“Is an embryo a human life? I think of a stored embryo as the product of a scientific process. Once received and nurtured in a woman’s womb, it becomes a human life. The embryo is a significant component, but there is no human life apart from the womb’s significant contribution.

And isn’t the use of embryos to find cures for other diseases and disabling conditions also a “God thing”? Jesus was very much concerned with the restoration of the sick. I have a friend who is wheelchair-bound. He is active, employed, and has a family. Wouldn’t it be a “God thing” and an affirmation of the sanctity of human life if through the results of embryonic stem cell research he would be restored physically?”

—Rev. Jochem Vugteveen Grand Rapids, Mich.

1.) Something can be the result of a “scientific process” can still be a human life. In point of fact one could easily say that a fertilized egg arising from a man and a woman having intercourse is a “scientific process” though to say such probably wouldn’t earn you the “Romantic of the year award.”

2.) Rev. Vugteveen will have to supply us the hard data that time in the womb is what makes a fertilized egg human. What will the good Reverend say when technology arises where a fertilized egg can come to full gestation apart from time in the womb? Would a human nurtured in a artificial womb not be a human because they weren’t in a human womb? Finally, on this point, why should I take Rev. Vugteveen assertions as being authoritative? By what standard is Rev. Vugteveen asserting that a human isn’t human until it has spent time in the womb?

3.) If the scientific process gives us a fertilized egg why do we euphemistically refer to that fertilized egg as a “product of scientific process.” The cynic might observe that the depersonalization of that which is human (fertilized egg) serves an agenda of those who desire to use the human as spare body parts.

4.) I wonder if Rev. Vugteveen has really thought through the implications of using human life as spare body parts. What happens to the value of life when men become disposable? What happens when we begin to cannibalize our children in order to heal our aged? If man can create man for the sake of man then what keeps man from destroying man for the sake of man whenever he determines that is convenient? Jochem needs to spend a weekend reading and reflecting on the book Frankenstein.

5.) Rev. Vugteveen needs to read the research surrounding embryonic stem cell research. While human stem cell research has shown promise, embryonic stem cell research shows little promise.

6.) The price we pay for healing the sick at the cost of taking the life of the unborn is to great a cost to bear. To be blunt it strikes me as the height of generational selfishness to want to cannibalize the future for the sake of the present.

“To assert that “an embryo is not a potential human life—it is a human life with potential” is comparable to asserting that an acorn is an oak tree or that an egg is a chicken. This assertion makes the already difficult conversations about embryos virtually impossible and loads unwarranted guilt on those who lovingly make informed choices that result in the destruction of defective or healthy embryos.”

—George Vander Weit Rochester, Mich.

George, it just this simple. We don’t know when life begins. We don’t know. Now, since we don’t know, we are, by necessity, in a position where we need to err on the side of being conservative. If we err with acorns, chicken eggs, or tulip bulbs, nobody is going to lose any sleep. However, if we err with nascent human beings and are destructive with those that God does count as human life, well then that is another story all together. Ignorance on this vital and important of a matter should be very patient in awaiting for enlightenment. Fools, however rush in where ignorant but wise people fear to tread.

I do agree however that caution does make the already difficult conversation about embryos virtually impossible. It makes it virtually impossible because it challenges the presuppositions of ignorance that are masquerading as knowledge. It makes it difficult because suddenly we now are in the position of having to consider the possibility that those conceived people already are stamped with the Imago Dei. If we consider that it is possible that conceived people already have the Imago Dei stamped on them suddenly we are no longer in a position to harvest them for vaccines, or skin cream, or replacement parts for when we get old and decrepit.

You say that you fear that people are going to be loaded with unwarranted guilt. But, again, George, you don’t know absolutely if that guilt is unwarranted. This is a presumption on your part. It may be the case that the guilt is quite warranted. Since we don’t know when life begins I think it is unwarranted of you to suggest that guilt in the destruction of healthy or defective embryos is unwarranted.

One of the mottoes for Doctors has been for centuries, “First, do no harm.” I think George, that motto might serve us pretty well on this issue. Since we don’t know when life begins, we should “First, do no harm.”

“Where is My Son Welcome?

Some time ago I asked my oldest son a question that was very hard to ask. My wife and I had talked about asking him on occasion, and as I was talking with him on the phone late one night, it seemed to come a bit naturally. I asked him if he was gay.

Our son had grown up in the home of a Christian Reformed pastor—his father, me. As a pastor I had thought about and re-thought and sometimes spoken about and written about (in newspapers) the issue of being gay. I am certain that our son understood from me what most Christian Reformed people believe about being gay.

Our son knew he was gay for 10 years without telling anyone. How he must have struggled, wondering if his parents would still accept him if he came out. As I remember the few times he asked me for my personal thoughts on people who were gay, it breaks my heart to think that behind the questions was a growing knowledge about his own orientation.

How he must have struggled when, years later, I left him at a Christian college—but not before we had dinner with friends of the school. During that dinner we lamented the hardship caused to the school by the presence of a gay faculty member. How he must have struggled when his fellow students ostracized gays. Our son kept quiet.

He once did make a choice regarding his sexual orientation. In high school he chose to live a straight, heterosexual lifestyle. He thought he might never tell anyone of his orientation and still somehow have a wife and children. How much did he struggle when his dates with young Christian females did not create any sparks for him? Our son chose his sexual orientation and expression. But the choice did not catch. He remains gay.

The first setting in which our son was accepted as a gay young man was his “secular” medical school. The acceptance was immediate. What a sad contrast to his experience in the Christian community.

I believe that I am called as a father to love my son. God has placed him in our family. My wife and I are called to love and support him in every way. His brother and sister, along with many other relatives and friends, have been clear that they love him and support him. Our wish for him is the same as that for all our children: that he would live his whole life, whatever choices he will make, in the context of the grace of Christ. But if, in that context, he chooses a committed same-sex relationship with a Christian partner, a choice that does not conform to the expectations of most straight Christians, where will he be welcome?

First, we should note that Christians should have sympathy for those who have embraced any kind of sinful lifestyle. Growing up I lived with a destructive Father who embraced multiple significant lifestyle aberrations but until the day he died I never quit having sympathy for my Father. I can understand therefore Pastor Veenema’s sympathy for his son, who, like my Father, has embraced a significant lifestyle aberration.

Yet, as much as I loved my Father and had sympathy for him, I would not have shown him any love if I had excused his behavior as just an alternative lifestyle. In the same way we do not show the homosexual community any love by excusing their behavior as just an alternative lifestyle. Homosexuality is a sin that attacks God by directly attacking the image of God upon man. The ontological differences between male and female, reflecting God’s ontology do not exist in a homosexual relationship. As such the coupling of two men that are engaged in the act of sodomy is an attempt to deface the image of God by attacking an aspect of that image that makes them distinctly male and uniquely human. The sin of homosexuality by attacking God, results, as all sin does, in destroying the person who has embraced it. Should we allow our sympathy and pity for sinners to eliminate the necessity of calling for repentance we turn sympathy and pity into vices masquerading as virtues as a sympathy and pity that do not and can not call for repentance are emotions that damn the person who has need to repent by coddling them in their sin.

Second, there is a subtle presumption in this article that homosexuals don’t choose their homosexuality. Now, very few Christian social scientists would contend that a person wakes up some morning and decides to be homosexual, just as very few people wake up and decide to be kleptomaniacs are in more severe cases mass murderers. How it is that our fallen-ness exhibits itself from person to person or why our fallen-ness exhibits itself in the way it does from individual to individual is anybody’s guess, but all because people aren’t epistemologically self conscious about selecting their besetting sin doesn’t mean that on some level choices weren’t made along the way. People are responsible for their sinful behavior and this includes my Father and it includes Pastor Veenema’s son.

Now some will argue that homosexuality is genetic but there isn’t any hard evidence out there that supports that claim that doesn’t come from “scientists” who have a homosexual axe to grind.

Third, I will be the first to admit that the way societal and cultural taboos often operate are cruel and mean spirited. But having admitted that we also must admit that there is a certain generosity in the cruelness and mean spiritedness of societal and cultural taboos. That generosity is found in the fact that the purpose of the cruelness and meanness often is to send a message to other individuals in the culture who might be tempted to pursue a cultural taboo that someone else has violated not to trespass in that direction. Those who violate cultural taboos are punished with the kind of ostracization that Pastor Veenema speaks of in reference to his son and though there is a certain cruelness to such a practice there is also a certain warning for those with eyes to see how they will be treated if they tread this direction. If we tear down negatives that surround taboos, at the same time we tear down the taboo and communicate that acceptability of the behavior that the negativity surrounding the taboo was serving as a “keep out” sign in order to reinforce the taboo.

Fourth, it must be clearly said that if Pastor Veenema’s son chooses “a committed same-sex relationship with a Christian partner,” then Pastor Veenema’s son is no longer living in the context of the “grace of Christ.” Homosexuality is a sin. Galatians 5 teaches that those who live in the lifestyle of sin will in no wise enter into the kingdom of heaven. It is the soul of sympathy and pity to speak such words to those caught in the web of sin. It is the soul of enmity and hostility to refuse to speak such words to those trapped in sin.

I have sympathy for Pastor Veenema. My heart goes out to him. I know what it is to live with a loved one who chose personal destruction over the fullness of life created by grace. But Pastor Veenema does his son, nor his church, nor his God, any favors, in the midst of his anguish for his son, to try and subtly suggest that the Church can embrace those as members who have no heart for repenting in light of God’s clearly revealed Word.

If I could I would fill the church with repentant homosexuals as members. If I could I would fill the church with repentant homosexuals who still struggle against that besetting sin as members. But I find nowhere in Scripture that allows me to fill the Church with homosexuals that expect the Word to be reinterpreted so as to codify their lasciviousness and lust. To believe and confess anything else would be terribly hateful to such people.