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IVF and Cloning Part 3
Jul 29th
We have seen that cloning raises some incredibly difficult ethical and moral questions. But before we attempt to address them, it may be helpful to look at things from the perspective of the infertile parent, and also to survey various religious positions on the matter.
It is important to appreciate that these are not just hypothetical questions that people in ivory towers can enjoy discussing over a nice cup of tea. They are questions that influence the lives of many people, real living people. I have encountered couples dealing with infertility, and I can assure you, it is no small matter. Until you have gone through the experience yourself, I don’t think you can really understand what it means to be denied the chance of having your own children. Read the rest of this entry »
IVF and Cloning Part 2
Jul 23rd
If you think the ethical questions raised by IVF are tough, you’ll be totally flummoxed by those raised by human cloning. Claims of human cloning have occurred sporadically since the turn of the 21st century, yet none of them has been substantiated – with one exception. Dr Panayiotis Zavos, a Greek Cypriot immigrant to the USA, may soon go down in history as the person responsible for the first ever successful human clone. He has so far made a number of unsuccessful attempts, but with each one, the knowledge gained is bringing him and his team a little closer to success. I have included some links at the end of this blog for those who wish to learn more about him and his very controversial work.
Dr Zavos is an enigmatic figure who proves yet again just how much truth is stranger than fiction. He is a practicing Greek Orthodox Christian, and he puts forward arguments based on Bible verses in support of his work, even though most Christians would disagree with both the work and his interpretation of the Bible. Having been blocked by the laws of Western countries, he moved his work to Beirut in Lebanon where there are no laws to prevent human cloning, and he even met with the spiritual leader of Hezbollah in Lebanon to get his ‘blessing’ on the work of human cloning. Read the rest of this entry »
IVF and Cloning Part 1
Jul 19th
One of the major issues challenging our ethics in the 21st century is the issue of human cloning. There are compelling parallels to the rise of nuclear energy 60 years ago. Whilst nuclear energy has given us a relatively clean source of incredible amounts of energy, and is even used in medicine to save lives, it also brought with it the ability to destroy the world as we know it. Would we have been better off if the power within the atom had never been unleashed?
Cloning today provides a stunningly similar set of ethical questions. Most people are happy with the idea of cloning plants or even animals if it will provide some benefit to humanity, but when it comes to considering cloning a human being, we run into a minefield of questions, for most of which we have yet to find satisfactory answers.
Nor is it a hypothetical question any more. At this very moment, Read the rest of this entry »
What’s Wrong With Alcohol?
Jul 7th
"Drinker" by Paul Cezanne. In today's world, drinking is seen as a normal part of life. As Copts, we go against this trend and often suffer ridicule for doing so. Why do we take this narrow path?
What’s wrong with having the occasional alcoholic drink? Why does the Coptic Church make such a big fuss over this issue?
The Coptic Orthodox Church strongly recommends that alcohol not be a part of its member’s lives, apart from Holy Communion of course. Today, I’d like to take a look at both sides of the story.
Critics of this policy attack it on the following grounds:
- The Bible never condemns the drinking of alcohol, only drunkenness
- Jesus Himself changed the water into wine.
- Most other Christian Churches allow social drinking of alcohol. Even their clergy drink.
- The Coptic Church bans alcohol only because it exists within a Muslim society where alcohol is banned by Islam.
- Alcohol is not evil in itself. What counts is how you use it. People are responsible enough to use it wisely, so there is no need for it to be banned.
I will address these points below. On the other side of the debate, the following points need to be made: Read the rest of this entry »
O, for an honest politician!
Jun 27th
Australia's first female Prime Minister.
Angela brings up the topic of Australia’s new Prime Minister, Ms Julia Gillard.
She is right in saying that priests tend to stay out of politics, and so it should be, but I am going to offer a few non-political observations on the political landscape. I have always thought that faith ought to be applicable to every sphere of our lives, without exception. Politics is one area where perhaps we need to apply our faith the most, for it is the sphere where the major decisions that determine the external nature of our lives are made. Living in a democracy, we get to choose who makes those decisions, and thus have a responsibility to make the best choices we can.
Firstly, it is the first time Australia has ever had a woman Prime Minister. Someone actually pointed out to me that we now have a women-only government, starting from the Queen, the Governor General, Prime Minister, Governor of NSW, Premier of NSW and even the Lord Mayoress of Sydney – all of whom are women! In today’s world, the ideal of equal opportunity has, rightly I think, largely emilinated older ideals of the fragility of women. We should get the best person to do the job, regardless of race, colour, creed or gender. There are many who feel at the moment that Julia Gillard is the best person for the job, so let’s see what she can do.
There is no doubt poor old Kevin Rudd, until recently, Prime Minister of Australia, has been dealt with rather harshly. Read the rest of this entry »
Punctuality Punctuated
Jun 24th
It never fails.
The moment you decide to go for it, the instant you steel your will and take up your weapons for battle, something has to happen to make your goal suddenly seem that much harder.
Last time I shared my intention to be more punctual – a brave thing to do. What followed was an illness that meant I had to not only not arrive on time for my next few days of appointments, but cancel them altogether! Talk about not keeping your word. The good news is that I’m back out of hospital now with little permanent damage done, and I’m not going to give up! It may well be some time before I can make appointments again, that’s true, but when I do, I am going to try to be punctual to them.
This kind of thing does not surprise me. It is for me one of the indirect proofs of the existence of God. If God didn’t exist, why should it prove so consistently darned hard to obey Him?
It is also good for the soul. Obstacles give us an opportunity to be stubborn in a good way, and that’s something most of us relish. At least you are sure whose side your on. Give me a clear path with lots of obstacles over a confusing path anytime.
Fr Ant
Punctuality
Jun 16th
Time Stress...
I have a confession to make.
I am not always very punctual.
The more cynical among you may be thinking right now, “Isn’t that compulsory for a Coptic priest? Don’t they teach that during their 40 days of training?”
Of course, the reality is that Egypt lies at the junction of the Middle East and Africa, two regions of the world where puncuality as a priority rates somewhere between eating your greens and polishing your carburettor. If the West enjoys occasionally being ‘fashionably late’, everyone in the Middle East is a trend leader, while the dark continent loves to remind you, “No hurry in Africa”. No wonder that Egyptians, by and large, are not a very punctual people.
But here’s my problem: not only do I serve with a priest who is abnormally punctual, but I am married to one of the most punctual people I know! I am developing an inferiority complex! If they can do it, why can’t I?
Lateness is an attitude. If you are engrossed in the thing you are doing at the moment, it is easy to lose track of time. It is easy for the person you are talking to now to seem more pressing than the person you have not yet reached. Somewhere in the back of mind lurks the idea that nothing so terrible will happen if I’m a little bit late. And of course, the little bit becomes a little bit more, and little bit more, and… oops.
I can see spiritual benefits in this attitude, not to mention health benefits. Surely it is a good thing to give the person you are with your fullest attention? Doesn’t that let them know that they are important to you? It also means that you can do things properly, rather than leaving things half finished. Then of course, there is the valuable humility you gain from constantly apologising to people when you are constantly late. Healthwise, it is really good for you not to stress over the little details of life. Your blood pressure will thank you, even if the person waiting for you will not.
But my wife said something to me once that gave me pause: “Being punctual,” she said, “is keeping your word.” I had never really thought of it like that. If Egyptians are famous for lateness, Upper Egyptians (of which I am one) are proverbial for keeping their word – no matter what. So every time I am late, I am actually breaking my word to someone. “I’ll be there at 7,” I confidently tell them. When I eventually arrive at 7:30, not only have I kept them waiting for me for half an hour, but I have also broken my word. That’s not a nice thing to do. The message it sends is that the person waiting for you is not that important. Perhaps that your time is more valuale than theirs, so it is fine for them to wait for you.
Punctuality is often viewed as a cultural thing. But if so, I wonder why many of our Coptic youth who have been brought up here in Australia still seem to have the lousy punctuality of their parents. I begin to wonder whether there is not more to it than just culture. Maybe there is a personal choice to be made here. Can an unpunctual person really change? Can a Coptic priest really turn up on time? I have known some who do, on a regular basis!
Well, I’m going to give it a try!
I’ll let you know how it goes … some time …
Fr Ant
Who Do You Trust?
May 21st
Trust is never an easy thing to attain...
Among the difficult questions in life is trust. We cannot survive without trust, but then again, we are constantly anxious about who, when and why to trust.
On the simplest of levels, you trust that the glass of water you drank this morning did not contain some deadly germ, and that the brake pedal in your car is actually going to stop the car when you need it to. (I once owned a car where this was not always true, by the way. We developed a very close relationship, that car and I. We came to know each other’s limits intimately; I knew the distance the car required to stop on the flat using only the manual downshifting of gears and the hand brake, while it came to know what I sounded like when I thought I was about smash into a tree.)
But it’s not usually the inanimate objects that give us grief with trust. Far more often, it’s the other humans. I think we are all born with an innate willingness to trust; an innocence if you like. You need only watch a three year old being tossed high into the air by her Daddy, see the huge grin and hear the cackling, to know that here is an example of absolute trust. Daddy drop me? The very thought is impossible!
But by the time we are adults, we find it hard to take people at their word or completely depend on someone. Between innocent childhood and suspicious adulthood something changes. Of course, the change occurs through bitter experience. Once someone lets you down, you find it hard to trust that person again. If it ever happened that a Daddy did actually drop his daughter (surely not!) that daughter would no doubt be quite wary of games with Daddy after that. And so it goes on through our early lives: promises broken, agreements dishonoured, honesty repaid with humiliation, secrets betrayed…
If it only happened once, perhaps we would have a fighting chance of maintaining our innocence. But when it happens many times, we naturally develop an instinct of wariness and caution that eventually comes to colour our personality and our whole approach to life. Shatter trust often enough and the person will withdraw into their own safe little world of lonely isolation where no one can hurt them anymore. How sad.
Life a lot nicer when you can trust. To live in constant doubt about others is to live without peace. If we are ever to share a sincere relationship with someone, we have to let them in to our inner thoughts and emotions, share with them the experiences that made us who we are. But to do so is to leave oneself incredibly vulnerable to the other. he might go and tell someone else, or criticise me, or not like me, or worse of all, laugh at me! It is so hard to trust another person with your real self, and yet, if we don’t, we are doomed to a sad life of loneliness.
As a parent, you learn how important trust is in the relationship with your child. You cannot be with them twenty four hours a day, so they have to learn how to keep safe, how to be sensible in their choices, how to resist temptation and how to be honourable and remain steadfastly true to their principles. That trust is not easy to achieve. It involves a lot of heartache, not knowing how things are going to turn out, sometimes even running the risk that the child may be hurt in some way, but it’s the only way to develop true trust.
And the trust has to work both ways. A child can only learn to be trustworthy if they have a living example of trustworthiness before them every day. The parent who takes the shortcut of telling a little fib to escape to buying those chocolates at the checkout today will find their child telling them fibs about anything and everything tomorrow. There are no shortcuts to trust, no discounted sales: it’s expensive, and part of the price is being utterly trustworthy yourself.
God trusts us.
He shows us His trust in the incredible degree of freedom He gives us. Yes, if I choose foolishly to eat unhealthily or to blow myself and others up as a suicide bomber, he doesn’t forcefully stop me. God grants every one of us genuine freedom of action, even knowing the consequences of a bad choice. Why does He do that? Why doesn’t He make the world such that no one can hurt anyone else? Perhaps He could enclose every human being in a sort of force field that is impervious to evil actions! Every time you tried to hurt someone, you couldn’t pierce the shield around you. Wouldn’t that be a much nicer world to live in?
Or would it? I know many parents who would love to get their hands on an invention like that, and would love even more to get their children shackled inside one! But then, where is the freedom? Where is the chance to learn real lessons? Where is the trust? No, God does not deal with us like that. Instead He chooses to unleash us on the world and leave us to make our own choices, choices with real consequences not just for us, but for others also. Only in this way can we become the kind of creatures He wants us to be, or develop the kind of relationship He wants with us.
Can you trust God?
As life goes on, everyone goes through experiences that shake their trust in God, and in some cases, destroy it completely. “How could God have let such a thing happen?” is not an uncommon question. How can we trust God when things go so wrong in this world? How do we know He’s not going to drop us?
Bu there’s the beauty of it. He never does! Oh sure, there are times when it really feels like He has. We see the ground screaming crazily towards us and we get that sick feeling in the pit of the stomach that this time, everything is not going to be alright. But then, it is. Maybe not when we want it to be, maybe not how we want it to be, but wait long enough and sure enough, there it is: the safe hands that reach out at the very last moment when all seems lost and gently hold us and draw us back into that powerful safe embrace.
Those who have been up and down often enough learn to trust those powerful hands. They know that it simply cannot happen that He should ever drop one of His children.
“Can a woman forget her nursing child, and not have compassion on the son of her womb?
Surely they may forget, yet I will not forget you.”
Isaiah 49:15.
Now that’s a promise worth trusting.
Fr Ant
Little Fixes
May 18th
Much like God, a GPS satellite floats around our world offering guidance to anyone who asks ... and who uses the right equipment to decode its signal.
Have you had your daily fix today?
No, I am not turning into a drug addict. The English language, like most language, has a wealth of words with double meanings. There are even some with three or more possible meaning, and there is one word that holds the record for having the most meanings: 50! But today, I’m thinking about just a few of the meanings of that little word: “fix”.
For a drug users, a fix is a dose of the drug. It makes them feel better by alleviating the discomfort caused by withdrawal symptoms. If you have had any exposure to modern western culture, you almost certainly have a vivid image in your mind of a sweating, dishevelled person with bulging bloodshot eyes, nervously manipulating a needle into an arm vein with shaking fingers, then falling back in relief as the drug begins to kick in.
Drugs of addiction control a person not just through their chemical effects, but also through their psychological effects. An addict can become free of the chemical need for the drug in a relatively short time. Depending on the drug, it might take anything from a few days to a few weeks. During that time, withdrawal symptoms can be horribly uncomfortable, but at the end, the body is freed of the need for the drug. The reason an addict will relapse into their addiction after they have been physically freed, is that the psychological need that led to the addiction has not yet been dealt with. A smoker who can go for seven days without a cigarette is free of the physical nicotine addiction. But there still remain the sense of security a cigarette can give, the way it occupies the fingers and the mouth, and the easy escape it promises from stress. All of these are in the mind, not the body.
Interestingly, for some people prayer can become something of an addiction. Not everyone who prays, prays for the right reasons or in the right manner. The act of praying can degenerate into nothing more than a security blanket, a tick in the box of the conscience that says, “you’ve done your duty, you’ve paid God His dues”. If you miss a prayer, you feel guilty; not because you actually miss being in God’s company, but because you feel that you’ve spoiled your record. And when you do pray, you feel a sense of relief that God is not going to punish you now for being negligent. Thus, prayer loses its positive effects upon you and becomes a thing that does nothing more than alleviate your ‘withdrawal symptoms’.
I think prayer SHOULD be a fix; but in a different sense. Prayer is something by which you get a fix on things. A person who is lost uses a compass and a map to get a fix on where he is in the world. Nowadays, we don’t even have to do the geometry – your GPS will do it for you! Prayer should be a spiritual GPS (God’s Positioning System?). It allows you to step back from the maelstrom of life and see the bigger picture, to get your bearings, to see things through God’s eyes as it were. Suddenly, problems are put into perspective. Wrong turns are retraced and you are set back on the right track again. By being in God’s presence, you see more clearly where you really are and who you really are, and you can proceed from that point in your life accordingly, with a different approach.
Prayer is also a time not only to get a fix, but to fixate. A fixate is where you firmly fix your attention and your thought exclusively upon one object, and one object only. In prayer, draw your attention away from the many clamouring distractions of daily living and focus it, fixate it on One alone. How lovely are the words in the Monday Psalia:
Gather within me
All my senses
In order to praise and to glorify
My Lord Jesus
Fr Ant
PS If you are dying to find out which English word can mean 50 different things, go to http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_word_has_the_most_meanings_in_the_english_language_Hint_It_is_a_3_letter_word
Complexity and Simplicity – Part 2
May 6th
Albert Einstein, like many scientists, trusted a result more if it looked simple: something many Mathematics students will relate to!
Is it better to see life in complex or simple terms? Should I delve deeply into things, seeking hidden meanings, or should I just accept things at face value?
In my last post I looked at the argument in favour of complexity. Today, a look at the other side…
Simplicity plays a crucial role in the life of the true Christian. When our Lord gives us simple, direct commands, there is not a lot of wiggle room, nor should we be clever and try to find it. An example of this might be the central law of love in Christianity. We are enjoined to love our brothers and sisters in Christ, our neighbours, and even our enemies and those who persecute us: in simple terms, to love every human being in this world.
You can get pretty complicated in addressing the question of how to apply this command, but basically, it boils down to something pretty straightforward: put away your ego, your fear, your dignity and your pride. See how God loves the unlovable, and strive to do the same. When the man asked Jesus “who is my neighbour?”, he was possibly trying to find a way out of loving someone he didn’t want to love by changing the definitions. This is resorting to complexity where it does not belong. This is why attackers of Christianity accuse Christians of being hypocritical. Richard Dawkins is convinced that when Christians say “love thy neighbour”, they mean only the neighbour who belongs to my tribe, my faith, my nationality. From where does he get this ridiculous concept? From Christians who play with the words for their own selfish ends.
Simplicity makes life so much easier, so much more peaceful when we employ it in our dealings with one another. Consider the person who constantly doubts the motives of others, constantly taking offence at others’ words and actions, seeing insults where none are intended or snobbishness where none exists. This person lives in constant anxiety and discontentment. Compare him to one who takes the words and actions of others simply. When someone says, “I didn’t mean it”, he takes them at their word and thinks no more about it. If someone seems to ignore him, he takes no offence but rather anticipates that there is some other unknown reason for the apparent snub (he was tired, he was distracted, he has a tooth ache…) This person lives a life of peace and contentment. He is happy with others because he is happy within himself. A simple heart produces a simple eye, and a simple eye produces a simple heart.
Last time we considered mandlebulbs where simple instructions produced incredibly complex and beautiful forms. But the opposite may be true as well. Sometimes very complicated beginnings boil down to a very simple ending. Consider the famous Theory of Relativity discovered by the famous Albert Einstein, a man who himself was in love with simplicity. Some pretty heavy maths takes a long and circuitous path to boil down to a stunningly simple equation in the end: e = mc2.
In his personal life, Einstein sought simplicity in ways that many would consider eccentric at best, downright insane at worst. For example, he drove his poor wife crazy by insisting upon taking up the scissors and cutting off the cuffs of his shirtsleeves. What purpose do the darn things serve? All they do is get dirty and force you to wash the whole shirt before the rest of it is in need of washing! For similar reasons, he apparently often dispensed with socks. To his mind, unnecessary distractions prevented him from focusing his time and energy on his real goals, his mathematical and physical investigations, so he took the logical course and simplified his life.
Personally, I find much to admire in this approach. Gone are the days when I used to spend ages trying to match up my socks. Of course, they’re all black, but there is black and there is black. There are thicker winter materials and lighter summer ones. There are long, medium and short ones, with elastic and without, and then of course, there are all the stages of fading. You can tell I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this. But one day it dawned upon me that this is such a waste of time. Black socks are black socks in the end, and who pays attention to your socks? Matching socks never got anyone into heaven, not so far as I know, anyway. So now I just take any two socks out of the washing basket and slip them on. Simplicity! It feels like being set free from prison! The prison was my own unnecessary perfectionism, vanity and small mindedness. Just don’t look too closely at my feet, next time we meet…
So where does all that leave us? Should we be simple or complex in our approach to life? The answer, I think, is both. There is a time and place for complexity and another for simplicity. There are even times when we should use them together, as we use a hammer and nail together. To know which is to be applied requires wisdom and discernment: gifts that generally are won through hard experience, many mistakes and an open mind.
“Be wise as serpents, innocent as doves”, said our Lord. And yes, it is possible to have both in the same person. I hope these modest reflections may have shed a little light on how this is possible.
Fr Ant
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