Of Cells and Souls
"The opportunity for me to become a cyborg is extremely exciting. I can't wait to get on with it."
No, this isn't a line from the most recent film starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. This is a quote from a real person. His name is Kevin Warwick and just under 3 years ago he started to experiment on himself in an attempt to incorporate computer technology into his body. Humans have been meshing their bodies with technology for quite some time now. Consider: pacemakers, artificial bone, artificial skin, prosthetics. And this is just the beginning. One day "chip implants" may become common. The advances in technology and their application to humans is causing philosophers and theologians to seek an answer to a most basic question: "What makes us human?" Is there a point where we would become so much like machines that we would cease to be human?
Definitions vary widely when discussing what it means to be human. One extreme says that we are nothing but a collection of cells. A prominent scientist says this about us: "...there is nothing beyond physical principles going on. There is no soul, no elixir of life, nothing beyond molecules working together in the mindless, fixed ways that the physics of their constituent particles dictates." (from Newsweek, Dec. 2000-February 2001, Special Edition)
The Bible gives us a very different view:
"...the Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being." Genesis 2:7
The Bible says that humans are composed of "dust and breath", cells and souls. And, if the prospect of transforming our physical bodies seems exciting to someone like Mr. Warwick, just think of the promise of new life that God can birth in our souls. That's what's called "inner transformation." And we don't need a microchip or a scalpel to add it to our being. The Bible, the sword of the Spirit, is more than sufficient to open us up, and, having been opened, we incorporate this new development into our souls by simply believing and asking Christ Himself to take up residence.
"If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!" II Corinthians 5:17