The Law and Life: Artificial Life – The Law of God and Public Policy

The Law and Life: Artificial Life
The Law of God and Public Policy

“When men strive together and hit a pregnant woman, so that her children come out, but there is no harm, the one who hit her shall surely be fined, as the woman’s husband shall impose on him, and he shall pay as the judges determine. But if there is harm, then you shall pay life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.” Exodus 21:22-25

As we have seen, the Law of God is deliberately not specific about the stage of development of children forcibly ejected from the womb by outside violence. In the Scriptures a child is a person from the moment of conception, as complicated and difficult a position as that may be to understand.

Not long ago the citizens of the State of Mississippi were asked to confirm that Biblical perspective in a constitutional amendment. Their rejection of that proposed amendment illustrates to how clouded this matter has become in our day.

Opponents of the proposed amendment offered campaign ads featuring parents of children conceived through in vitro fertilization, who argued that the right of parents to have and love children conceived through this means would have been outlawed under such a law. They were, of course, correct, since in vitro fertilization inevitably involves the destruction of many embryos in order to implant one.

Other arguments against the amendment posed ethical and legal questions that advocates apparently had not anticipated and were not prepared to address. Consequently, the proposed constitutional change was soundly defeated, leaving the question respecting the origins of life and persons in the hand of individuals, whose decisions about so important a matter are typically based more on expediency and convenience than truth.

The writers of Scripture could not foresee a time when it would be possible to conceive human life in ways other than by the familiar means of human sexual intercourse and reproduction. Nor did it please God to elaborate any further than what our text indicates—as representative of the teaching of all the rest of Scripture—concerning the beginning of human life.

Does this mean that other methods must not be used, such as in vitro or cloning or fertilized egg implants and surrogate mothers? The Scriptures do not speak to this question. However, these practices very often result in more conceived children being lost or thrown away than I can imagine Biblical Law would countenance, since every conceived child, in Biblical Law, is a human person.

We recall that God lamented the fact that fallen and sinful human beings would pursue whatever their minds could imagine in order to gain some advantage in life (cf. Gen. 11:6). But just because people can imagine something and are able to create a technology to achieve it is no indication that such a proposal or practice should be endorsed or allowed. Human imagination, left unchecked, can lead to terrible consequences, as the last century can testify.

Christians must serve as the moral conscience of a society which has cut itself adrift from the solid moorings of God’s unchanging Law. Otherwise, indeed, people will undertake to do whatever they can imagine, whatever they consider as being to their advantage.

The Christian’s approach to affecting the moral climate must be prayerful, informed, exemplary, servant-like, missional, prophetic, gracious, compassionate, and resolute. It must be grounded at all times in the teaching of God’s Word, beginning with His Law as the foundation for love and justice (Matt. 22:34-40).

So, while these various technologies for the artificial creation of human life may be able to demonstrate positive results, this does not outweigh the fact of the countless thrown-away lives these technologies also produce. From the perspective of Biblical Law, these practices should not be allowed as matters of public policy for creating human life, even though certain people may be able to gain some advantage from them. It may be that scientists and practitioners will be able, at some point in the future, greatly to improve the life-efficiency of these technologies, but even this is not sufficient reason to grant them the endorsement and protection of public policy.

Do these practices—even if they were 100% safe—contribute to justice and neighbor love and the creation of sound and stable families, or to the commercializing of human life for the satisfaction more of human interest than divine glory?

These are questions Christians should be discussing and debating right now, even as they work, like the many good people of the State of Mississippi, to find ways of preserving human life against the holocaust of abortion and artificial life technologies.

Visit our website, www.ailbe.org, and sign up to receive our thrice-weekly devotional, Crosfigell, featuring writers from the period of the Celtic Revival and T. M.’s reflections on Scripture and the Celtic Christian tradition. Does the Law of God still apply today? Order a copy of T. M.’s book, The Ground for Christian Ethics, and study the question for yourself.

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In the Gates is a devotional series on the Law of God by Rev. T. M. Moore, editor of the Worldview Church. He serves as dean of the Centurions Program of the Wilberforce Forum and principal of The Fellowship of Ailbe, a spiritual fellowship in the Celtic Christian tradition. He is the author or editor of twenty books, and has contributed chapters to four others. His essays, reviews, articles, papers, and poetry have appeared in dozens of national and international journals, and on a wide range of websites. His most recent books are The Ailbe Psalter and The Ground for Christian Ethics (Waxed Tablet).

Scripture quotations in this article are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, (c) copyright 2001, 2007 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.