The Darwinian Who Found God in the Woods
One of my old biology and zoology teachers died recently. When I knew him, he was an agnostic. He was pretty close to the Richard Dawkins corner of the swimming pool compared to the "Well, I suppose we can't really know anything, so let's all be nice to each other" people. He had a very Darwinian worldview and was very skeptical of religion. Evolution by natural selection was central to his life; his college roommate had even been the product of a German selective breeding program. And yet, my teacher was a kind man, and he was one of the best instructors I ever had.
He was also quite a character. He was a photographer on the side, and I wonder if his eye as an artist played a part later in this story. At one point in his life, he became engaged to a woman and subsequently had a philosophical revelation: he did not, in fact, want anybody telling him what to do, so he went back to living alone. Had he cared to join such a movement, he could probably have been the patron saint of MGTOW. He was also one of those intensely anti-government guys who went to the same gun shows as the militia dudes you’ve seen on the news. He had accumulated an impressive armory by the time I met him. He joked that if he ever completely snapped, he said he wouldn't use his guns because he didn't want to give guns any more bad publicity; he would use a samurai sword. His description of the resulting carnage involved spreading hair, teeth, and eyes everywhere. That was just his sense of humor.
Eventually, after his years of service were over, he took his pension and moved into the woods. He became a hermit. He embodied the spirit of Proverbs 18:1.
And then, about eighteen months before he died, he became a Christian. That part still amazes me, and it makes me very happy.
People sometimes misunderstand what empiricism can and cannot do. Science is extraordinarily good at telling us about things that can be empirically investigated. You can dissect an animal. You can examine a fossil. You can study chromosomes. You can compare populations. You can formulate hypotheses, test them, discard bad ones, revise good ones, and gradually build increasingly powerful descriptions of the observable world, and praise God for that. Seriously. A Christian doesn't need to be afraid of looking at what God made. There's a difference between saying:
"This is the method by which I investigate observable phenomena."
and saying:
"Therefore observable phenomena are all that exist."
The second statement isn't science, it's metaphysics, and that's where things get interesting. The Bible has never claimed that human beings possess perfect access to reality; the truth is quite the opposite. Paul says: "For now we see through a glass, darkly." We are creatures looking at creation through creaturely eyes. We have limited senses, memories, information, perspectives, etc.
Furthermore, according to Scripture, something even more profound is wrong with our perception. We have what Paul calls "sin in our members." We don't merely have insufficient information; we are being actively deceived. See 2 Corinthians 4:4. We can also rationalize, suppress, deceive ourselves, etc. We can become so committed to an interpretation that contrary evidence becomes invisible to us. According to the Bible’s diagnosis, humanity's epistemological problem is deeper than simply needing better scientific instruments. We need revelation.
Despite all that, "The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork." Creation is declaring something, even though the world we live in is presently fallen. Look around. There is order. There is beauty. There is astonishing complexity. There is consciousness. There are somehow beings who can sit around and wonder why there is a universe at all. There is love. There is courage. There is music. There is the strange persistence of goodness in a world that has managed to become remarkably good at producing suffering.
And then there is us; our own ability to appreciate qualities other than brute strength and utility. We are somehow able to recognize beauty even while surrounded by ugliness. We recognize injustice. We recognize love even when we betray it. We recognize truth even when we lie. Something in us keeps insisting that the world ought to be better than it is.
Paul says that Creation groans. Creation is subjected to corruption. We groan. The whole thing is waiting for redemption, and yet, the fingerprints of the original Artist remain.
That's the part I keep thinking about when I think of my teacher. He spent his professional life studying animals. He knew a lot of facts. He was committed to a scientific paradigm. I don't know what finally happened inside his mind. I don't know what argument convinced him. I don't know what conversation, book, experience, person, prayer, crisis, moment of beauty, or inexplicable nudge finally caused him to say: "Jesus is real." I don't want to invent a conversion story for him that I don't know. Maybe it was gradual. Maybe it was sudden. Maybe he couldn't have explained it himself. Maybe there was some moment in the woods when the man who had spent decades insisting that nature was enough finally realized that nature was pointing somewhere.
Whatever happened, I'm grateful that it happened.
God’s work is visible. David looked at the heavens and saw glory. Job looked at storms and animals and stars and discovered that reality is much bigger than his ability to comprehend it. Paul looked at the created order and said that God's power and nature have been made evident through the things He has made. All we really have is a dim mirror, but we see enough to ask questions. Then, God does something extraordinary. If you look for God, you will find Him. He doesn't merely shout additional information from the other side of the universe. He comes here. The God who made the visible world becomes visible. The Word became flesh. The Creator walks around inside His creation.
My teacher wasn't disqualified by the peculiar collection of opinions and personality traits he accumulated during his lifetime. If the grace of God can reach that man, God can get anybody. Perhaps we ought to stop deciding who is beyond hope.
That includes the people who look like him: the angry ones, political malcontents accused of being society’s housecats, hermits, skeptics, scientists, conspiracy nuts, the people who distrust every institution they've ever encountered, the people who have made an entire identity out of not needing anybody, the people who have been burned by churches, the people who think Christianity is intellectually embarrassing, the people who have spent fifty years telling God they don't believe in Him…
We don't know. That's the point. We're squinting at our own reflection half the time, too. We don't know what God is doing in another person's heart. We don't know what conversation will be the last straw against unbelief. We don't know which sentence in a sermon on the radio will stick like a splinter for twenty years before it finally works its way to the surface. We don't know what sunset will make somebody wonder. We don't know what act of kindness, moment of grief, or quiet night in the woods might become the tiny crack through which the light gets in. We don't know if the hinge is a hospital room. We don't know which door looks locked from our side and isn't. We don't know, but God does, and that's enough. That's enough to keep the porch light on for people we've already written off.
My teacher taught me about biology when I was young. He taught me how to look closely at living things. Years later, he taught me something I don't think either of us expected him to teach me. Never assume that what you can currently see is the whole story. He spent his professional life looking at nature. Near the end of it, somehow, he found the Creator, and I am profoundly grateful that he did.
Rest in peace, brother in Christ. You were a good teacher, and apparently, when the time came, you were willing to become a student again.
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