One of the most precious and amazing privileges God has granted us is the ability to join Him in creating other humans, equally the image of God as ourselves. We know that in order to create a new person, we must join a sperm cell with an egg cell in such a way as to produce a living, developing life with its own unique genetic code. For most of us, this is accomplished easily enough by the natural means God has ordained. But we are now at a level of technological advancement that allows us to create embryos artificially.
This technology has been a godsend to countless hopeful parents who, for one reason or another, cannot reproduce by natural means. Is it not wonderful that God has given us minds capable of helping one another in this way? Or should we be more cautious, fearing to tread into territory God has marked out for Himself alone?
In my Declaration of Faith I speak of promoting a "technology of life." God has enabled us to invent tools and methods to preserve, prolong, and enhance life, or to render life empty, short, or destroyed, depending on the application of our knowledge. We promote a technology of life when we explore the mysteries of life, health, and death, and find new ways to preserve, prolong, and enhance life, with respect for God's creation and for the lives of the subjects and objects of our research. The end of the preceding sentence is crucial to the issue at hand.
In determining my position toward life technology, I use the criteria of method and purpose. God's standards for sexual morality in the Bible rest on God's caring how we go about the reproductive process. Yahweh, creator of all mankind, has laid down firmly that procreation should take place only between a man and woman united as husband and wife. With that in mind, we can say with confidence that any reproductive method in which the sperm and egg come from a man and woman not married, is sinful in the eyes of God.
The reproductive methods that fail this test are donor-insemination, donated eggs, and any means to create human life that does not involve the uniting of sperm and egg, such as cloning. The creation of human life wholly from scratch, were the technology feasible, would similarly go against God's established means of procreation.
Other methods, however, are perfectly right. Adoption, of course, is a wonderful picture of God's adoption of believers as His chosen children. Insemination and/or incubation outside the womb can be conducted using the sperm and egg of a husband and wife, and allow them to have their own child even if they cannot through natural means bear offspring. Surrogate mothering, while fraught with other kinds of moral and practical dilemmas, also falls within biblical allowances for reproduction and is conceptually similar to temporary adoption.
Purpose is a consideration whenever people choose to initiate a new life, but particularly when the act is of scientific interest. Scientists have the ability and resources to create humans for the purposes of research, often with the knowledge that most of the "subject" embryos will die, and without consideration for their well-being should they come to term. Some have even spoken of harvesting tissue and organs from them, essentially viewing them as resources to be used for the medical benefit of others. Without question, if we respect life at all, we should denounce such intentions as dishonorable and detestable.
If you, the reader, are unable to conceive by natural means, there are a number of options for you that uphold biblical principles, and you are blessed to live in a time when this is so. But consider: will the child be the biological offspring of two people married to each other? Will embryos or other unborn children be destroyed or discarded in the process? Remember that you are creating an image of God, as real and as human as you are, a joyous but awesome responsibility. And when you meet someone who was reproduced abnormally, whether illegitimate, cloned, or whatever, treat that person lovingly as an image of God, too.
For a concise statement of my beliefs about human life and life-respecting technology, see my Declaration of Faith.
