What does the Bible *REALLY* Say about Human Genetic Engineering?

Discussion Questions:

• What do you know about Human genetic engineering?
• What are the ethical questions you have heard brought up in discussions about this topic?
• What are your personal questions about this topic as it relates to Biblical living, Christian ethics, etc?
• What do you think the Bible says about this topic?

Scriptural Context:

• 1 Corinthians 15:38-39
  • “But God gives it a body as he has determined, and to each kind of seed he gives its own body. Not all flesh is the same: People have one kind of flesh, animals have another, birds another and fish another.”
• Ecclesiastes 7:13
  • “Consider what God has done:
    Who can straighten what He has made crooked?”
• Matthew 15:13
  • “He replied, ‘every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be pulled up by the roots.'”
• Genesis 1:11-12
  • “The God said, ‘Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds.’ And it was so. The land produced vegetation: plants bearing seed according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good.”
• Romans 1:22-23
  • “Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles.”
• Psalm 139:13-16
  • “For you created my inmost being,
    you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
    I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
    your works are wonderful,
    I know that full well.
    My frame was not hidden from you
    When I was made in the secret place,
    when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.
    Your eyes saw my unformed body;
    All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.”
• Isaiah 17:10-11
  • “You have forgotten God your Savior; you ahve not remembered the Rock, your fortress. Therefore, though you set out the finest plants and plant imported vines, though on the day you set them out, you make them grow, and on the morning when you plant them, you bring them to bud, yet the harvest will be as nothing in the day of disease and incurable pain.”
• Colossians 1:16
  • “For in Him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him.”
• 1 Corinthians 6:19-20
  • “Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies.”
• Ephesians 5:29
  • “After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church”
• Romans 5:12, 3:23
  • “Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned…”
  • “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God”
• Genesis 6:3
  • “Then the Lord said, ‘My Spirit will not contend with humans forever, for they are mortal; their days will be a hundred and twenty years,'”
• Genesis 1:27
  • “So God created mankind in His own image, in the image of God He created them, male and female He created them.”
• Isaiah 45:9-12
  • “Woe to those who quarrel with their Maker, those who are nothing but potsherds among the potsherds on the ground.
    Does the clay say to the potter,
    ‘What are you making?’
    Does your work say, 
    ‘The potter has no hands’?
    Woe to the one who says to a father, 
    ‘What have you begotten?’
    or to a mother,
    ‘What have you brought to birth?’
    This is what the Lord says-
    the Holy One of Israel, and its Maker:
    Concerning things to come,
    Do you question me about my children,
    or give me orders about the work of my hands?
    It is I who made the earth and created mankind on it.
    My own hands stretched out the heavens;
    I marshaled their starry hosts.”
• Jeremiah 1:5
  • “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.”
• Mark 10:9
  • “Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”
• Luke 5:31
  • “Jesus answered them, ‘It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.'”
• 1 Corinthians 15:39
  • “Not all flesh is the same: People have one kind of flesh, animals have another, birds another and fish another.”
• Psalm 24:1, 1 Cor 10:26
  • “The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it…”
  • “The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it.”
• Ecclesiastes 11:5
  • “As you do not know the path of the wind, or how the body is formed in a mother’s womb, so you cannot understand the work of God, the maker of all things.”
• Proverbs 13:22
  • “A good person leaves an inheritance for their children’s children, but a sinner’s wealth is stored up for the righteous.”
• Romans 8:21
  • “That the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage and decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God.”
• Genesis 3:22
  • “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.”

Further Discussion:

• What are the motives behind the goals of Genetic Engineering?
• Are these motives ultimately moving towards the glorification of God and the spread of the gospel or away from it?

Extra Resources:

• http://www.equip.org/article/the-christian-and-genetic-engineering/