The Stem Cell Extremist: "Let's not shut our minds to stem cell research - just our logic"

The Stem Cell Extremist speaks the truth! Behold:

Unfortunately, no one has a right to a life free from pain: especially when a majority of the planet would still like a life free from hunger.

Those that desire a life free from suffering betray their belief in utopianism. There will never be such a perfect world, no matter how far scientific research progresses. We're not God, in spite of the best, crazed hopes of the Reasonable. While we can, and should, look to alleviate suffering to the best of our ability, we can't hope to banish it from our lives.

We certainly can't liberate ourselves from it by killing unborn children in order to develop "cures."

Unfortunately, the first temptation humanity faced remains the most seductive temptation humanity faces. A part of all of us wants to be God. We want to have that control over our lives. We want to decide good and evil for ourselves. We want the power to command our destiny to be whatever we say it will be.

This is just short hand for saying that none of us want to die. None of us want to suffer, either. We don't understand why we must eventually suffer and die. It doesn't make sense.

Christians do not need to live in this existential nonsense. Christ has offered us an answer to the paradox of life and death. He offers us the cross. Rather than tell us what suffering and death mean, he shows us. He transforms their bitterness into joy and their despair into hope. For suffering with him through the bearing of our Cross brings us into the greater joy that comes from communion with him. Death, too, becomes not our inevitable end but our doorway to him. We have been baptized into his death; if we remain in communion with him throughout our lives, we rise from death with him!

This teaching is hardest to accept when we experience the misery of suffering and grief of our loved one's death. It was impossible for all but one of the disciples to experience Christ's death on the Cross, too. The times when we suffer and grieve are the times we must hold fast to our Faith most of all. Suffering and Death are not part of God's original plan. Both entered the world after sin. However, God's new plan allows goodness to come through even suffering and death. Redemption is real. It is ours if we ask for it. It is ours when we live in the love he offers us!

We don't need a world free of suffering. We need a world in which even suffering leads to communion with him. Thank God we already have such a world!