Scientists say that the DNA, the so-called building block of life, of any two people is 99% identical. But scientists are looking into the differences in that 1% that isn't. This is having results that would generally be considered positive: the DNA changes that account for a West African's resistance to certain diseases have been identified and could lead to medical advances.
But more and more people in and outside the laboratory are seeing a dark side to all this and the dawning DNA era. They fear that DNA data will be used to revive racial prejudices—that one race is smarter than another, for instance. While saying that it's currently not possible to draw any conclusions about IQ from DNA, Marcus W. Feldman, a professor of biological sciences at Stanford University, told The New York Times that research into genetic differences "has the potential to spark a new era of racism if we do not start explaining it better."
Actually, what we have to start explaining better is man's real spiritual nature.
"Cease ye from man, whose breath is in his nostrils: for wherein is he to be accounted of?" we read in the Bible (Isa. 2:22). This suggests that biological research may not lead to results that really matter. And St. Paul points to a difference in heritage that does matter, saying "The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit" (I Cor. 15:45). "The first man Adam" he's referring to comes from the biblical account in the second chapter of Genesis of a fellow named Adam being made of dust—this after it's been declared a chapter earlier that man is made in God's image and likeness (see Gen. 1:26, 27) and so must be spiritual because God is Spirit. This spiritual man, specifically as exemplified by Christ Jesus, is "the last Adam" Paul refers to. This spiritual man is a quickening spirit—someone and something that enlivens and invigorates and helps and that could never deaden anything or impede the expression of the good that is God.
What does all this have to do with us? Well, Jesus made it clear that we're all God's offspring—that we're all spiritual rather than material. He did it through his words—the Lord's Prayer opens with "Our Father" (Matt. 6:9), as clear a statement as there can be that God, Spirit, is our source—and most emphatically with his healing works—works that would be impossible if matter is the arbiter of life that it's proposed to be. He proved that he and everyone else are quickening spirits, not complex arrays of matter created by biochemical instructions encoded in DNA.
Are there differences between us as God's image and likeness? We're certainly all individual. But a God who is Love itself, as the Bible says (see I John 4:16) and as Jesus' healing works prove, wouldn't—couldn't—give more good to some of His offspring than to others. The quickening spirit enlivens us all; it's what we must express, because it, rather than DNA, is what we're made of and what we are.
We have to do more than explain this in words. Like Jesus, we have to prove it through our deeds and the way we live. Christian Science, rather than any biological science, makes this possible. It explains the spiritual laws that Jesus' healing work was built on—spiritual laws that are just as active and reliable today as they were 2,000 years ago. As we understand them and let the quickening spirit that we are shine rather than consider ourselves to be mortals with our own ways of thinking separate from God, we'll heal the same way Jesus did. And many Christian Scientists are doing just that, proving day after day that man—male and female—is the expression of God, not of DNA.
"The harmony and immortality of man are intact," Mary Baker Eddy writes in the Christian Science textbook, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (p. 521). She continues, "We should look away from the opposite supposition that man is created materially, and turn our gaze to the spiritual record of creation, to that which should be engraved on the understanding and heart 'with the point of a diamond' and the pen of an angel."
That's the task for all of us: to reject deadening material notions of ourselves and focus on enlivening spiritual viewpoints. This defuses DNA prejudice because it proves that matter doesn't determine who we are; Spirit, God, does. It proves that we all have all the good we need all the time. As Paul also says, "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ" (Eph. 1:3). We have all the spiritual blessings there are, all the goodness there is, because of the quickening spirit we are and that we express. As we accept this and reject erroneous mortal concepts that say we're some much lower form of life, we're in a position to experience all that good and help others experience it too.
Link
The New York Times — "In DNA Era, New Worries About Prejudice" (registration required)
