by JOSEPHINE ELIA
“And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart.” (Jeremiah 29:13, KJV)
Every Christian desiring to glorify God in thought and deed must ask at one point, “How can I please God in everything I do?” The nature of the answer is unique and personalized to every profession. As a graduate student myself, I have wondered how to glorify God in my studies.
The completion of the first semester in graduate school marks another beginning in my scholastic pursuit. I have chosen a thesis topic and an academic advisor, and have now officially entered this great realm of academia called research. The search of knowledge and the deepening of understanding in unexplored areas continue to hold their aerial fancies in a beginner’s mind. As I go through the humble quotidian routines of working in the lab, I hope that this fascination will not go away in the next five years it takes to obtain a doctorate, or even after I graduate.
Five years is not a negligible amount of time. This pursuit is a solemn undertaking. Knowing that time is a talent from God, wasting or misusing these five years would be poor stewardship.
This period in graduate school must be used to advance God’s kingdom through my primary role as a missionary and my secondary role as a student. Campus ministry is a given mission, but the academic work must count towards bringing souls to Christ as well. My work better make a difference.
But I have always grappled with the question of what a godly engineer looks like ever since undergraduate years. What difference does my Adventism make in this profession?
Obviously, the controversy between creation and evolution is ever present in science, and a Christian by logical and theological necessity must believe and advocate for the existence of an Intelligent Designer: God. But, is the question of our origins the only thing that is relevant in my field?
Often, even the creation versus evolution controversy does not seem to matter in engineering. After all, whether one believes in God or not, people generally agree that 1+1=2, mass and energy are conserved, and specific differential equations only have certain solutions.
Some purport that because the discipline of science and the field of engineering are more systematic and classified than the humanities and social sciences, its devotees would find it easier to compartmentalize their private, spiritual lives from their professional or scientific pursuits. Individual belief systems could be separated quite nicely from the secular work of scientists and engineers.
Intellectuals in the humanities, in contrast, may not be able to separate their academic lives from their private lives, such as having to read the Bible as the inspired Word of God but also as a document for humanistic studies. Thus, a Christian engineer may look essentially no different than a secular engineer in the workplace.
Yet for a follower of God, there is no room in life where leaving God out is excusable regardless of whether one’s field is “codified” or not. There has to be a difference between a God-led scientist and a Godless scientist. The question, then is, what would that difference look like?
One particular afternoon, as I listened to Francis Arnold presenting her work on directed evolution in biological systems, something dawned in my mind. What would it be like if God was the one directing this research? What difference would it make if, before doing anything in the lab, a research student would consecrate his undertaking to God and be attentive to His leading? What would it be like to conduct research with God as one’s Advisor?
It must make a difference. Just imagine the kind of cutting-edge results one would get, results that come by direct instruction from the Maker of the universe, the One who created science.
Instead of randomly testing each sample from the library to find one particular molecule that would accurately target tumor cells, maybe God would reveal the right one some divine way. Perhaps research would finally deliver the answer instead of merely stretched promises to cure cancer. Perhaps this massive energy crisis and environmental issues would not have taken place if godly engineers earlier in the century had accounted that we are stewards of the earth. The results of their studies would have been way ahead of their time.
Further, imagine what impact our Adventist institutions could have if they hosted cutting-edge, God-led research. They would lead the world to experience true education. Scientists, in the truest meaning of the word, would conduct research that deepens knowledge of the Creator as well as of His creations. This would be an education that matters in this life and in the life to come.
A God-led work must make a difference. Of course it will. How can God-led research be the same as every other, secular research? And so I want to commit my doctoral research to the hands of the Maker, because I really do want to know what it is like to be taught and led by God—yes, even in chemical engineering. Despite fancy labs or prestigious institutions, the best place to learn science is at the feet of Jesus.
WORKS CITED:
Robert Wuthnow, “Can Faith Be More Than a Side Show in the Contemporary Academy?” in The American University in a Postsecular Age, ed. Douglas Jacobsen and Rhonda Hustedt Jacobsen (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008). Article found at http://religion.ssrc.org/reforum/Wuthnow.pdf.
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Thank you, sister Josephine! We must dedicate our work to the Lord, but our micro work and our macro work, each day, each task, and our work in the global sense — that is, our mission. You write so well (I should not be surprised, but I am) and it is a privilege to read this piece.
I can sense the sincerity in your words, Jo. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this. :]
I recently came across your blog and have been reading along. I thought I would leave my first comment. I don’t know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading. Nice blog. I will keep visiting this blog very often.
I was reading something for class today and remembered this article. Worldly paradigms through which science and other forms of research are interpreted are driven by sinful motives and may come and go, but research advised by God is timeless. We wouldn’t be offering mere interpretations, but uncovering eternal truths.
Thanks for sharing this. I am also an engineer and sometimes it is tempting to ignore our work as missionaries just because it is hard to bring up conversations about God, but one thing I realized is that when we pray at the start of each day that God may use us to share Him with the people we meet that day, He will provide opportunities for us to share Him. God the author of all science and engineering, and who knows the end from the beginning will certainly give us knowledge we need if we include Him in our research.