"I will say to the north, Give up, and to the south, Do not withhold; bring my sons from afar and my daughters from the end of the earth, everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made.” Isaiah 43:6-7
I’ve been thinking alot about babies lately — not because I want another (I’m way past that time!). Yes, the talk of Jesus coming to earth as a baby has been in my mind’s forefront but also my two-year old grandson and six-week old granddaughter had been staying with us for Christmas. Having had two daughters of my own I still find myself fascinated with pregnancy, childbirth, and the ever-changing process of growing up.
Even while I was pregnant years ago, I thought the concept of having a human being inside me was very odd and alien-like. The miracle of life seemed just that, a miracle. While too many people in our societies want to pretend that a life growing inside a woman is not … a life, I remain in awe of how a tiny swimming seed can push its way into a tiny egg and an explosion of life begins. What a wondrous miracle God came up with to continue His creation!
For you formed my inward parts;
you knitted me together in my mother's womb.
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works;
my soul knows it very well.
My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in secret,
intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Psalm 139:13-15
While scientists pride themselves on the basic “how’s” of the creation of life they can never fully answer the “why’s.” Why does the tiny sperm swim up to the egg? Why does it find the egg and push its way through? Why do the cells begin to split? Why do the cells stop making new features of whatever creature they are creating?
My pondering led me to a different question about this glorious, God-given miracle we call human life. When does the mystery of consciousness begin? Any small amount of research will unveil the biases of scientists working in this arena. The idea of God’s creation of consciousness is seen as “make believe” (as written over and over by Dr. Ralph Lewis in his 5 part series in Psychology Today). Yet, even after studying this topic for many years, evolutionary biologists and psychologist can only make conjectures based on theories of animals that lived thousands if not millions of years ago. They reject the one, most simple answer – God’s miraculous work in us.
I did find an article on when the journey to consciousness may begin in babies. Again, however, it is based on the idea of what scientists presume must be in place physically before a human is deemed able to have consciousness.
But when does the magical journey of consciousness begin? Consciousness requires a sophisticated network of highly interconnected components, nerve cells. Its physical substrate, the thalamo-cortical complex that provides consciousness with its highly elaborate content, begins to be in place between the 24th and 28th week of gestation. Roughly two months later synchrony of the electroencephalographic (EEG) rhythm across both cortical hemispheres signals the onset of global neuronal integration. Thus, many of the circuit elements necessary for consciousness are in place by the third trimester.
Christof Koch, When Does Consciousness Arise in Human Babies? Scientific America
Friends, our glorious God, the creator of all things seen and UNSEEN has given humans the gift of consciousness. That, in turn, gifts us with creativity, planning, memory, higher emotions, and more. We can no more truly guess when this gift has been delivered to us than we can know when our souls have entered into our cells. Of course, many evolutionary biologists and atheists don’t believe we have souls either.
If we look at life simply as a compilation of mechanical-like parts joined together (somehow for some reason) to create a two-legged creature that can speak, then we ignore all the beautiful intricacies of our human existence. The nuances of love, of sadness, of joy, of peace, of fear, and of reverence.
Our Christian faith is not ignorant of the “how” we are knitted together. We can accept all the biological facts of our human bodies. We just have the key to why it all works. A God to whom we give all glory for being the greatest scientist and creator for all time.
All glory and honor and praise to God. Amen.
emboldened.net 