What Are You Rubbing on Your Skin?

Last night I heard on the radio that a cosmetic company is manufacturing and selling an anti-wrinkle cream that contains tissue from aborted babies. I was struck not only by the horrific nature of such a product, but also by the irony of rubbing part of a dead body on your face to make you look more alive.

The following is from the company’s website: “NEOCUTIS proprietary technology uses cultured fetal skin cells to obtain an optimal, naturally balanced mixture of skin nutrients including cytokines, growth factors and antioxidants. This mixture is called PSP®, which stands for ‘Processed Skin Cell Proteins’” (http://www.neocutis.com/categories.php?catid=13).

Our culture does not value children the way that God does. Unborn children are valued by the world more for their stem cells or (in this case) for their skin cells rather than for their reflection of the image of God. When we view people as a means to an end rather than as an end in themselves, there will be no limit to the ways we will seek to use people. The question we must answer is this: Are we so satisfied in God through Jesus Christ that we are free to love others with a love that does not seek its own, or will we use people to seek to satisfy our desires because we refuse to be satisfied in God?

There is nothing new under the sun. In the history of Israel, when there was no king, “Everyone did what was right in his own eyes” (Judges 17:6; Judges 21:25). In the world today, when King Jesus is rejected and his standards are set aside, everyone does what is right in his or her own eyes.

Eyes are important. Jesus said that the eye is the lamp of the body (Matthew 6:22-23; Luke 11:34-35). We will either do what is right in our own eyes, or we will recognize that every moment of our life is lived before the eyes of the Lord and live accordingly (2 Chronicles 16:9; Proverbs 5:21; Proverbs 15:3).