On the upcoming stem-cell funding vote

I have attached below the text of a letter I sent to several Representatives and Senators concerning the expansion of federal funding for stem-cell research. I urge you to read the text of the two Senate bills on stem-cell research and write your Congresspeople or Senators as well:
S.5 : A bill to amend the Public Health Service Act to provide for human embryonic stem cell research.
Sponsor: Sen Reid, Harry [NV] (introduced 1/4/2007)      Cosponsors (30)
Latest Major Action: 1/4/2007 Introduced in the Senate. Read the first time. Placed on Senate Legislative Calendar under Read the First Time.

---

2. [110th] S.51 : A bill to derive human pluripotent stem cell lines using techniques that do not knowingly harm embryos.
Sponsor: Sen Isakson, Johnny [GA] (introduced 1/4/2007)      Cosponsors (None)
Committees: Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions
Latest Major Action: 1/4/2007 Referred to Senate committee. Status: Read twice and referred to the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions.

I always welcome your comments, though it may be a while before I can respond to them (school starts in a few days!)

+++++++

I am writing to remind you of your responsibility to the people of our
nation at large. You may technically represent your state or
constituency, but together with the other members of Congress, you make
policy for all Americans. You were also elected to represent your
conscience. As a scientist and a Christian, I understand that you are
in a quite difficult place in making decisions about stem cell
research. However, I feel that you are obliged to vote AGAINST
expansions in federal funding of stem cell research.

Voting NO will not prevent advancements in the understanding of
cellular development and stem cell-mediated medicine. We all are
familiar with the existence of private funds for this research, such as
the Michael J. Fox. Foundation. As a research scientist, I can tell you
their money is as good for funding as the government’s! However, as a
citizen, I do not want my tax money being used for this purpose.

Our nation has lasted for over two hundred years on the principle that
the rights of the minority are not infringed upon by the majority in
power. To quote Alveda King, niece of Martin Luther King, Jr.:
“How can the ?Dream? survive if we murder the children? Every aborted
baby is like a slave in the womb of his or her mother. The mother
decides his or her fate…. Because I am a civil rights activist I have
to fight for the rights of the unborn.”
We must protect the most voiceless minority of our society: our children.

Many of you were elected because of disagreements we, your citizens,
have with other policies of the federal government, such as the war in
Iraq. Yet do not misunderstand us on the issue of stem cells: WE DON’T
WANT THIS!

You represent the citizens of our nation, whether we voted for you or
not. Our democracy functions on that principle: we are ALL represented
by our representatives. I urge you to vote AGAINST expansions in
federal funding of stem cell research.

A Goodie from the Devo-file: God is mercy

“Because God is merciful, He forgives me of my sins when I sincerely confess them.”–Bill Bright

When I wrote about justice, I insinuated that God does NOT treat us fairly, at least at the face value of what justice means. I also must disagree with Bill Bright on his view of God’s mercy. Before I differed on the issue of definition; here I differ on mechanism.

There are 60 references to the action “forgive” and 50 references to the state “forgiven” or “forgiveness”. They are:
OT–
nasa: to lift up, cast away, (14)
sawlach: to pardon (35)
kafar: to cover (2)
NT–
aphiemi: to send forth, free (50)
apoluo: to relieve, release (2)
charzomai: to grant as a favor (7)

It strikes me as amazing that Greek words similar in meaning to the Hebrew terms for forgive are not used in the New Testament. (Now to be completely candid, Strong’s exhaustive concordance, and thus the New Testament, does not contain the Greek word for “to pardon”, but I’m sure such a word exists and yet it was not used!) The whole paradigm of forgiving changes when Christ comes on the scene! No longer is the process of forgiving sins seen as “unpleasant”, in the sense that it is overlooking faults, that God is being the bigger person about the whole thing. Now forgiveness is the opening of the cage door, the releasing us to the world beyond!

That is what mercy made complete is: not the looking past our mistakes, but looking deeper inside us and drawing out our inner nature that still reflects God’s image. Mercy, and its partner grace, are not authorities that choose not to write us some spiritual ticket, but are friends, rescuers who are trying to help to move beyond the quagmire of our flesh.

The second amazing thing I find is that Jesus emphasizes a time aspect to forgiveness. He teaches us to forgive (present tense, moving forward), but talks about being forgiven when addressing people He touches (past tense, already accomplished). Catch my point: He doesn’t say to the sinful woman or the lame man, “I now forgive your sins”; He says “Your sins are (already) forgiven”! (my addition there!) In the timelessness of the Godhead, the future act of crucifixion, death, and resurrection is already being attributed to the events of Jesus’ lifetime prior to it!

So why do we fail to see that this transcendance of time works both ways? Buckle your spiritual seatbelts for this: You don’t need to ask God to forgive you; He already has! Now I say “need to” in the sense of the mechanism (remember, my point of disagreement) of forgiveness. God is not sitting around, keeping score of our sins and waiting for us to ask for them to be erased. In the mysterious, mystical union of Christ’s moment of suffering and our moment of submission and faith, all that we have done, are doing, and will do that offends God or separates us from Him has already been atoned for and redeemed.

Having said that, we still need to ask God’s forgiveness for two other reasons: our humility and our restoration. First, to be more specific, we confess sins to God in order to humiliate ourselves before Him! (Still have those seatbelts buckled?) Remember at the Fall, Adam and Eve (and us as their children) tried to elevate ourselves to be God’s equals (Genesis 3:4-7). The action of our prayer for His mercy lowers us back down, returns the hierarchy of the universe back into proper alignment. This then restores us to communion with Him. Sin separates us from God: our attempts to work our way back only shows how far we truly are from Him.

Salvation is by faith because it is only when we stop trying that God can step in and cross the chasm. There we sit, slumped over, crying our eyes out, when He walks up. He picks us up (nasa: to lift up) and pulls off our garments of “sin that entangles us” (Hebrews 12:1), throwing them away (nasa: to cast away). He tells us that everything is all right now, that He won’t hold this against us now that we are sorry (sawlach: to pardon). He puts His coat around us (kafar: to cover) and tells us to wear it for a while as His welcome-back gift (charzomai: to grant as a favor). Then He tells us to start walking back home, that He is following us to make sure we stay on the path and are safe (aphiemi: to send forth, free; apoluo: to relieve, release).

Now I am not advocating that you stop praying “Forgive me my many sins”. Instead, start listing them out! Once you face up to how much you have screwed up your life, then you will truly understand the magnitude and mercifulness of God’s mercy! This week, bust out of the exchange mentality cliche we have about sin, that we can just walk up to the Heaven window and trade in our errors for a clean slate. Today (and every day), begin to “work out your salvation” (Phillipians 2:12) through your pleas for grace.