Carl Trueman has a thought-provoking essay here entiled “Playing God, Becoming Nothing.” In a nutshell, he argues that when we attempt to play God, we ultimately destroy ourselves. This is of course the lesson in Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel Frankenstein.

“when the Promethean act that makes us feel and act like gods reaches its apex, something ironic occurs: We human beings reach our nadir, degrading ourselves to nothing, with nothing much to say. Porn is now background noise, babies in the womb are merely clumps of alien cells, and infants are the objects not of unconditional parental love but of consumer taste. What must we conclude from all this? That we have truly used our godlike powers, our human genius, to make ourselves into mere handfuls of dust. And once we are so reduced, then even our acts of desecration become routine, matters provoking indifference or even boredom.“

When we attempt to usurp our exceptional God-given image-bearing nature that God stamped us with (Gen 1:26-27) and that marks us as the pinnacle of God’s extraordinary creation, surpassing even angelic beings (1 Cor 6:3), we make the same fatal error as Satan. And ultimately, like Satan, we end up losing everything. We trade 24k pure gold for worthless fools’ gold. As Trueman wisely concludes, “we have truly used our godlike powers, our human genius, to make ourselves into mere handfuls of dust.“