As we saw in last weeks homework, our lists of qualities were unique. Building a child is nothing like going to the mall and building a teddy bear or a race car. While it is still the stuff of science fiction, if God tarries, I believe scientists will eventually unravel the mysteries of our DNA, allowing parents to design children with the qualities we would like them to have. I’m not saying I like that idea, I’m just saying it is inevitable. It may surprise you to know just how many of our traits are governed by our genes. What we think are personality traits are actually genetic tendencies. They’ve already discovered that children are genetically wired for selfishness, and other less desirable traits. Even good qualities are rooted in our DNA. It isn’t just our genes that shape us, but medical studies have also discovered that the mother’s emotional, hormonal, and physical health while she is pregnant influences a child’s nature.
Your Spouse is a major factor in the ‘Build A Child’ process. She is the stuffing of your precious little bundle of joy. Her incubator (womb) is not totally impartial, and your contribution through your DNA is affected by small things such as temperature, hormones, and her emotional condition. Her womb, also affects gene development. While we know a lot about a child’s development in the womb, we don’t fully understand all the intricacies of that initial 9 months. The old saying “I didn’t choose to be here.” isn’t true. A matter of fact, that one happy little sperm cell fought valiantly to be you. It was faster, stronger, and more determined than the other sperm cells in the contest.
Having taken a DNA test, I have learned a ton of things I didn’t know about my DNA. The most surprising knowledge was that the DNA stew that is all of us isn’t an equal amount of both partners. Dominant and recessive genes can go a long ways toward determining, YOU. You can be a little bit more your mom, or a little bit more your dad. A boy won’t necessarily be more like his dad, nor a little girl like her mother. Traits can pop up from ancestors that lived hundreds of years ago. Genetic tendencies toward health conditions can stay in families for hundreds of years. I believe that someday, governments will demand that parents take DNA tests and have their genes evaluated for tendencies towards inherited diseases, and even psychological disorders. If the Lord should tarry, I believe genetics will shape our ability to live in extreme environments. What is now commonplace in our society was once science fiction, so I have no problem envisioning the ability to sculpt a child through DNA.
Christians don’t want to discuss the effects of DNA upon behavior or other things we consider as ‘learned behaviors,’ but medical science has clearly shown that our DNA is responsible for the tendencies toward altruism, selfishness, generosity, addiction, sexual hyperactivity, celebacy, and even a tendency toward murder. As more people take DNA tests, and answer their surveys, scientists will be able to associate certain genes to behaviors. It may frighten you, but I promise you, we will see genetically engineered children in this generation because it can be done. Someday, if we continue down this path, we will design a child without psychopathic tendencies, or pathological tendencies.
HOWEVER, until that day, just because you may have the brain of a psychopath, or be clinically pathological, doesn’t mean you have to succumb to its power. A matter of fact, it is estimated that nearly one percent of the population are psychopathic. What parent wouldn’t want to remove the gene responsible for psychopathic behavior if they could? Better yet, what society wouldn’t relish the thought of diminishing the tendency toward criminality through DNA? This is what I referred to in the introduction to this study when I said that you may be the best Christian parent you could be and still have a child that is psychopathic. It is a terrible discovery, and will make any parent doubt their abilities. I’ve witnessed exhausted parents who’d done everything within their power to devote their lives to their children only to be confronted with a psychopathic child bent on killing them, and everyone around them. If you combine that with any of the other clinical/ neurological disorders that exist out there, is it any wonder that the idea of building a perfect child through DNA has an appeal to prospective parents? Someday we may see storefront malls where we can literally purchase a ‘Build A Child.’ Till then we have to do everything as Christians to guide less than perfect children into successful adults.
I’m not saying psychopathic disorders can be overcome by Christianity. A matter of fact, I believe a strict Christian home could add to the conflicts in a psychopathic child. I am saying that good parenting can help shape the lives of even psychopathic children away from criminal behavior. I’ve said all of this so that you will realize that you contributed to the DNA of your child. Written into that DNA is a host of latent tendencies that mankind has deemed as ‘morally’ wrong.
At the same time, medical science would like you to believe that many expressions of human behavior that don’t fit nicely into polite society are the result of genetics when it is simply a life choice based upon societal and environmental inputs. Society, primarily the family, is the major sculptor of our sexual/ social life. I would even go so far as to posit that our worst genetic tendencies can be overridden through good parenting. Our latent genetic tendency to survive at the cost of others, (murder) is inhibited by societal pressures, of which religion is the biggest factor.
As all of you know by now, I’m a science geek. I’m not afraid of science, but I am afraid of those who treat it like a religion. Science does not love, it doesn’t make moral decisions, and it doesn’t create art. Our little build a child exercise was just to show you how much of your child’s behaviors and giftings are genetic, and how much power you have to help them embrace what you dealt them. I don’t believe any of us are beyond God’s ability to save, or deliver us from ourselves.
My point to all of this, is that we do have a path to life, and godliness available to us even when our genetics work against us. To quote Jesus; ‘You don’t understand the power of God.” The man who steps into fatherhood with faith in God can ‘build a child’ able to overcome their worst latent tendencies. There is nothing written in stone where God is concerned. I dread the day we have the ability to view a child’s DNA before birth with the express purpose to diagnose conditions that would be considered detrimental to society. It would not be a stretch to believe that parents would be pushed to abort the child, making society a worse criminal than the unborn child.
Our societal shift toward safety at any cost is frightening. Rational thought, and basic respect for life is surrendered to fear of something that may never happen. We could become a society where the rich can afford to have designer children, and the poor become slaves because they would be considered deficient. The current arc of DNA research is headed this way. We don’t have to succumb to the ‘Build A Child’ concept of genetic design. Instead, we can put a little more effort into being good parents. Someday, always comes, but till then doing the right thing will have to do.
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