An Awakening to Awareness of Our Humanity

When in 1953 the structure of DNA was eventually mapped and bio-technology started to take over from philosophy in its understanding of what it is to be human, the personal became highly important in seeking a solution to the pressing problems in a modern, dynamic society. Once it was established that the building blocks of all life on this earth were the pairs of chromosomes on the DNA double helix and that the DNA segment of each human being was unique to that individual, then the authentic way forward was to respect and value this uniqueness and to promote and develop it. Human differentiation is as staggering as the trillions of millions of stars in the heavens and a unique inheritance.

Here is to hand a new contemporary language, the language of genetics, to relate science to faith. Here is a human language born out of science to equip faith to communicate with it at a time when the communication lines are down and science and faith with their rival anthropologies cannot speak to one another. Suddenly gospel texts begin to be understood in a new way: "the hairs of your head are all numbered". The underlying themes of the Bible, creation, inheritance, universal relatedness, common humanity, begin to be appreciated in a new, personal and immediate way.

Abraham, the father of faith, was called out of the comfort and security of the known into the unknown, to a land without maps. He never returned to the Oaks of Mambre. So too, genetics tells us that human existence is precarious and uncertain. Humanity took an evolutionary leap forward in discovering its true value and glory as the bringer of order in an otherwise random nature, and so we continue in history to move towards our eschatological future and the land of promise.