Saturday, September 09, 2006

Three Men, Two Divergent Paths

I've come across a couple good websites, and I thought I'd share them with
you:

1) A gallery of artwork by Dr. Frank Netter -- the "Michelangelo of Medicine."
2) An Overview of Biomedical Engineering -- which started with a pharoah
with a wooden toe!
3) Graduate InterVarsity Fellowship" -- a group of believers in medicine, history, physics, and a whole host of other departments.
4) A Med Student Blog -- by Karen Lo at UMich; she has some very good insights.

Recently, I've been able to hear 3 different speakers:

A professor
A Nobel Prize Winner
A neurologist


The first talk was with my professor. We discussed evolution, politics, and Christianity. What I found in our conversation was:
1) To him, evolution is a solid, unquestionable fact
2) The majority of people in the US currently are ignorant, and this explains their extreme gullability when it comes to anti-evolutionary speakers. He does not believe that people turn against evolution because of their own, scientific inquiry. Rather, they are told by someone else what they should believe about evolution, and then they obey complicity.
4) He belives that the Western church today knows nothing about what Jesus taught or said

The Nobel Prize winner described some of his recent designs in chemisty, but that's not what he talked most about. Even in the midst of his technical speech, he would throw in references to books he had just read and enjoyed. The one book he recommended that we all read is "Out of Control." He often referred to "going back to Mother," which is how he referred to Nature.

I was struck by the fact that this man who has had an extremely succesful career is still pursuing more than chemistry. He is searching for universal truth. Still, his talk was extremely rambly and patchy. Nevertheless, one statement of his that "stuck" with me is this (he was stressing the incredibly vastness of things to study in the universe): "We could all work on peanut butter and never get enough of it."

The last speaker I've recently heard was a neurologist at a local hospital.
Not only that, but he is a believer. He talked about career choices. Through his years as an undergrad, a medical student, a resident, an attending, a fledgling, and an established neurologist, he has tried to keep his priorities in this order: God, wife, medicine...

For example, instead of looking for the positions that would advance his career the most, at one point he took a position that made the most sense for his wife. He realized that he wouldn't be able to talk to her alot because of the work he would be doing, so he wanted her to be close to her family, for support.

At the end of his talk, he asked for questions. The question came up, "How do you share your faith?" He said that you can wear "Jesus" pens. He pointed out that in his clinic they're about 2 neurologists short, so they are backlogged about 2 months. If he took a lot of time to explain Scripture to each patient, that would be pretty much equal to stealing time from his colleagues. Sometimes, though, little things can provide openings. One incident he shared had happened recently. This neurologist puts a verse on his screensaver. At one point he was treating a Jewish patient, but the neurologist had to step out of the room. When he came back, the man made a comment about the "New Testament verse on your screen." The doctor looked at the screen and saw that it was Jeremiah 29:11. That wasn't any NT verse! But it gave the neurologist an opening to talk about something other than spasms and numbness.

Of the three speakers, one man is settled in his view, one man seems to be searching, and one man has found the ultimate source of all wisdom and knowledge. While some of the speakers were tangled in a web of secular humanism, one man had yielded himself to the ultimate God. His faith made a difference, and that difference showed in how he spoke, what he spoke about, and how he viewed his past and future.

1 comment:

eve said...

Thanks for the encouragement!
Love you!
"eve"