Why Should God Bless Us With A Cure:
Just what is “stem cell research” and what’s all the fuss about? I won’t pretend to understand how some brilliant scientists plan to use stem cells in an attempt to cure a devastating, frightening illness like Alzheimer’s. On the one hand I recognize the moral concerns dealing with embryonic research, but on the other hand I certainly don’t want to stand in the way of a cure. My first inclination is to wish the scientists Godspeed.
With God’s guiding hand, scientists have discovered vaccines for mumps, measles, rubella, chicken pox, polio, and others. Still 50 percent of the children in Third World countries die before they reach the age of five. Preventable diseases coupled with starvation are what most of the children succumb to. Whether you believe in God or not, this is outrageous.
How can a civilized people sleep peacefully while millions around them live in poverty, squalor, and disease in the shanty towns of the world? This is the moral issue we should be concerned with, and in the end the one that will condemn us.
If we build another multi-million-dollar church building while children the world over are sick and hungry I’m afraid the Lord will disown the whole lot of us.
Why should God bless us with a cure for Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, or cancer when we’ve been such poor servants of His rich blessings? It’s time to put away childish things and get serious about the job at hand. Or we can build bigger barns and buy more toys; God always leaves that choice up to us. It doesn’t surprise me at all that the Word of God describes our human family as children of wrath.
PRINTED IN THE TOLEDO BLADE: June 19, 2004