A university professor and scientist in Southern China, He Jianku, announced that a pair of twin girls were born that he had genetically altered. He made them resistant to HIV because the father is HIV positive. He did this by editing their genetic code. Many in the scientific community are concerned about the ethical and legal concerns this raises. Not only for the safety of the two girls but for the rest of the world. Because their DNA was altered it will be passed on to future generations, and there is no way of knowing what the long-term effects will be. Jianku said that he intended this to open the door to future research in this area. His work is still being verified. If it turns out to be true, this has very far reaching implications. How far will science go in rewriting man’s DNA? If this continues, super soldiers and designer babies will be next.
I don’t want to go all Orson Welles on you, but as frightening as this is, it has already been going on for thousands of years. How long have men taken what God has written and changed it or altered it, just a little, to get their own desired outcome? We see it in Genesis chapter 3, “God didn’t really mean that you would die for reals” (paraphrased). Peter mentions it toward the end of the first century A.D., talking about people changing Paul’s letters. “In which are some things hard to understand, which the untaught and unstable distort, as they do also the rest of the Scriptures, to their own destruction” (2 Pet. 3:16). He was talking about people who wrest, break up into its individual parts, the Bible. What they were seeking to do for gain ended up being their destruction. We can clearly see the similarities to one scientist changing the codes that God has written and others changing His commandments that govern our lives. One could lead to a physical death and a contamination of what God has made. The other leads to the contamination of something that was part of God’s eternal purpose, that He paid so dearly for with the blood of His Son.
The warning from the book of Revelation is very clear, “…if anyone adds to them, God will add to him the plagues… if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God will take away his part” (22:18-19). Should man go so far in his pride that he would rewrite the code of our physical bodies to “improve” what God had originally made? Likewise, should man be so arrogant that they would change anything of what has been written as though it needed changed or updated? I understand that they are not the same things. Both have huge implications, only one has eternal consequences. “You therefore, beloved, knowing this beforehand, be on your guard so that you are not carried away by the error of unprincipled men and fall from your own steadfastness” (2 Pet. 3:17).