Clones

 I hate cloning around.  I hate it in biology and I hate it in theology.  I hate science cloning sheep like Dolly.  I hate religious groups trying to increase their flocks by duplicating themselves.  Both are a bunch of clones.  Science wants to clone the human embryo. They say its for the good of humanity.  At best some say to  cure disease, at worst say others, to grow body parts in organ factories.  I have never met a biological clone (I don’t think) but I have met thousands of church clones who are clowning around with God’s Word and God’s church.  It’s a shame.

 Scientists make clones by creating “blanks.”  They take the nucleus out of a cell and re-insert other cells from the donor.  Religion does the same.  Millions of religious clones, everything from Zealots to Zombies are roaming the earth. Frankly, it frightens me.  Even the Christian Church “so-called” is cranking them out by the droves.  I call them “fill in the blanks” Christians.  They somehow had their souls removed, re-engineered and replaced.  Ask them a question, and like those little dolls with the pull-string in the back, they spit out their pre-programmed answers. Even when they are right, they are wrong.   They have answers for everything and understand nothing. 

 The Bible does not say much about biological cloning, but the Lord Jesus warned about theological cloning.  It is found among all the other woes found among the religious zealots of Matthew 25.  “Woe unto you , scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte: and when he is made. Ye make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves” (Mt. 25:15).  The secret of this awful alchemy is in the words “when he is made.”  When God does it, it is good.  When we do it, it is bad.  Whether it is in the petri dish, or in the church pew- man making man in his own image never ends well. 

 The world does not need any more clones.  It needs no more “Dollys” or followers of the Dali Lama.  It does not need another denomination, or more religious dead heads.  The world does not need any more man- made churches.  We have enough church picnics and church politics.  The world needs to see the reality and the love of Jesus manifested, not manufactured, endued from above, not engineered from below.  The world needs to see Christ in you, the hope of glory, not a carbon copy of some man or method.  What the world needs to see is new creations, authentic God-made originals.  Each God-like, but uniquely gifted and different.  As far as cloning goes, the church should be less worried about things they can't change and more concerned about what they must change.  What the world needs is a church that is not cloning around, but committed to following the Only begotten Son of God in word and in deed. 

                                                                                                                              id