Dear Stories of Value Subscribers: We have been in a Devotion story paralleling my Sunday series, “Jesus: What You Need to Know”.  This Sunday the series concludes.  For the next several days I will be posting devotional excerpts from my last two sermons on “Jesus, The Victor” and “Jesus, The Conqueror.”  Then, we will begin a new series connected to a fall study for the Northside Christian Church family.  The fall series is called, “Pray Here”, and in it we will be considering how we pray in the midst of life’s changing circumstances.  I hope you enjoy the new series in preparation for this special season of prayer, as well as the remaining “Jesus” posts.  Blessings…Larry Jones.

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Most people would like to live longer. But while we would like to live longer, not every idea on how this might happen is well received. Several years ago when Michael Wells published the book, “The Immortal Cell”, he set off a firestorm of controversy because his views toward stem cell research and cloning sounded a lot like someone trying to play God with human life.

I want you to know I am all for scientific research to help us live longer and better lives, as long as we can satisfy some fundamental ethical questions. But something West said in an interview a couple of years before he published his book really caught my attention. In an interview with a reporter he was asked, “Are we immortal individuals?” West said this, “That’s right. We are immortal in the sense that we continue to have immortality through our children. The goal of medicine is to try to translate that biology into treating age-related disease and potentially making humans immortal. Whether we’ll be successful in that attempt, of course, remains to be seen. We’re optimistic that we can improve how you and I age, potentially adding not only life to years but years to our life.”

It has been several years since this statement was made, but there is still a struggle in the field of bioscience when it comes to human attempts to engineer human life. And here is the irony: Some people who play God with science feel as though it is implausible to think there is a God who created life (or can raise the dead), because they have trouble reconciling a good God with an imperfect world. But the same people who don’t think God is good enough to run the universe, have no trouble believing it is possible for humans to achieve immortality on their own, and are confident man can be in charge of human lives without self-destructing.

Which would you rather have: a good God we don’t completely understand who can raise the dead or an immortal human race managed by man?

I will be honest with you. The thought there is something we can do to live longer excites me. But the notion of an immortal human life engineered and managed by humans scares me to death.  When it comes to eternal life, quality is more important than quantity.  And the quality of this life begins with God.