God’s Epiphany
Although omniscient, advancements in Science gave God pause
to consider paradoxes he hadn’t originally considered. As John opined in the chapter bearing his
name, "I solemnly assure you, no one can enter God's kingdom without being
begotten of water and Spirit.” The necessity of baptism seemed reasonable at
the time but now God was mildly concerned about the souls of the unborn or
babies that died at birth or, for that matter, babies that died at any time
prior to baptism. He knew the Church taught that it does not know of any means
other than Baptism that assures entry into eternal beatitude. Limbo, which had a good run but was ultimately
retired, was a speculation as to what happened to the souls of children who
died and, who through no fault of their own, were not baptized. What should
happen to souls that have neither been baptized or accepted the Spirit? After
all, it was his own son who directly instructed that, "Unless a man be
born again of the water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the Kingdom of God.”
God had doubts back around 1560 when the Council of Trent
decreed: "If anyone says that Baptism is optional, that is, not necessary
for salvation, let him be anathema” and thought about intervening. However, Martin
Luther had done such good work and it appeared as if people were finally
starting to understand and get along. Eventually, the window of opportunity
closed and by the time Pope John XXIII Vatican II’s: "What was, still is” circulatedhe felt
it was too late to interfere.
But God worried.The dilemma he faced was how to reconcile the requirements for
baptism and accepting the Spirit with the fact some souls simply didn’t have
the opportunity. Some scholars tried to rationalize that, "The Church can
only entrust them to the mercy of God” but even God knew this was a cop out.
One option God was aware of is that souls can get into
heaven if they die a martyr. Those who through no fault of their own have not
received the sacrament of Baptism can be saved through what he called baptism
of blood or desire. An unbaptized person receives the baptism of blood when he
suffers martyrdom for the faith of Christ. Not every death is martyrdom, but if
aborted children have in some way been killed because of Jesus and his
teaching, they might qualify to be among those souls that were slain for the
word of God. The caveat being that either the martyr must choose death for Christ, or else the murderer kills out of pure
hatred for Christ as a motive. Perhaps the reason mothers abort their children is
due to the nefarious workings of Satan and thus, unborn baby souls are martyrs
who have suffered the heinous act of murder by mothers under
Satan's spell.
God felt he was making progress on finding an acceptable
solution until he came upon a New England Journal of Medicine article on fertilization
within the female species of Homo sapien sapien, the humans he created back in
the Garden. The article reported that as many as 70% of fertilized eggs do not
survive through to a live, viable birth. Though not a doctor, God grasped the
explanation that the maternal RNA transcripts -- that is, the molecules that
carry instructions from the mother's DNA to the embryo's protein-making
factories -- must be actively degraded in each cell of the embryo, and that
this degradation is necessary for the cells to begin to express embryonic
genes. Cells that fail to execute some part of this delicate process get out of
sync with their neighbors and jeopardize the life of the embryo. God realized the
whole endeavor is complicated, and how this might explain why human embryonic
development is so precarious and unique.
What a quagmire though. Seventy percent of souls never take
a breath, get a chance to sin or embrace the Spirit and are then kept from
eternal paradise? What kind of world was this?
God shared his concerns with Gabriel and Peter. Peter
acknowledged the difficulties and shared his own concerns over the paradox of
when life begins and how many souls never get the chance to even try to fail. Peter told God about his confusion over the case
of monozygotic (identical) twins: each twin does not exist as an individual
when "its life begins" - that is, when it is conceived because the embryo
doesn't split into two parts until later. “If we told them life begins at
conception, and ensoulment is the defining factor indicating life, how is
possible some get souls earlier than others?”
God began to consider giving himself a mulligan and starting
over. It was clear he had not put as much thought into this as he probably
should have. If lasers or electron microscopes had been around back in the day
he might have looked a little deeper into his creations.
“What a clustermess”, said God.