Playing God

Have we gone too far in the past 100 years? by Clay L. Smith

I heard about a bio-tech company whose stock shot up 80 percent in one day. That company was experimenting with a cancer treatment that killed tumors in mice. Using a combination of two proteins, scientists were able to cut the blood flow to the tumor. Within days of this story, cancer patients were lining up to volunteer for the experimental treatment therapy that held the promise of new life.

Medical advancements have been standard fare in this century. Some of the most debilitating diseases have been conquered or controlled. While we hail these successes, new battles challenge our sense of medical ethics. The scientific community considers human cloning not a matter of if but when. Progress is still being made in genetic engineering, and some have even claimed to create life in a test tube.

Then we have Dr. Kevorkian, a man apparently enthralled with mercy killing. In the past, such life-and-death decisions for the terminally ill were left in the hands of God. Now researchers and medical personnel come uncomfortably close to playing God through euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide.

The attempt to play God is not new. Man's basic nature is to decide his own destiny and not be bothered by God. Because humans don't want to be subject to God's will, they try to disprove His existence or at least duplicate His creation. After all, if it could be proven that we could do everything God can, who needs Him?

The attempt to play God is addressed in Paul's letter to the Thessalonians. In the context of Christ's return, Paul reveals a man of lawlessness who "will oppose and will exalt himself to be everything that is called God or is worshipped, so that he sets himself up in God's temple, proclaiming himself to be God" (2 Thessalonians 2:4).

The man of lawlessness is so labeled because of the values he advocates. He opposes God's ways and sets himself up in God's temple. He promotes a humanism that worships man and his accomplishments, along with himself. Sadly, many people are taken in by the smooth-talking leader who wants to play God.

Paul writes that this lawless man effectively convinces others that God is not needed in their lives. His influence grows because he is able to display "all kinds of counterfeit miracles, signs and wonders, and in every sort of evil that deceives those who are perishing" (vv. 9, 10a). Those who rejoice at the thought that there is no God do so at their own peril. "They perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. For this reason God sends them a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie . . ." (vv. 10b, 11).

The values of the man of lawlessness have influenced the mass of humanity to accept the lie that there is no God. This lie sets a person up for a deflating experience. Even Christians are susceptible to the lie and may be surprised to learn they could be playing God as well.

The Bible says, "You shall have no other gods before me" (Exodus 20:3). Who sits on the throne of your heart?

Clay L. Smith co-pastors the Church of God (Seventh Day) in Sacramento, CA. Scripture quotations are from the New International Version.

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