Biotechnology: A pastoral reflection

Theology Today, Apr 2002 by Cole-Turner, Ronald

The grave danger we face is that our discontent with nature so easily turns to protest against the creator for having made us to be less than we think we should be. We find ourselves less healthy, less strong, less perfect than we think we have a right to be. We learn how to fix things, and we wonder about the goodness or power of a creator who made us this way in the first place. As we stand on the threshold of the Age of Human Modification, the prophetic warning against such foolishness is most timely:

The power of this warning lies not so much in pointing out where it all ends-in questioning God-but in showing us where it all begins, with simple discontent. Rejecting how we are made, we soon reject our maker and conspire to take over the job ourselves. In more recent times, the warning is echoed by Paul Ramsey: "Men ought not to play God before they learn to be men, and after they have learned to be men they will not play God.

Surely, if we desire genetic engineering in order to give us the tools to displace God, even if only in our technological illusions and in the pride of our imaginations, it is a dangerous pursuit. But does not one of bioengineering's most exuberant supporters suggest just such a displacement? Lee M. Silver says, "Simply stated, there is a commonly held sense that genetic engineering crosses the line into God's domain. And as we have all been taught, it is wrong to tread in God's domain."6 Fortunately for the scientists, according to Silver, God's domain is small and shrinking fast: "For most people in modern Western society, God's domain has been reduced to a much smaller size."7 As technology advances to such things as the insertion of DNA into cells, it "reduces the domain of God even further." Scarcely containing his glee, Silver announces the end of the matter: "You can see the problem we are running into. If we allow the possibility that `man's domain' extends into the nucleus-into the DNA itself-then by this line of reasoning, God's domain vanishes into nothingness."8

Of all the wrong reasons for biotechnology, surely this desire to push God out of our lives has to be the worst. But is that really what biotechnology is for? Is it "playing God," as biotechnology's most vocal opponents sometimes say? Theologians, of course, tend not to use this phrase, seeing it as too blunt an instrument for the task of a theological account of technology. Surely "playing God" must not mean that certain parts of the creation-such as human DNA or perhaps human embryos-are simply off-limits to human action, while everything else is open to our technology. Nor can the phrase mean that human beings may never make life-and-death decisions. At its best, the phrase points to human arrogance that knows no limits, no modesty, and no guilt, but acts everywhere it wills as it wills in its self-centered pride.

Against this, Allen D. Verhey has suggested that there might be a wholly different meaning to what it means to "play God." He writes, "What does it mean to cast ourselves playfully in the role of God the healer? It means to promote life and its flourishing, not death or human suffering. Therefore, genetic therapy, like other therapeutic interventions which aim at health, may be celebrated."9 The whole point, Verhey suggests, is that our actions are to imitate God's: "If we are to `play God' as God plays God, then we will work for a society where human beings-each of them, even the least of them-is treated as worthy of God's care and affection.... We must `play God' as God plays God. God is God, and not us, but God has called us to follow where God leads, to imitate God's works, to serve God's cause."10