God is Still Speaking in Science and Technology Wisconsin Conference United Church of Christ

Transcription

1 God is Still Speaking in Science and Technology Wisconsin Conference United Church of Christ Rev. Dr. Ronald Cole-Turner Thank you to Rev. David Moyer and to all of you for setting aside this time for us to think together about what it means to be a faithfully creative church in a world like this. It is so good to be with United Church of Christ people. I believe we are a special church and God has a special purpose for us in today s world. Being a teacher of theology has its rewards. One of the more profound things I have learned from a student paper is that the sermon is the word of God as interrupted by the preacher. Interruption well, I hope not. But good sermons and good theology are always a kind of dialogue, as even Karl Barth put it, with the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other. And today the newspaper is filled with all kinds of disturbing political news but also a lot of news about science and technology and medical advances and moral debates about life and death and prosperity and scarcity. And if you ask Barth s last students where he would have gone next, had he been given more years, they tend to answer, pneumatology, the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, alive and new and powerful and transformative in this world. Sure, there are some theologians who never get to Jesus Christ as the Word of God. But many who do get to Christ stop there and don t get on to the Spirit as the present-tense Speaking of God, and the danger is they get stuck on what God has said rather than leaning forward attentively to what God is saying now, a new word for a new world. I want to read you a sentence from John Calvin, who of course is one of the great pioneers of protestant theology, the preeminent figure in the Reformed tradition, and in many respects one of the key influences on the antecedent streams that flow into the UCC. Before the quote from Calvin, however, just this comment. The other day I was talking to a Methodist theologian who teaches at a Lutheran seminary, so in the interests of Protestant harmony I asked him, What is Calvin s distinctive contribution to protestant 1

2 theology? Without any hesitation he said pneumatology, the focus on the Holy Spirit, the living, transformative presence and power of God here and now in this world, revealing new things, creating new things. Here s the quote: If we regard the Spirit of God as the sole fountain of truth, we shall neither reject the truth itself, nor despise it wherever it shall appear, unless we wish to dishonor the Spirit of God. 1 We ll come back to that, but first let me tell you a little bit about Charles Townes. Does that name ring a bell with anyone? He and his wife, Frances, are active UCC members in the First Congregational Church in Berkeley. Charles is going to turn 90 this fall. I just saw him a week ago at a meeting in Philadelphia where he spoke about some of the future challenges of relating religion and science, particularly physics and cosmology. In 1964, Charles shared the Nobel Prize in physics for work on light. In fact you could say that Charles Townes invented the laser, which is the basis for so many other advances in science and technology and which is used in all kinds of consumer electronics and scanning devices. In 2005, Dr. Townes won the Templeton Prize because of his pioneering work in science and religion. I want to salute Charles Townes, and with him all of our other UCC scientists and engineers, medical researchers and health care providers, researchers and designers and creators and inventors, who, if Calvin is right, are channels through whom the Spirit of God discloses increasingly rich and profound approximations of the truth of nature. Nature is beautiful, and how exciting, how enriching it is to live in an age when for the first time in all time we little creatures on a little speck of a planet can gaze out in space and back in time to the engines of creation, from swirling clouds to forming galaxies to new stars and to dying stars whose death gives life to us planetary creatures who look at it all in wonder and awe and praise and humility. Just a few weeks ago I saw some new video images of primate embryos at the earliest stages. Thanks in part to Charles Townes and his laser, researchers can watch, in real time and at stunningly high resolution, the molecular processes that guide the successful multiplication and division of chromosomes. Whoever wrote, thou hast knit me together in my mother s womb would have loved these pictures. I was moved almost to tears; but not just me the room became uncommonly quiet as these brilliant young scientists, stem cell researchers and embryologists, stared in silence. I was the only theologian in fact, too often in my life I have been the only theologian in the room but I was not the only one for whom the details of life evoke awe. If God is in the details, we were getting closer to God. The next evening, after seeing these images, it was my turn to talk to these researchers about the ethics of their work and in particular about religious perspectives on their work. 1 John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. by John T. McNeill, translated by Ford Lewis Battles, The Library of Christian Classics, vol. XX (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1960), vol. 1, pp (II.2.15). 2

3 Unless you have been vacationing on Pluto you know that many churches, many Christians, and following right in line, in fact very right in line, there are many politicians who condemn their work. I told them about the positions taken by other churches. In fact I tried as hard as I could to help them understand the deep place from which come the religious objections to embryo research. I told them about the Presbyterian Church, which has taken a position much more accepting of their work. I told them how the United Methodist Church, on the floor of their General Conference in 2004, amended a proposed resolution to support legislation very much like what House just passed, the Senate is likely to pass, but the world s most powerful Methodist, President Bush, has pledged to veto. Then I told them about the UCC. I explained that we don t always agree. In fact we never all agree. And I explained that we don t take our own resolutions very seriously, although we have a lot of fun meeting and talking about them. But then I told them that as far as I know, we are the only church on the planet who has allowed, who has accepted the moral legitimacy of what was just achieved by the research team led by Dr. Hwang at Seoul National University in Korea. All the way back in 1997, just after Dolly was introduced to the world, the UCC opened the door to accept the moral legitimacy of using cloning or nuclear transfer to create something like a human embryo for purposes of research and possible some day for therapy. In 1997, of course, we didn t know about the work that was being done just a short distance from here in Madison, where human embryonic stem cells were first derived and cultured from human embryos. That work was published in 1998, and since then, researchers have wondered whether it will be possible to use cloning to create entities like embryos, from which stem cells could be derived. Why would you want to do that? Two reasons are at the top of the list. One is that if we ever learn how to use embryonic stem cells for medical purposes, maybe to replace cells that are injured or damaged by disease, we ll have to figure out a way to keep the immune system from rejecting the cells. If we could create a cloned embryo-like entity from the patient s own cells, and cultivate stem cells from that, then there should be no immune reaction. Second, if we want to learn how certain diseases progress in the human body, or want to test a large number of potential drugs on human cells, we could create cell cultures from people with these diseases and then literally watch the cells develop the disease in the dish in the lab. So now, in May 2005, the researchers in Korea published their results. They announced to the world that they have been highly successful in using cloning or nuclear transfer to create human embryo-like entities, which developed for several days in a laboratory dish. From these, they were able to take human embryonic stem cells, which they are actively growing right now in their lab. For a long time it looked like this would be difficult, maybe impossible. So it s pretty amazing what the Korean team is doing. The report from Korea was published about a week before I was meeting with this group of researchers. In fact, there s one non-korean who is a co-author of that report, and he 3

4 was there with us when we were meeting. So we weren t talking in the abstract about human cloning or embryonic stem cell research or the potential today for research using these strategies. And there was nothing futuristic or hypothetical about one church, at least, holding open the door of legitimacy for this line of work. To put it mildly, there is gratitude among these scientists and researchers when they hear that one church, at least, is open to what they are doing. It s not just that they are fearful of being called baby killers, or that their efforts at medical research are condemned by many religious people. I think it s deeper than that. I think many of them, at least, come to their work as a kind of calling, a form of service, mixed with a wonderful dose of scientific curiosity but aimed at understanding the processes by which nature so often causes human suffering. I told them that even the Christians who condemn their work approve of healing, and that Jesus spent more time healing the sick than in preaching and or even in delivering theology lectures. But they were grateful for a church like ours. They re aware that their work raises profoundly difficult moral and social issues. They just think that most people get it wrong. The question raised by their research is not primarily the question of the embryo. Far more profound and troublesome are the long-term applications of modern technologically-empowered medicine, with promising but provocative fields such as regenerative medicine about to move to center stage. The key point of embryonic stem cell research is the promise that some day, medicine will be able to regenerate cells in the human body, cells in the brain or bone marrow or muscle, cells impaired by disease or injury, that these cells might be regenerated and the body quite literally will restore and heal itself from within. This is not going to happen in a year or even in a few years, but the promise is real and the prospects are great. The challenge in front of us will be to know how to use these treatments in ways that are truly life-affirming. Should we use treatments designed to slow the progression of Alzheimer s disease and make them available to others who have no disease but who would like to boost their memory? Already we are troubled by the use of performance enhancing drugs in sports. Soon we may be able to enhance human cognitive performance. Should we? Or more in the spirit of our age, why not? It s really frustrating to me at least so much attention is given to debating the morality of stem cell research in respect to the embryo, and hardly any energy is left over to look at the long-term implications. Here s where the United Church of Christ can play a key role. We re the kind of church that pays attention to social and economic justice, to contextual issues and to long term implications, and to the ways in which technology modifies the human social fabric. Too many Christians today focus on the embryo I would say hyperfocus. Some go so far as to argue on the basis of Matthew 25. That s the text where Jesus says that we care for him by caring for the least among us. Today some add the embryo to the list. The embryo, they say, is the least of the least, life in its most vulnerable form. That might 4

5 sound plausible but it s certainly not Biblical. Jesus mentions the hungry, the sick, the unclothed, the imprisoned, and the stranger as examples of the least among us. Care for them and you care for Jesus himself. You can add the embryo to the list if you want. Just don t claim Jesus as your source. In fact I suspect something more sinister is going on here. Do you remember when Terry Schaivo was in the final weeks? The Congress of the United States met in the middle of the night to try to save Terry. Never mind that 15,000 children die each day around the world of dehydration and preventable diseases. Does that keep Congress up at night? In a similar way, all this talk about protecting the embryo makes me wonder who we are ignoring, who we are not protecting, whether it s Americans without health insurance or the 1 billion people who live on less that 1 dollar a day. You see why some would rather talk about the dignity of the embryo than of the indignities of their neighbors. My friends, our church needs to reframe the debate. You and I need to reframe the debate. Moral values? You betcha. But let s get real. Let s have the heart of God for this world, with its divisions and exclusions. One place where the exclusions of today s inequities bite down so harshly is in the area of technology. Many people are excluded from the benefits of technology because they can t afford it. Many others, closer to home, are excluded because they are afraid of it or because it makes them anxious. They are afraid they won t know how to use it, how to press the right buttons. They are afraid that technology is moving so fast that they are going to fall behind. They are afraid they have already fallen behind and will never catch up. They are afraid that other people are getting ahead of them or that other people s kids are getting ahead of their kids. They are afraid that things won t work. And they are afraid that technology will work, that it s succeeding, quickly running away with things, already beyond human control, with computers and robots not just taking our jobs but just taking over. They fear we are being swept along by powers we no longer control into a technofuture we cannot understand. 5

6 In fact, they hit it on the head. It s the theological question of our day. Who or what is in control? Who or what is shaping the future? Closely connected, of course, is a fear of science and it s disturbing new ideas, like evolution and its view of the malleability of all life, including human life. For many, this is a frightening idea, and so they resort to creationism or intelligent design in an effort to avoid such a view. For them it s all the more fearsome to face the truth that human nature is in fact malleable because now we malleable human beings hold in our own hands the technologies of self-manipulation. And so they are afraid. And such fear excludes them from using technology and benefiting from it. Fear excludes them from understanding technology and participating in the public discussion about its purposes and limits. In fear, they hide behind creationism or behind exaggerated valuing of the embryo. To their fears, our church, the United Church of Christ the church of people like Charles Townes, the church of John Calvin and his belief that all truth, scriptural or scientific, comes from the Spirit of God to their fears our church must say: Do not fear. God is still alive. God is still speaking. God is still creating. Some say: God and science are in conflict. If they disagree, throw out the science. Keep it from the children. We say: God speaks in many ways, and one of them is through science. God reveals more and more about creation through the hard work of scientific discovery. So we take science seriously and we always look for ways to incorporate it into our theology. Some say: God and technology are opposed. Trust God or trust technology. One or the other. Young people, in particular, are often told they have to choose between serving God and pursuing technology. We say: The God who speaks through science acts through technology. Serve God by pursuing technology. It s not that we are unaware of the huge challenges. Of course, technology can be used in God-defying ways. But we need to calm our own fears and claim for our time the truth that the future is in God s hands. The danger is that we are not in God hands and that our technology is not in God s hands. And I assure you: if we are not in God s hands and if our technology is not in God s hand, then we can t very well expect that the future is in God s hands. Like it or not, God creates by sharing by sharing knowledge and power and responsibility. God trusts us to get it right. 6

7 More and more, in fact, I believe God is looking at a church like ours to get it right, to create a culture capable of technology: Not of fear and anxiety but one of wisdom and maturity; Not of competitiveness but of generosity; Not of exclusion but with Christ s own welcome; Not of power over others but of shared access and mature empowerment for abundant life. If we fail to claim technology as a realm in which God can act, then we set it adrift. And I assure you, it will live out our worst nightmares of injustice and inhumanity. But if we claim technology as God s as a realm in which it is God s right to act, God s right to create, God s right to engineer a future worthy of God s vision for this creation if we claim the technoculture for God and if we put our lives and our knowledge and our tools in the hands of God, then we can have hope for the future. About a week ago a friend of mine told me a story about how he stopped to order a sandwich at a convenience store in Philadelphia. He had to use one of those new-fangled systems where you press buttons to select the bread and everything the goes on it. After he went through he watched as an older man stepped up to the screen and just couldn t make sense of things. The line was practically going out the door so people weren t too happy with the delay. As the old man was in the process of ordering wheat on rye with extra relish, a young woman stepped forward and offered to help. Patiently she guided him through each step in the process. As my friend was leaving, he noticed the young woman coming out of the store. That was really kind what you did, my friend said. Do you have time for a quick story? She said OK. That man you were helping, he s the inventor of the laser. My friend, you see, had been escorting Charles Townes through Philadelphia when this happened. I am sure you see the irony. His mind could invent the laser but was still puzzled by the gadgets that use the laser. He knew the math but was confused by the buttons. So I conclude with a few suggestions Be kind to those who are puzzled. Speak peace to those who are afraid. Warn the selfish and all who use technology to exploit, to dominate, to exclude, or to secure their own status. Encourage young Christians in science, medicine, and technology. Trust in God who s trusting in you. Listen: God is still speaking. 7

8 Behold: God is still creating. God is just getting warmed up. And God is looking for a church that can keep up. 8