Z: ZIPPED (DNA)

DNA, the cell’s genetic macromolecule, is a marvel because of its ability to ZIP UP massive amounts of information in a compact, elegant form. The sugar-phosphate backbones that run anti-parallel to each other house an interior library from which any amino acid can be read and assembled into protein! It is truly amazing: this coded macromolecule runs life and makes the complex simple. The arrangement of the bases into threes called codons translates via cellular code-breakers into every protein that structures or catalyzes living function! (Even now as I write it, I marvel as if it is brand new.)

The human genome (DNA in just ONE human cell) consists of three billion base pairs contained in 46 chromosomes. Estimates of the length of the uncoiled DNA in one cell range from two to three meters. An estimate of the total DNA content of the human body would be: 70 times the distance from the earth to the sun. All of this means that the information in DNA is effectively “ZIPPED” up very, very tightly for storage in a molecular architecture that makes this all work. The design has to accommodate a plethora of information, but also keep it accessible. (It was the computer long before computers.)

To replicate itself or to expose the information contained in its library for protein synthesis, DNA, powered by enzymes that it has previously coded for, UNZIPS itself in sections, exposing the code at the center to be copied or read. Appropriate portions producing a protein (genes), like books being checked out of a library (or downloaded from Amazon?) yield their secrets long enough to be read, and then re-zip and recoil. This is “on-demand” genius! The nucleus is a lot like a massive hard drive of information and the cell is an expert operating system accessing it with rapid speed—only the parts needed in the moment!

Think of it: The immune system that gloriously goes to work to fight off disease gets called out of genetic storage, in a sense, in response to a pathogenic invasion. Increased white blood cells counts, antibody production, and all the other cascade of response that ultimately makes you well again does not come from thin air. The vast array of creative defense results from millions and millions of “un-zippings” which access the needed immune treasures of the DNA code for copy and production! It isn’t just heredity on the generational scale that DNA carries! It is ALL the functions of daily living zipped up!

For all its immense and unfathomably complex information duties, the double helix had to be the shape of DNA. This twisted ladder sheltering the base pairs in between makes it all possible. But, I will hearken back to the X-ray crystallography post and remind you that there was a time that no one had seen it. It is one thing to know the chemical composition of things by percentage, but quite another to SEE how the molecules are actually arranged.

On this, the last post of the A to Z blogging challenge, I have done my characteristic marveling at the natural world—what John Wesley called the “general revelation” of God--and not yet told you where I am going with it in terms of analogy. I suppose that is because it is open-ended. DNA is not a metaphor but an example—an extremely profound example of how information is densely packed into things we stumble over everyday. The universe is your genome to be explored and unzipped, and there are amazing architectures of form and function to be understood all around us. The wonder never ceases.

And right here IS where I turn to the spiritual. Backed up by Scriptures declaring things like, “The Kingdom of heaven is within you,” or, “Christ in you the hope of glory,” or “Out of his belly will flow rivers of life,” which speaks of anyone who believes, I will say that I honestly believe that our own spirits, in the hands of God, are repositories of massive amounts of life-generating information. We are full of spiritual DNA. I believe that the vast inner frontier should be regarded with equal wonder that the wonders of the world afford.

It is tragic that some people approach exploring inner landscapes with a sense of burden, defensiveness or even foreboding that manifests as avoidance. To be given a spirit made in the image of God is a wonder-filled playground to be investigated! We should be alive with curiosity about how this wondrous invisible stuff—the inner stuff in the world where God lives—works itself out in our prepared lives. We should be UNZIPPING our INNER DNA and making copies and proteins off of it regularly. (I think here of the parable in the Bible where the master was displeased with the man who buried the talents in the ground rather than employing them! Some people guard their spiritual DNA so carefully in fear—it is MUCH MORE ROBUST than that!)

God proved He knew how to make enduring genetic substance in the physical realm. Could perhaps that display of genius cause us to trust in the mechanisms of life operating in our spiritual beings that are at least as effective and reliable? We really just need to cooperate and unzip!

The biggest promise in the whole Bible to me is that of Jeremiah 31:33 which is repeated in the book of Hebrews. This is where God guarantees that this new covenant will not be one of law. It is the definition of grace itself. God promises here to write, or we could say CODE, His truth right into our hearts, making it authentic to us--not some outward imposed, awkwardly foreign thing. (He promises to zip it right into our motivations, rather than just gluing on the exterior where behaviors dance!) Because I discovered this early on, I have related to Scripture this way and it has been a joyous journey. I remained largely immune to legalism, except now and then when I doubted my own DNA!

God makes His truth YOUR VERY DNA so that growing in Him is never anything but unzipping your true identity. And it stretches to the sun and back countless times. You can never be bored discovering what it inside you—you just can’t. You are information-dense, spiritually speaking. You are fractals of coded wonderment folded up on themselves waiting to be read, decoded and revealed…and used. AND, if you are facing a challenge, there is a veritable arsenal of high tech spiritual weaponry available not from outside you, but from within. (The ability to forgive is one of the most powerful and it IS inside you—when you feel you can’t do it, you just haven’t unzipped that part yet.)

One of my least favorite things Christians do is moan about what supposedly happens when they “pray for patience”. It is an old, old song in Christian circles, how people pray for patience and then endure ridiculous trials as God supposedly teaches them that skill. There are so many corrections to be made with this hyper-linear theology that I need a DNA molecule to contain them, but I’ll try to summarize what I feel is the missed truth. Patience is in your spiritual DNA, available to you when you became one with Christ. His genome becomes yours at that point (else good luck trying to become patient in your own strength). If you feel you “need more,” in response to the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, you can intentionally focus on that bit of the DNA—unzip it and meditate on the fact that the very patience of God is abiding inside you. Probably because you focus on that reality, the contrast that appears between your inner world and the pressures of the outward one will increase in your consciousness. Your reticular activating system may cause you to take note of the challenges more poignantly in the coming days. But, clearly, the patience you seem to acquire will NOT be produced by the challenges, but rather by the DNA your inner man carries—which will, like a spiritual immune system—rise to the occasion providing you not just with a teeth-gritting, tongue-holding kind of patience but rather with an incredibly fly-above-it kind that clearly came form another realm!

When we don’t see the genius of the design of something, we attribute a lot to what I call “ju-ju magic”. (DNA and heredity was somewhat ju-ju magic until we saw the design. Praying for patience in the way that riles me up is a Christian version of the same—some black box of speculative working that makes God look less genius than He actually is!) Hear me well, as I close this particular A to Z journey: The message of the UNI-verse is two-fold. First, we will never run out of marveling moments if we have our hearts open. There are burning bushes everywhere for us to turn aside and see—REALLY see—breathe in and view the invisible God! The mystery abounds and we can spend our lives chasing it. BUT, this mystery is not just ju-ju magic—it is not just “Oh well, God is mysterious, so you never know…” The mystery is elegant wisdom displayed for our discovery throughout every layer and level of existence! It is beauty of design and order and arrangement AND FUNCTION that takes our breath away like the sight of Solomon’s kingdom did to the Queen of Sheba! God wants to unzip it before our eyes for the enhancement and enjoyment of our experience of worship! God calls us to KNOW the UNKNOWABLE and to modestly fathom the unfathomable. And that call points us immediately to SPIRIT, crossing that thin line between realms and landing us back in the only place we can understand and escape the speculation that mere reason affords. That is the message of the Uni-verse. God is Spirit and they that worship Him must do so from their very DNA.