how to become journeyman saints, skilled spiritual craftsmen.

In family devotions we teach them good doctrine: God loves, Jesus saves, the Holy Spirit empowers. They attend Sunday school and learn their memory verses or catechism. Good. But it all becomes real when they watch us walking with God. As they catch us in the acts of receiving answers to prayer, of being fruitful in every good work, of expressing Christ-like love in the home and family, they grasp abundant life. If the beauty of our holiness contradicts the folly of man’s horrible concept of himself, they will want it.

Of course, we can also turn them off all too easily. Here are a few ways to obscure reality.

1. Stress cultural norms as emphatically as biblical absolutes.

2. Integrate family life around something other—and therefore less vital—than fellowship with God.

3. Teach them not to ask questions about matters of faith and conduct. Always advise them, “Only believe.”

Eventually they are likely to give up whatever seeking of God they might have undertaken, having found so little evidence that it is worth the bother.

When the Romanian pastor Richard Wurmbrandt and his wife were thrown into prison by the Communists, their nine-year-old son was hauled off to a government school to be indoctrinated in Marxism and atheism. Some years later, as part of a program of psychological torture, the boy was brought to see his mother for the purpose of denouncing Christianity to her face. As he studied the marks of suffering mixed with the evidence of joy written in his mother’s face he suddenly exclaimed, “Mother, if Christ means this much to you, I want him too.” Years of intensive brainwashing evaporated with one touch of Christlike encounter. God help us to demonstrate a living Christ as well as a correct doctrine to our precious observant apprentices.

Can a Church that has often been charged with complacency and apathy find the compelling force it needs to develop and carry out a strategy for the future? There is some hope. Observers have noted a “greening of the Church” in quiet renewals and, occasionally, spectacular revivals. We have begun to examine some of our 1950s attitudes and have found them wanting. Surely most of us are convinced that the will of God has profound implications for the culture of today and tomorrow. Now is the crucial time to face the 1980s and prepare for future shock.

FOLLOWERS OF CHRIST

We have not come to You at last from tears

Long freed; they are yet ours. We do not rise

And, rising, leave behind late pain, late fears;

We live the hours with silence in our eyes,

Not living day alone, but also night.

We reach, but there is darkness; search, but find

Not glory. Yet we come, our faces white

With weariness we cannot leave behind.

Yet we have come. Receive us, for your eyes

Hold worlds of radiance, and Your hands were torn.

We dare to ask of You long ways that rise

From pain; we see the pain that You have borne.

Morning and darkness we shall follow yet;

For having known You, we cannot forget.

MARGARET HUDELSON

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