February 22, 2007

99.9 Percent the Same

A couple of days ago I was watching a television news show while working out early in the morning. There was a special report about what scientists have learned about DNA and the human genome. It was fascinating. Identical twins (I am one!) have exactly the same DNA. Genetically speaking, they are 100 % identical. I suspect that you knew this. But guess what? All human beings share 99.9 % the same DNA. Can you imagine that? Tall, short, fat, skinny, black, white, American or Iraqi, genetically speaking we are all 99.9 % the same!
That scientific analysis helps me to understand some of the amazing things I am seeing around here at Christ Church these days. For instance, an evacuee from Katrina has become like a sister to a woman who has never at all experienced real tragedy. A mentoring family with Project Hope treats the children of their client family like their own. The youth come back from an Appa Mission Project and they speak about some of the people they were helping as if they were long-lost aunts or uncles or grandparents. Somehow, people are being connected in extraordinary ways.

I am not naïve or blind to the divisions and hatreds that separate us. I cannot explain the terrorist who plans, and sometimes succeeds, in killing dozens or hundreds of innocent people. I have more experience with, but no better explanation for, the family members who share the same blood but who are no longer speaking to one another. But I am struck by the fact that perhaps an understanding of “community” or “family” is somehow primal, buried deep within our DNA. That it is a powerful genetic instinct that leads us to understand that when one person hurts, we all hurt, and that when one person is helped all of humanity is better because of it.

I have never believed that there is an inevitable conflict between science and faith. When we finally see face to face and know all there is to know, I think we will discover what our scientists are now telling us: we are all the same. That which unites us is much greater than that which divides us. That is the message of Jesus Christ, and that is the message of Christ Church. The more we live it, the more powerfully it will rule in our hearts as well as the Kingdom that God is building in our midst.