The Downward Tendency of Man-Made Worship
The Second Commandment forbids the making and worshipping of graven images, and one duty implied by this, according to the Shorter Catechism, is the “keeping pure and entire all such religious worship and ordinances as God hath appointed in His word”. Two sad breaches of this duty have recently come to our attention; and while they are of a very different nature, they are both rungs on the same ladder, and it is a ladder which leads step by step all the way from the pure worship of God to false religion and to hell.
The first breach was the “Easter Reflection” from the Moderator of the Free Church of Scotland, published on the Free Church website. The “Reflection” itself was comparatively unobjectionable but the fact that it was entitled, “Easter Reflection”, and concluded with the words, “Blessed Easter, everyone,” is not so. Surely the Moderator of the Free Church knows as well as anybody else the opposition that Scottish Presbyterians have maintained, since the Reformation, against the so-called “Church calendar”? One of the Five Articles of Perth in 1618, which were so strongly resisted by the likes of Alexander Henderson and David Calderwood, was the observing of Christmas and Easter. Does the Free Church really want to identify herself with James VI, Archbishop Spottiswoode, and the persecutors in that struggle? The objection to these things is that they are not part of the worship appointed by Christ, that they help to blur the distinction between biblical worship and man-made worship, and that they open the door to future departures from purity of worship. One step leads to another.
The second breach furnishes more evidence of this, and it is the Episcopal church in Aberdeen, St John’s, which is presently allowing Muslims to perform religious worship in the building. The St John’s congregation did not have an auspicious start, in that it was originally composed of the adherents of George Garden, an Episcopalian minister who embraced the heresy of Bourignonism (a form of mysticism) and was deposed from the ministry in 1701. Returning to the Episcopal fold after Garden’s death, the congregation became “High Anglican” and numbered the eminent historians John Stuart and George Grub among its members in the nineteenth century. They would have been shocked, we think, to have envisaged the worship of a false god in their building 150 years later. But one step has led to another: High Anglicanism (with its emphasis on Christmas and Easter) has turned into ecumenism and ecumenism into multi-faith worship. And multi-faith worship leads to hell because, in Christ’s words, “if ye believe not that I am He, ye shall die in your sins” (Jn 8:24).
Church history shows that the path of innovations in worship is dangerous. Those who are on it should turn back, and those who are not on it should take special care to avoid it. “Take us the foxes, the little foxes, that spoil the vines: for our vines have tender grapes” (Song 2:15). DWBS
Three-Parent Children?
Last month the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, the fertility regulator which advises the Government, advocated legalising a procedure which would result in a baby having three biological parents. It uses a form of In Vitro Fertilisation (IVF), and unleashes a myriad of moral considerations. Researchers in Newcastle University are seeking to move forward on this technique, known as Mitochondrial Replacement Therapy.
Research has been going on for some time into mitochondrial disorders – genetic conditions which are passed on from the mother to the child. These disorders can cause various degrees of muscle weakness, blindness, heart failure and, in extreme cases, death. The new procedure could, according to Prof Doug Turnbull of Newcastle, “help hundreds of women have healthy children”; he claims it is crucial that the Government approve the technique. For ethical and safety reasons the research itself is illegal in many western countries but, here in the UK, Newcastle University has been awarded substantial grants to explore this field.
One method being attempted is to take a fertilised egg, with a mitochondrial disorder, from the mother. There is, as yet, one set of parents. A donor egg is also fertilised; so there are now two embryos from two women. The mitochondria are in the outer part of the egg and contain some DNA, or genetic information; they produce energy for almost all the cells in the body. The nucleus is taken out of the mother’s egg with faulty mitochondria and implanted in the donor egg with the healthy mitochondria. The donor egg’s nucleus is destroyed. Now only one embryo is left, with genetic information from three people. Another technique uses the implantation of the nucleus before fertilisation with the same ultimate result.
As the experiments multiply, thousands of embryos will very likely be destroyed. The psalmist tells us in God’s infallible Word: “Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me” (Ps 51:5). He refers to his own sinful identity at the moment of conception. Surely then life begins at the point of fertilisation. How sinful then to be involved in the destruction of human embryos!
While we feel sympathy for those who have serious genetic disorders, it is not for man to manipulate the physical life which God gives – and which God has ordained to come from one man and one woman within the bonds
of marriage. Certainly man can have nothing to do with the soul which God creates for that embryo within the womb. It is God who gives it, as we read in Ecclesiastes 12:7: “The spirit shall return unto God who gave it“. How awesome when we read in Psalm 139:13-16 how mysteriously a child is formed in the womb. The psalmist knew that he was an entity there. Scientists, experimenting in this way, using their natural wisdom, are largely oblivious to the soul’s existence.
The potential destruction of thousands of embryos in this as well as in other IVF procedures should be enough to halt all such work immediately; but there is the additional serious concern posed by artificially changing the building blocks of a baby’s life. If such a child does survive, he is made up of complex genetic material from three persons. There are unknown risks of mutations which could adversely affect future generations. This is genetic manipulation at an advanced level. Even Lord Winston, a leading fertility expert, warned in an interview with The Scotsman: “We may find that people will want to modify their children, enhance their intelligence, their strength and their beauty and all the other so-called desirable characteristics. . . . That will be a form of eugenics which will actually have all sorts of serious implications.” It is clear that our secular society is entering a frightening realm where genetic enhancement will result in making children into commodities to suit our selfish desires.
However, several learned voices in the profession are advising caution. A group of doctors and other concerned professionals have written to The Guardian and The Times expressing their dismay and opposition to the Newcastle research. They see danger in this interference with life at such an early stage. Bio-ethicist Dr Calum Mackellar states, “Eugenics is not just a problem of the past . . . eugenic ideology is already with us and it is developing very fast. As a society we have to examine and discuss what is happening, as a matter of urgency.”
Man in ignorance would seek to wrest power away from God, wishing to create life on his own terms. How futile this will appear at last! “As thou knowest not what is the way of the spirit, nor how the bones do grow in the womb of her that is with child: even so thou knowest not the works of God who maketh all” (Ecc 11:5).
KHM