The other day I watched Abigail Breslin's movie called My Sister's Keeper. Have you seen it? I can't say I am a huge fan of Director Nick Cassavetes, but this movie got me thinking.
In this movie, Abigail's character, Anna Fitzgerald, an eleven-year-old, hires a defense attorney to sue her parents. Anna was conceived via in vitro fertilization, genetically designed so to speak, in order to help save her older sister, Kate, who suffers from an acute promyelocytic leukemia. Anna has endured many medical procedures and hospitalizations to provide Kate with bone marrow, white blood cells and others since she was five years old. Finally Anna declared that she wants a medical emancipation, to have the right to her own body. She doesn't want to undergo another medical procedure to save her sister.
Is Anna selfish? Is she wrong for wanting to live a full life? Is it an ethic and moral violation to bring a child into this world to become an organ donor for his or her sibbling?
That's a tough issue. With the state of stem cell research these days, many parents bank their children's umbilical cords. Blood from umbilical cords has been extensively studied and can be used to treat hematopoietic and genetic disorders, such as leukemia.
As in the case of the Fitzgerald family, parents have the best of intention for their children. There is no fault in that, but how far is too far? What would Anna have to give Kate to save her? Does Anna have a choice to say 'no'?
This movie got me to thinking about God's decision to send His Son, Jesus, to save humanity. It is a challenging and morbid concept to understand, but God in His sovereignty and justice sees that salvation comes only by the shedding of pure and sinless blood, the giving up of one perfect life to redeem all imperfect and broken lives. I wonder what Jesus really felt about that. According to the Gospel of Matthew, He did cry out to God in his final hour on the cross, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" But in faith and trust, He surrendered His life. Just like Job who said to God, "Even if You slayed me, I will still trust You."
God has the final word. He did raise Jesus from the dead. Jesus did conquer death so that human kind can have life, the life of the spirit, the eternal kind. Jesus is the Keeper of humanity.
Can we possibly fathom God's love?
Is Anna selfish? Is she wrong for wanting to live a full life? Is it an ethic and moral violation to bring a child into this world to become an organ donor for his or her sibbling?
That's a tough issue. With the state of stem cell research these days, many parents bank their children's umbilical cords. Blood from umbilical cords has been extensively studied and can be used to treat hematopoietic and genetic disorders, such as leukemia.
As in the case of the Fitzgerald family, parents have the best of intention for their children. There is no fault in that, but how far is too far? What would Anna have to give Kate to save her? Does Anna have a choice to say 'no'?
This movie got me to thinking about God's decision to send His Son, Jesus, to save humanity. It is a challenging and morbid concept to understand, but God in His sovereignty and justice sees that salvation comes only by the shedding of pure and sinless blood, the giving up of one perfect life to redeem all imperfect and broken lives. I wonder what Jesus really felt about that. According to the Gospel of Matthew, He did cry out to God in his final hour on the cross, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" But in faith and trust, He surrendered His life. Just like Job who said to God, "Even if You slayed me, I will still trust You."
God has the final word. He did raise Jesus from the dead. Jesus did conquer death so that human kind can have life, the life of the spirit, the eternal kind. Jesus is the Keeper of humanity.
Can we possibly fathom God's love?
Going back to the movie without divulging all the story, Kate eventually passed away. There are, of course, deeper reasons why Anna wanted to stop helping Kate. In the epilogue Anna is pondering the paradox of her life. She was brought into the world to save her sister but in the end it was Kate's death that saved the Fitzgerald family.
Life, like freedom, is not free. Something has to die to sustain life. Animals and humans depend on vegetation and other animals. We can't completely comprehend the laws of spiritual life, but someone had to die to bring life. Jesus did, and eternal life is made available to everyone.
