My Father's Genes - Part IV - The Delivery System

In Parts I – III, we reviewed the Biblical background that established the connection between human birth, sin, and the need to be born again. The discussion then laid the foundation for examining the scientific and genetic principles involved in human birth. We now continue this discussion as we move into Part IV.

The Delivery System

In Jesus’ great priestly prayer as recorded in John 17, He prays for His disciples and says in verse 20 “My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message…” The apostle Paul in his letter to the Romans amplifies Jesus’ implied delivery system of God’s plan of salvation by stating in verses 12-15: “12For there is no difference between Jew and Gentile—the same Lord is Lord of all and richly blesses all who call on him, 13for, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” 14How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? 15And how can they preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!” (Based on the last half of verse 15, one of my former pastors declared his feet more beautiful than other people’s! Oh, well…)

Just as the human egg may have literally millions of sperm directed toward it before conception, the unconverted human spiritual heart still in need of being born again may hear anywhere from a few words to millions of words or messages before reaching real receptivity. And just as the sperm must survive a highly hostile environment to reach the tube and search for the egg, so the message of salvation must survive an increasingly hostile environment in today’s society and culture in order to penetrate the human mind sufficiently for God’s truth to sink in clearly and with conviction. The hostile distractions to God’s Word in today’s environment are virtually countless. The more we remove God from every area of public life, the easier it is to remove Him from our private life. The more we try to isolate Him to church only, the more we succumb to “out of sight, out of mind”. God’s instruction to “18Fix these words of mine in your hearts and minds; tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. 19Teach them to your children, talking about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. 20Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates” (from Deuteronomy 11) is largely ignored today, even in any symbolic application. Practically every medium of modern communication is saturated with exhortations toward self-gratification rather than Gospel seeds that would lead to spiritual birth and growth.

Just as there is a limited window of opportunity for the egg and the sperm to successfully join to create a new life, so experience shows us there is a limited window of opportunity for the Holy Spirit to actively penetrate the human soul and mind with the convicting power of God’s word enough to cause a new spiritual life to be created. Literally millions of words that would direct our attention to our need to be “born again” may be flowing toward us but end up being drowned out by the hostile environment of the competing words and images drawing us toward every conceivable form of self-gratification and away from God. When one thinks of all the radio stations, TV stations (including cable and satellite channels), newspapers and seemingly countless print and web media, and all the public meetings and private conversations that occur in our world today, our minds then begin to be boggled to imagine the small percentage of all that stream of communication which is designed to actually draw us to understand and act on our need to be “born again”.

Please don’t misunderstand me here; there is much legitimate communication occurring related to our work and our world, but I suspect we all permit excessive amounts of the “hostile” communication to enter our lives and this would be especially true of those not yet “born again”. The “messengers” God has sent, who struggle mightily to overcome the “hostile environment” and deliver that message of salvation, are in such a competitive environment for peoples attention that their communication skills and methods must always be up-to-date. While the message of salvation doesn’t change, stale words, skills and methods (just like stale sperm) will not reach the intended destination.

In the next Part, we will continue developing the relationship between the human “delivery system” and the spiritual “delivery system”, along with some exciting expansions of concepts we may now take for granted.

My Father's Genes - Part III - Genetic Principles

I have been intrigued for some time by the science of DNA from a layman’s perspective, particularly in how it and the human conception and birth process work together, as related to Jesus' command to be "born again".

Is being born again easier to understand if we first understand being born at all? What similarities, if any, exist between the two that might help our understanding? We will explore these and other important questions in a multi-part series over the next weeks and perhaps months.

As we now continue on after Parts I and II (already posted below), please forgive the length of this part, but this Part III needs to remain together for best understanding.

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Genetic Principles

Scientific research has revealed a tremendous amount of information regarding human genetics and how flesh not only gives birth to flesh, but how the genetic material is passed on (downloaded?) from father (parents?) to child. We see the result of this in the child’s physical, mental and emotional characteristics. We see the boy walk and talk and think like his father. We make up cute sayings such as “the acorn doesn’t fall far from the tree”. We note the eye and hair color, the visual likeness (“he really favors his dad, doesn’t he?”), the sound of his voice, and on and on. This similarity between father and son is either treasured or abhorred, or somewhere in between, depending on the closeness of the relationship between the two. A loving relationship makes the father proud of his son and the son anxious to please his father.

On the PBS TV program “Nova” there has been shown from time to time a video titled “The Miracle of Life” (a Swedish Television Production in association with TV station WGBH in Boston, MA). This video offers some amazingly helpful knowledge on understanding the scientific details of human conception. Additional research has also shed light on the mother’s DNA contribution, known as mitochondrial DNA. Let me highlight some of the salient points from the video and then make the comparison to spiritual birth and life.

DNA (Deoxyribonucleic Acid) is contained in 46 chromosomes:
• Each chromosome contains thousands of genes (a gene is a distinct segment of DNA which lies along the chromosome).
• It contains all the genetic information of the cell.
• It’s the only living substance capable of reproducing itself exactly. Without DNA, duplication (and therefore life itself) is not possible.
• The DNA in each organism is chemically identical, but its arrangement in genes and chromosomes determines what the cell will become, e.g. animal, plant or human.
• The female’s egg contains 23 chromosomes.
• The male’s sperm contains 23 chromosomes.

In a simplistic description, DNA is either nuclear or mitochondrial:
o The 46 chromosomes created when sperm penetrates egg are found in the nucleus of each cell and are often referred to as nuclear DNA.
o Still within each cell but outside the nucleus is the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), which is basically DNA contributed by the female but left outside the nucleus and still inside the fertilized cell. Thus, mtDNA perpetuates only the mother’s line. The father’s mtDNA is left outside the fertilized egg and thus is not perpetuated (unless he has a sister who has children of her own).
o Each cell contains about 1,700 mitochondrion and each mitochondria includes an identical loop of DNA about 16,000 base pairs long containing 37 genes. Contrast this with the cell nucleus which contains three billion base pairs and an estimated 70,000 genes. Mitochondrial DNA suffers less damage and deterioration over time than does nuclear DNA, permitting DNA testing along maternal lines of even ancient samples incapable of receiving nuclear DNA testing.

There are some interesting facts and statistics concerning human conception that are useful to our overall discussion:
• Only about 50 out of 200,000,000 sperm that start the journey ever reach the egg. (The average man produces over 2 trillion in his lifetime, at a rate of about 100 million per day.)
• The sperm must survive a highly hostile environment to reach the tube and search for the egg.
• Since the egg must join with the sperm within 24 hours of leaving the ovary and with the sperm’s effectiveness lasting only 24-48 hours, there is a very short window of opportunity for conception to occur.
• Genetic structure is fully formed from the beginning, but is not effective until the egg is penetrated.
• When the sperm finally penetrates the egg, the egg immediately hardens the outer membrane so no other sperm may enter. This is the “crisis experience” of the creation of new life and the beginning of the growth of that new life. One of the phenomena occurring here is the introduction of the father’s genetic material to the egg and its impact on the new life.

The next postings will explore the striking similarities between human conception, birth and life, and spiritual conception, birth and life, i.e., how we really can be “born again” as Jesus so matter-of-factly proclaimed to Nicodemus.

In the next Part, we will discuss The Delivery System.