Science and Calling

Something that one of my professors at Hope said a while ago has been rather stuck in my head:
"I wonder if Satan doesn't use the hardships of grad school to keep us out of the academy"
along with something that someone else (it may have been my pastor? I'm not sure) said
"Persecution comes part and parcel of being a Christian. If you aren't being persecuted, I would question your walk".

As I read about Newton, and the scientists of his era, I am reminded of the creativity inherent in science that seems to be missing. It is interesting to be referred to as a "practitioner" of science, especially when you think of doctors of all kinds getting their degrees before they can open a practice. When I take my articles and my textbooks outside and walk around, things seem lighter, like this was why I entered grad school in the first place: to find a place to explore science. I didn't go to grad school to get a degree. I went to grad school to learn and to explore.

Here is where I am considering scientific scholarship a calling (maybe not My Calling, but a calling nonetheless). I think we toss that word around a lot, but given the persecution I've been facing in the past few months, and the things that remind me why I'm a scientist, I wonder if, in fact, just as the Lord has been steadying me, this is not precisely where I am supposed to be. Not just one of those things where God just opens lots of doors and lets you choose which door to go through, the way he did with Urbana, but this is exactly what I should be doing.

I think what has been adding to the stress is that the persecution hits precisely where it hurts _me_--not other people, but persecution tailored to me. Not the persecution I see other people facing, with deadlines they are struggling to meet, with advisors that are cruel, but, in the absence of deadlines and hired by the rare advisor that actually cares, with internal struggles regarding emotions and sense of purpose and place. That instead of deadlines and advisors breathing down my neck, I have cinder block walls and The Institution trying to steal the creativity and intrigue that make me a scientist, like the ones of old. They observed something in their life that sparked their curiosity and proposed ideas about the phenomenon. The ones that truly saw science as an art, as an exploratory endeavor, instead of the scientists I feel surrounded by where the universe is meant to be solved and mastered, taken apart and put back together.

I think about what God did at IVLI, the particular ways he touched me. There were so many, but the one way that seems to bind the rest together, the undercurrent to that whole month and everything that happened, was that I was not meant to hide. I have spent so many years hiding in corner, shutting up because that was my place and I had nothing worth saying. I wonder that if instead of my plans to hole myself away in a lab because I had to, Jesus gave me confidence to do more than that in my lab; to remind my fellow scientists of the vastness of the universe, the humility and awe that science should inspire. That maybe I will call people to return to the roots of scientific research. To remind them and show them that the values we are asked to exemplify, like integrity, respect, and colleagiality, are values Jesus calls us to as well.

There's that word again: Return. I deeply feel like God is calling us to return to Himself; my soul cries out for it. I wonder if that is not everything my life is about: calling people to return. O, that I may have such a calling...!

Something else I've been thinking about (thanks to books like 'Courage and Calling' and 'Following Jesus in the 'Real' World' and other assorted articles and references to the Karate Kid), and taking great comfort in, is the way that our jobs can serve as avenues of discipleship. The question Jesus has been asking me is not, 'Will you go for me?' but 'Will you stay with me?'. Something that has been echoing in my heart since Urbana (maybe earlier?) is 'SEEK me, THEN follow.' Find me here, meet me here. I've been coming back to the idea of God having all of my days written in his book (Ps 139:16). Regardless of the trials of the days, they are still days written in his book, and only he knows where the days will take me. So my question I have to answer is not 'Do I want to do science for the rest of my life?' (which I don't know) but 'Can I learn and grow by doing science here?' and that answer is a resonant 'Yes.' So, I will stay in this land and grow here, now, in this way. And I think that's all Jesus ever asks us to do, grad school or otherwise. 'What does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.' (Micah 6:8)

Made to Worship

You and I were made to worship
You and I are called to love
You and I are forgiven and free
-Chris Tomlin

We were made to worship (Isaiah 43:7; Romans 1). We are worshipers. It's what lies at our core. If my memory serves me well, I don't see God (either through the prophets or through Jesus) asking his people to worship, but instead to turn their worship towards him. All of Hosea is about a woman running after other lovers, I think of Isaiah and Zechariah and Jeremiah (I may be getting names wrong) pleading with Israel to return; Jesus tells the Samaritan woman at the well in John 4 about true worshipers. It's not that we don't know how to worship, and God is trying to teach us how to worship. It's that we give worship to other things.

But what is worship? I'm not sure it's something you can define. I remember discussing this very thing in a track for worship leaders at an IV conference a few years ago. Most of us would agree that worship is not just church music. Worship includes prayer, it includes obedience. They way I answered (which apparently earned me the temporary nickname of "Jenga") was that it was a posture. Worship is a posture (certainly on an internal level, possibly also in a physical manner) in which you pour out to God and you allow God to pour into you.

So then if we were created to worship, we will, by nature, place ourselves in positions to expend energy towards something, as well as positions in which we are poured into. We are guilty of idolatry when we place ourselves in positions where we are offering and surrendering to that which is not God. It's hard to think of our idols because we think of idols like little cows made out of gold or something. But really the sin wasn't that the Israelites made a little figurine. The sin was that they trusted that little figurine for what it could never offer: hope, security. Our idols are what we rely on to give us hope and security. Performance. Wealth. Ourselves. Other people. These things are not bad things. But they can become idols.

We were made to worship. We are going to worship something. The question is where is our worship focused?

Lord, forgive us for the times when we have surrendered our worship to idols, things that are not you, that could never be you, but we insist on placing our trust in them all the same. Free us from the bondages, God. Free us from the bondages that come from serving foreign gods that never promise our safety, that never promise us love, but merely cheap thrills to lure us deeper into darkness and slavery. Lord! We cry out for release of those chains and bondages!! We cry out for the release of these shackles of shame and guilt and darkness. Invade our hearts, shine brightly into our darkness, lead us out of our self-made prisons, and heal the wounds our chains have left and our captors have dealt us. Walk us into your light, Father. We give you highest praise; may it be from the deep places of our hearts.