And the man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil

This is a bit late for the blogburst on Terri Schiavo but perhaps still useful and is part of a larger theme of mine.

As an adjunct history professor who does survey courses in Western Civ (or whatever other subject that needs doing and for which a paycheck will result) – one of the few jobs left in America where there is no shortage of U.S. citizens who will live an itinerant life for low wages – I have the challenge and privilege of trying to explain our civilization to young Americans and how it evolved in ways tha directly or indirectly shape their world and themselves. I might add that I take a certain subversive pleasure in extolling the majestic achievements of Christendom and the civilization that evolved with and from it (but no fairy tales or sugar coating either – the fallenness of man being one of the most useful interpretive tools I have)

I bring this up because I not only attempt to communicate important continuties but also the radically different world in which we live from all previous human experience. I tell my students that in many respects, their (my) lives are ahistorical.

The antibiotic divide is about 60 years old, the generalized acceptance of complete equality for women (much less open homosexuality as normative – spare me the tirades about the Greeks et al – as any sin, it was an inherent component of fallen man but its open acceptance has not been a generalized cultural given), the conquest of time, of space, famine (you have to take positive steps to ensure a famine will occur – which is differnent from crop failure – the food can be gotten anywhere on earh in sufficient qantities to eliminate or survive any incipient famine unless fallen man erects obstacles – see Sudan, etc). We have to some extent conquered weather – heated and cooled to within a degree of our desires anytime and many places. No generation of humans have lived in a world like ours.

Now most people would hold this to be good, and much good has come of it. I agree with most of this– believe me, I am as big a fan of air conditioning as you can find and would have been potentially dead several times over from things that are now considered minor injuries. My wife and daughter and I frequently marvel at the almost magical circumstances of our lives – we live lives that King Solomon (or Louis XIV) could only dream of or as we say we live better than kings and queens of Narnia.

But!

Since the material conditions of our lives are ahistorical, but our fallen nature is still unchanged and the requirements of our God are unchanged – we face a set of ahistorical moral choices. I have been haunted over the last several years, as the the speed and quality of new material marvels increase, by Gen:3:21: 21 The LORD God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them. 22 And the LORD God said, "The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever."
This haunts me because it seems that technology has taken us beyond (or is taking us or potentially will take us) beyond our finite capacity to make moral choices. Terri Shiavo is a manifestation of that, but so are many others. A moral world, a Christian world, would have rendered aid to Terri Shiavo, but absent the material capacity that is very recent – she would have died because we lacked to power to alter the ending of life in her case. Now, and increasingly and increasingly rapidly, we can. The ultrasound and other medical tests can tell us about what sex and often what condition a child is in. Good comes from this in that action can be take to ameliorate pre-natal conditions, but since we can know what up until a generation ago only God knew, we now are faced with new moral choices – abortion for sex selection (one of the most interesting and potentially appalling global phenomena is the consequences of the global shortage of young women as social preferences have resulted in the disproportionate abortion of girls in nations with the largest and often fast growing populations). The list of other issues is long and well known – cloning, organ transplants (and the harvesting of organs or the taking of organs), extreme preventative measures, the wrath of Altzheimers and other diseases of the aging population/

This is not a Luddite rant or an argument for indifference – although I know that I will likely be accused of both – it is merely to know that with Terri Schiavo and all these other things that confront us – we are outside the pre-existing bounds of ethics – even Christian ethics. The moral choices we face are a moral terra incognita. I know several deeply Christian physicians, and they are very uneasy with this argument. For them, modern medicine is a gift from God that allows them to do good and to heal. I am not denying that or wishing or thinking that it would be better otherwise. But I do know that Christians are beginning to face an ever increasing number of moral choices that no other generation has faced before and must defend increasingly unpopular positions that seem to leave matters in God’s hands or not to violate His commandments regardless of the real benefits to others of doing otherwise. This is a tough choice – it is also ahistorical. And unfortunately, we are now at that place that God knew we would eventually get to – we have beomce like gods in our material capacities, but I am afraid our knowedge of good and evil will prove insufficient for our new powers.

I fear we have tough times ahead.