Description
We are students in the St. Stephen's course of studies in Orthodox Theology from the Antiochan House of Studies and this year our project is a talk on Bioethics: the Christian Perspective on the Difficult Questions New Technology Poses for our Lives.
Our talk will address three prominent areas of bioethics: Abortion, Euthanasia and Stem Cell Research and Cloning, and we will discuss these issues in everyday language - just family - talking around the kitchen table. Our conclusions will be based on solidly established theological truth, but without an over-reliance on chapter-and-verse citation. We want to engage our audience where we live and in a conversational way. The people who will benefit most from our talk will be those who believe in God, go to Church, but may not have a firm Biblical worldview.
In fact, most of our talk will be myth-busting, or exposing False Christian ideas that have pervaded our culture. Many people have embraced a sort of feel-good Spirituality that we're calling False Christianity or the Religion of Nice. This is, as one polling group found out, "a personal idea of sin," usually arising from a belief that all roads lead to God, or that all ideas should be equally tolerated, respected and embraced. Good people who want to do good find themselves submerged by the flood of these ideas from TV, movies and our culture in general.
Every new advance in technology brings Christians face to face with increasingly difficult questions. Should I prolong life if I can't cure the disease? Should I have a designer baby? Should I be 'compassionate' and ease Aunt Sally's suffering with an overdose of morphine? Current culture provides a diversity of non-Christian answers to these questions in a False Christian disguise. In order for Christians to make the right decisions, we need a firm foundation in Christian truth. We will explore the worldviews that support False Christian ideas, such as, "When we die we all go to a better place" or "All God wants is our happiness. So, if it makes you happy, do it." And we will reveal the crucial short-comings of these worldviews and the need to return to the real truth that is provided by Christian moral teaching. We do not pretend to be theologians and, for further guidance, will direct our audience to their priests, their church community, Patristic writings and, of course, to holy Scripture.
|
