Learning from our Limits
by Michael Peat
During May, I spent a day at a conference at Chester University. The overall topic was theological and ethical issues raised by the use of animals in medical research, with a particular focus being whether there are any circumstances that justify combining human and animal genes for research purposes. Many exciting benefits of using these ‘hybrid’ embryos in research have been raised as possibilities, but there is still uncertainty about how many of them are realistic, and how many really require ‘hybrid’ embryos to achieve the expected benefits.
In one paper reflecting on this question, the speaker told an anecdote about the man often described as the ‘father of modern genetics’: the 19th century friar and scientist Gregor Mendel. The speaker pointed out that Mendel started out his experiments investigating how traits were inherited by encouraging the mice he was permitted to keep at his monastery to breed. However, the local bishop banned this because he considered it unseemly for a monk to watch animals mating! But what seemed like a closed door turned out to be a vital step in a process that would make Mendel’s scientific research vital for the discoveries about genes that have followed it (although the value of his work would not be recognised until after his death). Denied the opportunity to undertake research using mice, he turned his attention to investigating the inheritance of traits using plants, specifically garden peas. With hindsight, it was his use of a plant organism which, genetically speaking, is much simpler than a mouse, that made it possible for him to observe clear patterns and draw profound conclusions about the way traits are inherited. Mendel’s Laws of inheritance were ground-breaking, but would probably have eluded him but for a bishop’s ruling that, at the time, looked like a debilitating limit.
In fact, Gregor Mendel’s life-story is a testimony to the way in which positive opportunities emerge out of situations which, at the time, look like limits. Mendel set out to work as a parish priest, but his Abbot removed him from parish, saying of Mendel in a letter to the bishop that ‘he is seized by an unconquerable timidity when he has to visit a sick bed to see anyone ill and in pain.’ He showed some aptitude as a teacher, but nerves would get the better of him in exams, and so he failed to get the necessary qualification to allow him to continue with this profession. But it was precisely these shortcomings that gave him the time to devote to scientific research, and to growing and splicing the innumerable pea plants he needed to make the discoveries for which he is now renowned. What looked like shortcomings turned out for Mendel to be essential steps to him making a profound and lasting contribution to scientific progress.
In his second letter to the Corinthians, the apostle Paul similar discovers that things which look like drawbacks or weaknesses can prove a valuable step forwards. Paul speaks of having a ‘thorn in the flesh’ (which some scholars think may actually be a weakness in his eyes), and says that “three times I appealed to the Lord about this, that it would leave me, but he [God] said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.’ So, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me” (2 Corinthians 12 vv 8-10).
God calls us to play our part in God’s unfolding plan for the world. We might make assumptions about the talents and strengths we need to play that part well, as individuals and as a community. But it is God of surprises who gives us the gifts we need to play the part to which God calls us, and perhaps those gifts include our limitations as well as our strengths.
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