‘Jeff Bezos funds the quest for eternal life’ reported The Times recently. Bezos, 57, the founder of Amazon and the world’s richest man, is said to have a fascination with preventing aging. The company that he’s investing in, Altos Labs, was profiled by the MIT Technology Review under the title: ‘Silicon Valley’s latest wild bet on living forever’.
The new company plans to open labs in California, Britain and Japan and is thought to be looking at how to ‘reprogramme’ the body’s cells to delay the effects of aging.
While Altos Labs have hit the headlines because of the investment by Bezos, there are other companies looking to do similar things. Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal (estimated net worth: $7.5 billion) has invested in Unity Biotechnology. Larry Page, co-founder of Google (estimated net worth: $128 billion) is an enthusiastic backer of Calico Life Sciences.
Their goal? To live forever. OK, the headlines are a little hyperbolic, but they do get to the nub of the mission. While the various big players on the biomedical technology stage follow radically different methodologies, the central strategy is the same: combating death by turning back the biological clock.
These companies have managed to assemble a stellar cast of scientists and given them free rein to delve into the mysteries of their fields. Much of the research focuses on rewiring and resetting our very cells in order to remove the vestiges of age. Some of the achievements these men and women have made are impressive, albeit with some rather eye popping side effects at times.
Bezos and his fellow billionaires may have lorry loads of cash to pump into these projects, but at heart they are really no different from the rest of us mortals. No-one relishes death. Perhaps Woody Allen summed it up best when he said he didn’t want to live on in people’s hearts…he wanted to live on in his apartment. It’s very telling that men with wealth the rest of us could never dream of, are now using that money to try and stave off death. As we look at them, we see their riches – but they are more keenly aware of their mortality than their money.
No doubt at least some of these ventures will produce tangible results, although presumably not in time for most of us. Yet, for all the astonishing progress of centuries past, all we have managed to do is to delay the inevitable. Death is a matter of when, not if.
Christianity provides us with a balanced approach to medicine. Throughout the centuries, Christian pioneers have been at the forefront of the medical advances which we take for granted today. Their belief in the sanctity of all human life has led directly to the dramatically increased life expectancy we have come to expect in the 21st century.
Yet Christians recognise that death is the gateway to what comes next. As grand as these billionaires’ aspirations may be, when we look at them through the lens of eternity they seem to matter a whole lot less. If five hundred billion years is just a drop in the ocean of eternity, it’s hard to get excited about a few extra years on this side of the grave.
For Christians, our ambition isn’t to avoid death at all costs. Our true ambition is to die well; to approach our death beds with hearts full of hope and eyes fixed on Jesus Christ and the life to come. That’s something that money can never buy.
Oh and the price for that? It’s already been paid – in full – at the cross. That’s the message of the Christian gospel. We want eternal life – in fact we were made for it – but the Bible tells us that the wages of sin is death. And so we need someone, not just to deal with our record of wrongdoing, but to live a life of perfect obedience in our place.
The writer of Psalm 49 recognised 3,000 years ago that no billionaire could do this: ‘Truly no man can ransom another, or give to God the price of his life’. Yet he had the amazing confidence to be able to say ‘But God will ransom my soul from the power of death’. That confidence is one we can share today – if we put our hope for eternal life, not on cheating death, but in the one who defeated death for his people.
Published in the Stranraer & Wigtownshire Free Press, 23 September 2021.
Based on an article by Rev. Jonny McCollum.