Praying for the soul
of the deer
The Federated
Rev. John A. Mills
As you know I am a member of the United Church of Christ’s steering committee on science and technology. One of the topics that we study and produce material on is embryonic stem cell research. This is controversial research fraught with ethical issues. But it is also research that holds out the promise of cures for many diseases and conditions. So I wanted today to raise up some of this conundrum and search for a God-centric understanding.
So what are embryonic stem cells? These are cells found in an embryo that is less than a week old – an early embryo. Human stem cells are undifferentiated cells or unspecialized cells. These cells have not yet been programmed to become a specific tissue. They can be extracted from the early embryo and cultured in the laboratory. The hope then is that they can be used for a variety of cures, including replacing diseased heart cells, spinal cord injuries and so forth, by nudging them into forming the needed organ or tissue.
The ethical dilemma is that when the stem cells are extracted from the embryo, the embryo is destroyed. For many people, that is killing a person, or a potential person. That leads us to the conundrum: do we pursue a potentially vast curative research or do we preserve the life of embryos. So far we cannot have it both ways.
God calls us to care for the living. We are to heal the broken and free the oppressed. But what are we to do if in order to heal the broken we must “imprison” another in the research laboratory?
A central ethical issue regarding stem cell research is whether it is morally permissible to destroy the embryo. Many Christians believe that it is not: in order to respect every one of God’s children, each created embryo is fully deserving of protection and should not be destroyed. To destroy an embryo is equivalent to murder. But what then of the already living who suffer terrible conditions? Are we to abandon them as we abandon the research?
Other Christians take what is usually called a “developmental” view toward the embryo: it gains full moral status at some point during development, but that point is later than the first week. For example, if we define a person as someone with a soul, in this view the week old embryo doesn’t have a soul yet.
For instance, an early embryo has the potential to divide into two (or more) organisms. Identical twins are formed by the embryo splitting into two at a certain stage of its development. This splitting does not occur during the first week of the embryo’s existence. Now if we suppose that each identical twin has a distinct soul from its sibling, then the embryo must not become ensouled until after the point at which an embryo might have twined. Hence a week old embryo has no soul yet and therefore is not a person. Not until after twinning is no longer possible can we say that we have a unique developing human being. Hence, some attribute full moral status at this time.
Others point to the importance of the development of the neuronal ridge: without the structural basis for a nervous system, there is no capacity for pain or for those characteristics of consciousness that we think of as central to human life. Hence, full moral status depends on the neuronal ridge.
Of course, none of these approaches solve the fact that an embryo is always a potential person. While many in the our churches probably take some form of developmental view, we recognize the difficulties with such a view: if developing human life does not have full moral status from its first moments, then on what basis do we assign full value? Any point chosen is controversial. Biology does not answer the question of moral status. We therefore have respect for our Christian brothers and sisters who wish to protect a developing human from the first moments of its possible life.
Yet in the midst of this controversy we still have to ask what is God saying to us in the revelation of stem cells? Stem cells are a gift from God. God has arranged creation such that these miraculous cells exist. God has also given us the gift of science to discover these cells and so many other wonders in the universe. Why would God show us these cells and help us learn of their potential for cure, if God did not intend for us to pursue this research? And why would God put us in such a dilemma?
I suggest to you that we cannot resolve the dilemma of the status of the early embryo. Yet when we find it efficacious and/or profitable, we are willing to ignore its status. This is becoming painfully obvious in the process of in vitro fertilization. The doctors during the process stimulate mom to drop many eggs, which are then taken from mom, fertilized in a Petri dish, and grown. Then the most viable are chosen to replant into mom. What happens to the extra ones not chosen? The couple has a choice: freeze them for future development (an expensive process) or destroy them. Many, many embryos are regularly destroyed. So why not donate them to research? At least the person or potential person has been given some meaning in its very short existence, or life.
I suggest that had scientists develop a cure from stem cells already, then this argument over the status of the embryo would be academic. The benefit from the research would trump any general concern about the moral status of the embryo. So, I think the controversy is a blessing from God … we are being called not to take the embryo for granted and to find some acceptable, albeit flawed procedure to respect the potential person who is the embryo without abandoning our responsibility to cure the sick.
The debate has called us to realize that more is at stake than just the moral status of the embryo. How are we to get fertilized eggs? Is it moral to hire a woman to donate fertilized eggs? Can we clone embryos for the sole purpose of research? And will that lead us to cloning humans for body parts? And once cures are found who will have access to them? They will be expensive. Will only the well-to-do have access or will the cures be universally available? All of these questions should be answered and so long as the debate rages, they will be held in the public eye. … And we will have a chance to reach a righteous conclusion.
But in the meantime …
Many are pursuing
this research: in the
I believe that all of creation is imbrued with God’s spirit. I believe everything living has a soul and that those souls emanate from God. I also believe that we live in a web of life. No one is isolated. We are all in relationship and all in community. We cannot live apart from each other. I believe that the soul is the divine flowing through this web of life.
So I believe that an embryo has a soul from the very instant of conception. And that we are intimately interrelated to the embryo in the web of life. But I do not believe this necessarily prevents us from doing embryonic stem cell research.
I am told that among many American Indians there was a custom that may provide us some spiritual understanding of what to do. American Indians prior to the dominance of ourselves, hunted these lands we now live in. They hunted the deer and out West the bison, but not for sport. They hunted for necessity. They hunted for food and for hides. When they slew a deer or a bison, they wasted nothing. They ate the meat and made clothes and shelter from the hides.
But most importantly for our needs, they prayed over the slain animal. They thanked the spirit of the animal for giving its life for the sustenance of the hunter and his family and his tribe. In so doing they never forgot the value of the creature. In so doing they gave to the creature the respect it was due. They never took for granted the animals. The animals didn’t need them, but they needed the animals.
This practice provided a boundary on the hunt. They were appalled at how White Americans could hunt and slaughter the bison out of sport and for profit. To them it was not just destroying their economy, but it violated God’s good creation.
I suggest that it is this attitude that we must maintain in embryonic stem cell research. We must never, never forget that the embryo is a child of God too. That when an embryo is not to be brought to term but donated to research, that act is an act of divine sacrifice intended to heal all of God’s people.
I believe as faithful people, we need to encourage an attitude of respect for the embryo. It is not just a mass of cells. Its potential alone belays that. It is, indeed, a potential person. When parents decide not to carry it to term, then their gift is a precious gift and researchers must never forget that.
We can encourage this in our witness to our neighbors and the researchers. Eventually we will learn how to establish regulations that allow research and still protect the dignity of the embryo. We could never insist a scientist to pray over an embryo, but we can certainly create an environment where the embryo’s dignity is protected.
Then we who are
faithful can indeed pray a prayer of thanksgiving for all of the embryos whose
calling in life has become to heal the rest of us. We can raise our voices in
thanksgiving to God for the miraculous potential of stem cells and we can pray
continually for wisdom in their use.
God’s grace and love be with you …
Amen.