March 22, 2008 - The Metaphor of Conception

   God can be so funny about the details in life. He puts clues and metaphors to his masterful plan in the least expected places. Take for example the detail of conception in the flow of genetics. Prior to the modern understanding of heredity, humanity puzzled over the hereditary connection between father and son, mother and daughter, and between father and daughter, mother and son. Various scientists of past centuries investigated the reproductive processes of multiple living beings much the way a detective reconstructs a murder – there is the body, the scene, the suspects, but what is the actual progression of the story that brought this together? Following his discovery of “animalcules” in the sperm of humans and other animals, the seventeenth century scientist Anton van Leeuwenhoek speculated that he “saw a "little man" (homunculus) inside each sperm.”[1] Colleagues of his asserted, “The only contributions of the female to the next generation were the womb in which the homunculus grew, and the prenatal influences of the womb.”[2] This conjecture soon received the title spermist. Apparently there were feminists even back as far as that heavily masculine era because in response an opposing school of thought was formed which believed “that the future of the human was in the egg, and that the sperm merely stimulated the growth of the egg.” These thinkers were aptly named the ovists.     
    But as we are now clearly aware, neither is the case! The conception and development process is one of collaboration by both sperm and egg, and just as is the case with men and women, neither is more important than the other and both are necessary complements. In the past men were acclaimed as humanity's ultimate being - the powerful, the steadfast, the mighty and courageous. Today, a large part of the Western World's academia tout the Woman as the pinnacle of society. However, in conception, one of God's primary charges (be fruitful and multiply, see Genesis 1:28) research makes it clear that both the male and female are necessary. Again, it is a process of collaboration. Neither the egg is more important than the sperm, nor the male more important that the female. Both are necessary and equal. As He would have it, perfect complements.