Clergy from left, Deacon Cynthia Biddlecomb, retired; Pastor Nicolé Ferry, Associate Rector Lynn Finnegan and Pastor Deb Church. Courtesy photo

By Deacon Cynthia Biddlecomb
ELCA

33But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. 34No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, “Know the Lord,” for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord… (Jeremiah 31:32-34b, NRSV)

Humanity has a real problem. If there is something to be learned or a profit to be made, we can’t help ourselves, we must chase after it. We are wired for discovery. Does knowing the Lord keep us in check at times like these? Does it help us consider the potential negative or long term consequences of our actions? The Oppenheimer film raises some of these ethical concerns.

The urgent need for discovery is what created this town. The Manhattan Project was established here to quickly discover how to make a nuclear weapon before the Nazis could build one. Los Alamos on the Pajarito Plateau was summarily taken over by the Army in 1943, eighty years ago, and a laboratory of world-renowned scientists, engineers and mathematicians was established. It was a race against time to unlock the destructive power of a nuclear chain reaction.

In the process, as history shows, Pajarito Plateau homesteaders had their lands confiscated under the rule of eminent domain. The Los Alamos Ranch School hastened to end classes and graduate its seniors, closing the school for good. People working the land, ranching around the Tularosa Basin were evicted for the tests at Trinity Site, while a miscalculation of the power of the bomb meant a miscalculation of how far out those evictions should have been made. 

All this was done in the name of winning the world war against sadistic powers which were threatening Civilization as we knew it. The efforts at Los Alamos created the ultimate weapon of its time, capable of destroying whole cities and their citizenry in one drop. More important, at the time, was that this bomb was capable of ending that ghastly war. 

Unleashed in the process was an ethical issue born that July 16, 1945, at the Trinity Test. Did humanity need to discover how to build such a bomb? Would people somewhere else have created one if we had not? Did that fear make it ethical to do it first? And what about the ethics of dropping it on two cities of the enemy just to show that we had that power? Similar ethical concerns, for how the bomb they had created would be used, led many Manhattan Project scientists to petition the President of the U. S., not to use of the weapon on people.

Knowledge of good and evil … The second chapter of Genesis addresses the temptations of such knowledge. Does that story tell us not to search out and discover what there is to be learned? No, scientific exploration is not at risk here. Martin Luther averred, “We are both saint and sinner.” If we are aware of what tempts us and what we are capable of we can avoid causing destruction, both in the world and in other people’s lives. With God’s law “written on our hearts” we are better able to accept responsibility for what we discover and what we create.

Editor’s note: ‘All Shall Be Well’ is a semi-monthly column written by local women clergy (pastors and deacons) including, ELCA Deacon Cynthia Biddlecomb, M.Div., retired (czoebidd@gmail.com); Nicolé Ferry, Pastor, Bethlehem Evangelical Lutheran Church (pastornicole@bethluth.com); Lynn Finnegan, Associate Rector, The Episcopal Church of the Holy Faith, Santa Fe (rev.lynn@holyfaithchurchsf.org) and Deb Church, Pastor, White Rock Presbyterian Church (pastor@wrpchurch.com).