How to Be a Christian in a Brave New World

How to Be a Chris­tian in a Brave New World Copyright © 2006 by Joni Eareckson Tada and Nigel M. de S. Cameron Requests for information should be addressed to: Zondervan, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49530 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Tada, Joni Eareckson. How to be a Christian in a brave new world / Joni Eareckson Tada, Nigel M. de S. Cameron. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-0-310-25939-8 ISBN-10: 0-310-25939-8 1. Christian life. 2. Bioethics - Religious aspects - Christianity. 3. Medical ethics - Religious aspects - Christianity. 4. Christian ethics. I. Cameron, Nigel M. de S. II. Title. BV4501.3.T32 2006 241'.6429 - dc22 2005030455 All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved. The website addresses recommended throughout this book are offered as a resource to you. These websites are not intended in any way to be or imply an endorsement on the part of Zondervan, nor do we vouch for their content for the life of this book. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means - electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other - except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher. Published in association with the literary agency of Wolgemuth & Associates, Inc. Interior design by Beth Shagene Printed in the United States of America 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 - 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Part One The Brave New World In 1932, English writer Aldous Huxley wrote one of the most famous books of all time, with the strange title Brave New World. The title is a quote from Shakespeare's play The Tempest and suggests both the boldness and the folly of something that looks like a utopia (paradise) even though it much more closely approaches the opposite. Eleven years later, C. S. Lewis wrote a short essay that some people consider the most important thing he ever did. With incredible insight, his work The Abolition of Man looked ahead to the technologies of the twenty-first century and warned that a world that uncritically accepts the wonders of biotech will eventually devastate human dignity. Thus the secular Huxley and the Christian Lewis set the stage for the challenges of the twenty-first century. Some of these challenges still await us; many already are with us. Christians need to be prepared so they can be "salt and light" in the time and place where God has placed them. Human beings are unique because God made us "in his image," as the Bible makes so clear in Genesis 1 and Psalm 8. Reminding ourselves of what it means to be made in God's image is the starting point for understanding what medicine, science, and technology should be used for - and what they should not. In the last chapter of this section, we need to hear the long-forgotten story of what happened a hundred years ago, when Americans discovered "eugenics" - the desire for "good genes" at all costs - before the Nazis ever came to power in Germany and took those same ideas to their logical conclusion. We need to remember, because eugenics is making a comeback. Chapter 1 Starting Out Larry On a misty evening in September 2002, Larry drove his eighteen-wheeler into a gas station in a small Arizona town. He hopped out of the cab, started filling his tank, and then walked along the flatbed to check the restraining bands on his huge load of pipes. That's when it happened. A bTada, Joni Eareckson is the author of 'How to Be a Christian in a Brave New World', published 2006 under ISBN 9780310259398 and ISBN 0310259398.