The human body is an amazing Creation of an all wise God. Open minded students of our biological frame stand in awe of the marvelous design of God our Creator. “There are between 50 and 75 trillion cells in the body…. Each type of cell has its own life span, and when a human dies it may take hours or day before all the cells in the body die.”[1]
There is a myth circulating that we replace every last cell except brain cells are replaced every seven years, but it is more complex than that. “It is true that individual cells have a finite life span, and when they die off they are replaced with new cells… Red blood cells live for about four months, while white blood cells live on average more than a year. Skin cells live about two or three weeks. Colon cells have it rough: They die off after about four days… while brain cells typically last an entire lifetime (neurons in the cerebral cortex, for example, are not replaced when they die).”[2]
So the process of replacing all the dying cells in our body with brand new cells is an extremely important function. Imagine what would happen if a newly minted cell decided not to function as it was designed to function, to go rouge, to rebel against the Creator’s design for it as a cell. Just consider the liver for example.
The liver is our largest internal organ. “The liver performs many essential functions related to digestion, metabolism, immunity, and the storage of nutrients within the body. These functions make the liver a vital organ without which the tissues of the body would quickly die from lack of energy and nutrients.”[3] Some estimate at least 500 vital functions are preformed by our liver.
So what if the liver cells designed by God to manufacture bile, which is essential in digestion, decided on their own to stop making bile? If one or two cells did that, you might not notice. But if those few cells begin the reproduction of other rebel cells, very soon you are in serious trouble. If enough of those rebel cells reproduce after their kind you will be diagnosed with having liver cancer. What have each of those cancer cells done? Rather than preforming the task they were designed by the Creator to do, they have gone their own way; instead of serving the human body in which they reside, they have decided to only serve themselves. They greedily demand a continuing supply of blood, of oxygen, of nutrients but now these cells will no longer serve the body, now they will only serve themselves. They have rebelled against their designer and gone rouge. They have become an enemy to that very body they were created to serve; indeed they have become a deadly enemy.
We know that unless those cancer cells are stopped in their tracks, deprived of blood, oxygen and nutrients, the body they were designed to serve, the body which they inhabit will ultimately die. And ironically, those cancer cells, unlike a parasite which might migrate from one host body to another, those cancer cells are going to die in the body which they killed. In other words, cancer cells by choosing to go rouge are choosing the path of suicide.
I’m reminded of the discussion we had at IOTC’s First Friday lecture. We know that our Founders designed the civil government to be a servant of the people, to serve us by protecting and securing our God given rights.
But what happens when that government goes rouge, when it becomes a rebel against the purpose for which it was created, the purpose for which God ordained it, when it rejects the design of the creators and begins to only serve itself and not the people, when it greedily consumes the resources of the people for its own selfish ends, when it no longer operates as the servant of the people but turns itself into the master of the people? How then is this rouge civil government any different than liver cancer? The decision to go rouge, as with liver cancer, is the deliberate choice of suicide. Proverbs 8:36 puts it this way as God is speaking as the personification of wisdom. “But he that sinneth against me wrongeth his own soul: all they that hate me love death.” What is true of the cancer cell is also true of rouge civil governments. And what is true of rouge civil governments is true for each of us in our own self government. Turn to Exodus 23:14 as we continue in our study Celebrating Our Lord.
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