I have entitled this series Brave New World, named for the famous book by Aldous Huxley. If you’ve never read Brave New World, it was published in 1932 and is a stunningly prophetic novel. Set in the year 2540, the novel anticipates huge scientific advancements in reproductive technology, sleep-learning, psychological manipulation and classical conditioning that are combined to make a dystopian society. What I find to be so fascinating is that a lot of what Huxley imagines in his novel about the future will become reality in the next two decades.

This particular series is important for us because the Christian religion is steeped in ancient modalities. It is not particularly well positioned to deal with these technological revolutions and their implications for us as humans. This is not to say that Christianity does not have anything to offer in this new future that will soon be upon us. In fact, quite the opposite. My goal is to show how the Christian faith still offers important theological, ethical and philosophical considerations of how to best deal with these innovations.

So each sermon will start with an innovation that will fundamentally change our world. We will consider this innovation from a lot of different angles, drawing out the ethical implications. Then we will turn this innovation around and see what the Christian faith has to offer. How does Christianity provide a perspective that could benefit our society as we interact with this new technology? As we explore each of these innovations, I think you will see that Christianity has an important role play in this Brave New World.

We begin our series today by talking about the impending genetic revolution. In 2019, I preached a sermon during Lent about an up and coming technology called CRISPR, which allows scientists to accurately and successfully modify genetic code in any type of organism. I discussed how scientists want to use the CRISPR technology to remove genetic diseases from humans like cystic fibrosis, sickle cell anemia, type I diabetes and Huntington’s disease, which I think we can all agree is a good thing.

Another application of CRISPR is that it is likely to play an important role in eradicating deadly cancers or creating very effect immunotherapies. But as much as the focus of CRISPR is to fight disease, this technology also has the potential to alter genes that have nothing to do with disease. Theoretically, CRISPR can be used to determine the color of your eyes, the pigmentation in your skin, the density of your muscle fibers, the size of your hands and feet, your body fat ratio, whether you’re 5’5” or 6’9”, even your IQ.

This final application is the one that really scares people and rightfully so. If these alterations do become available, not only can you genetically alter a person to be disease free, but incredibly strong, agile, intelligent and beautiful. As you can imagine, this type of genetic alteration has the potential to create a new type of division within our society: a division that is no longer based on one’s sex or the color of your skin, but rather based on whether or not you possess these specific genetic permutations.

This is the future we find in movies like Gattaca. Let me show you a clip from this film of what this future might look like. This is a beautiful film and I would highly suggest watching the entire thing if you haven’t already because it portrays a lot of the negative possibilities of this technology. For our sermon today, I want to take the potential of this technology in a completely different direction.

What people don’t often consider is how this new technology has the potential to reduce suffering for human beings. So in our scripture today, we read from the book of Genesis about Joseph interpreting Pharaoh’s dream about how there will be seven years of plenty and seven years of famine. Joseph’s recommendation is that Pharaoh store up grain during the seven years of plenty so that the population will be able to survive during the seven years of famine.

As I’ve talked about on several different occasions, famines were very common in the ancient world. The success of a crop was based on a lot of factors aligning. You needed the right amount of rain at the right time. Too much and the crop gets washed away. Too little and the crop won’t grow. Assuming your crop does grow, you had to worry about bugs and animals eating your crops. Sometimes your crops would catch a disease, not have enough nutrients or the temperature would unexpectedly drop and they would die from frost. So there were a lot of factors that could cause your crops to fail or under produce.

Today, we’ve eliminated a lot of those variables. We have sprinkler systems to provide just the right amount of water. Fertilizers to provide nutrients to help the plant grow and chemicals to keep bugs from devouring the harvest. Farmers even have satellite systems that give them the ability to monitor the temperature and humidity levels of their fields. But perhaps one of the most incredible leaps forward has been the genetic engineering of seeds.

For instance, scientists have genetically engineered certain crops like soybean, corn, and cotton so that they contain a protein that is poisonous to many insects who eat them. This is great leap forward for farming because it means that we can avoid harmful and toxic pesticides that are really bad for the environment. The problem is that we don’t entirely know if these modifications are 100% safe for the people who are eating them.

This why the non-GMO movement began and it’s also the reason why these scientists who are working with these plants understand that they now have to take into account how a genetic modification might impact our bodies. With every innovation, there is a positive side and unforeseen consequences. I personally think that GMO foods are an important part of feeding the world, but we have to make sure it is done in a responsible way.

So I think this is a really great example of how genetic manipulation has the ability to remove unnecessary suffering from our lives. When it comes to food, nobody should have to starve if there’s enough food for everyone to eat. But there is something on the horizon that is even bigger than diseases and food and we see it in our Mark text.

Jesus comes across a man with a withered hand. We don’t entirely know what it means to have a withered hand, but basically we assume that his hand was unusable, which in a society where manual labor was the key to survival, put you at a severe disadvantage. Perhaps his hand had been crushed while doing work. Perhaps it had been that way from birth. Regardless, what Jesus does is he heals the hand instantaneously. Literally, one minute his hand is unusable, the next minute it’s restored.

Now this is the stuff of dreams. Depending on how badly our bodies have been damaged it can be anywhere from days to months to years to recover. But what if we could experience what Jesus did with this man and be healed instantaneously? How would that change our world? I know this might sound impossible, but it’s not too far off.

There are scientists who are studying how our bodies age and heal and they are figuring out mechanisms to shorten those processes. Eventually, their goal is to make it so that humans never age. You might say that such a thing is impossible, but I assure you, it is not. The natural life limit of human beings is about 120 years. How do we know this?

At either end of our DNA strands are binders that keep our DNA intact. These binders are referred to as DNA telomerase. As we age, the length of these binders become smaller and smaller until one day they no longer exist. When this happens our DNA can no longer replicate and we die. Studies have shown that the telomerase runs out at exactly 120 years.

The question is why do most of us die well short of our genetic potential? The answer is that there are a lot of environmental factors such as toxins, disease, diet and genetic abnormalities that impact our lifespan potential. Geneticists, such as Harvard’s David Sinclair, are working on gene therapies that could not only lengthen our life span significantly by repairing damaged cells, but could also theoretically stop the aging process entirely.

Dr. Sinclair envisions a future where, once these gene therapies are refined, not only will living past 100 be commonplace, but once we get to a certain age, say 30 years old, we could live the remainder of our lives in our 30 year old bodies. Indeed, his research has suggested that these therapies could eventually result in our bodies being able to heal injuries almost instantaneously, removing all physical suffering from our lives.

These potential gene therapies are a literal fountain of youth and it would revolutionize human existence. No more disease, no more cancer, no more aches and pains—your body and your mind could remain in prime condition for the whole of your life. But as wonderful as all of this sounds, there is one thing that this new technology does not take into account: human character is forged through adversity.

It is by enduring suffering that we become stronger people. Indeed, some of the most amazing people I’ve ever met are those who have risen above really challenging obstacles. The greater the hurdles, the more these people learn how to thrive. This makes sense because for hundreds of thousands of years, human life has been defined by suffering. In fact this is how the Bible begins: Genesis chapter 3, God makes it clear that part of the curse of being a human being is that you will struggle and toil.

So if the goal of this new technology is to remove suffering from our lives, what happens when you take away those hurdles? How do human beings cope with a world where there are no obstacles to overcome? The answer is we do not cope well. We have a little window into this because over the last 40 years, the level of comfort we experience as humans has risen dramatically.

We live and work in temperature controlled environments where we can eat as much food as we want, whenever we want. Any product we can imagine can be delivered to our door, often by the next day. We can choose what entertainment we want to watch, when we want to watch it. The world is literally at our fingertips. And what has happened as a result? More than ever before, people report feeling lost. They have no discernable purpose in their lives. Drug and alcohol addiction are spiraling out of control. Suicides are steadily increasing and more people are being crippled by the effects of mental illness. Most importantly, people are losing their empathy and compassion for others.

What this tells us is that removing all our physical suffering, as wonderful as it might seem, has unintended consequences. Humans need something to overcome. Without adversity, our minds and spirits will suffer. And so in this new world where we will soon alleviate much of the physical suffering we currently endure, the next obstacle we will have to overcome is ourselves.

And this is where the gospel has something very important to teach us. Jesus teaches us that love is the highest value to which a human being can aspire—love of God, love of self, love of others. We often think of love as being something that naturally occurs, but Jesus tells us that love is like a skill, it’s something you have to develop and nurture over time.

It’s something that really takes work and effort if it’s going to be driving force in your life. This is really important because it’s a way to keep our mental and spiritual health strong in a world where many of the obstacles and hurdles have been removed from our lives. Indeed, this would fundamentally change the way people think about Christianity.

So if people see the church as a place to come to find balance in their lives, where they can nurture their mind and spirit in order to make it equally as healthy as their body, then I think the church will not only survive in this Brave New World, but will experience a renaissance as it becomes an indispensable aspect of people’s daily lives. Although this is very different from what the church has been in the past, I think this new way of approaching Christianity will create the potential for our religion to be something that truly matters for people who are in desperate need of love and purpose in their lives.

So even though this future I paint for you is still many years away from coming to fruition, I believe that the one thing we can do now is invest in Jesus’ teaching on love. When we say choose love at the end of our services, we need to stop assuming that this is something that we will do automatically. Choosing to love in the way Jesus loves takes work. It takes effort to love at the level that Jesus requires of us. It does not happen naturally, but is something that requires deep investment on our part. But if we invest in that kind of love now, when that future does come, then we will be well positioned to offer purpose and meaning to those who need it most. Amen.