Faith and Values: Man can’t improve on God’s design for humanity

“Jurassic World” and our world have far too much in common these days.

As the film is released this weekend, millions of us will pay millions more to see man play God, insisting he can create an alternate reality, only to end up with a world far worse than anyone imagined.

The latest installment of Michael Crichton’s best-seller about dinosaurs makes for good fun, because at the end of the movie we’ll all know it’s pure fiction.

Sadly, reality is much stranger – and more tragic – than fiction. Or at least the alternate reality some insist on by changing what God has done, imagining it to be an improvement.

Consider the evidence:

In recent days, we’ve watched former Olympian Bruce Jenner act on a desire to become female, insisting he identifies as a woman. He’s certainly not the first to do so, but Jenner’s notoriety has made him a gold-medal winner among transgendered folks, and he, or she, has a Vanity Fair cover to prove it.

This week, Spokane’s NAACP director is the subject of pointed questions about why she’s identified herself as an African-American, though both of her white parents insist she, too, is of European descent.

Both are sad examples of what happens when men and women decide that what God has done is not good enough and can actually be made better, in real or imagined ways.

And in my view, both are pure fiction.

What are Christians to think of all this? As always, the Bible is our anchor in this storm of relativity. God has answers to man’s questions about whether he has the right to choose his own gender, sexuality, race, the day he dies, or whether a child deserves to be born.

Psalm 139, for example, tells us that God has brought each one of us into his world miraculously and purposefully. “For You formed my inward parts; You covered me in my mother’s womb. I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; marvelous are Your works.”

Each one us came into this world with a gender, race and lifespan chosen by God’s providence, and God’s providence always is purposeful. That purpose, ultimately, is to glorify God, not ourselves through so-called self-actualization. The very best life possible is found in God’s purposes for us.

“For everything comes from Him and exists by His power and is intended for His glory,” says Romans 11. “All glory to Him forever!”

Of course, our intended purpose is ruined by a sinful nature that is ours by birth. That’s why we insist on self-fulfillment, rather than embracing the far better life of fulfilling God’s purpose for us.

Case in point: No one will disagree that “Jurassic World” is a fiction. Almost no one would disagree that a white person cannot declare herself a black person. But, incredibly, there is now serious debate over whether a person chooses his own gender, let alone sexuality.

Our help and hope is a return to God’s purposes for us. And that is possible only through faith in Jesus Christ. It is Christ who makes all things new, and immeasurably better, for us sinners. And it is Christ who makes it possible for us to live to the glory of God, not self.

“For we are God’s masterpiece,” says Ephesians 2. “He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things He planned for us long ago.”

I pray one day people in our real world will conclude the same thing as those who watch “Jurassic World” this weekend: Man cannot improve on what God has done.

To believe otherwise is pure fiction.