I’ve officially reached the age where I don’t know any less than my parents do, when it comes to a lot of things.
How do I know?
Well, I’ve been asking my parents a lot of “how to” questions lately, such as “How do I monetize my art?” and “How do I get a Biology internship in today’s market?”. Instead of teaching me like they’ve taught me how taxes and voting work, my parents have just shrugged their shoulders and essentially told me, “I don’t know. Figure it out.”
“What do you mean you don’t know?” I’ve replied too many times to count.
“That’s exactly it. I don’t know any more than you do.” both my parents have answered me, verbatim.
Man, that’s a scary thing to hear from your parents.
But, it’s true: I’m an adult. This month, I will be older than my parents were when I was born. In university, I’m pursuing a degree literally nobody in my family has pursued before. Even my extended relatives in Seattle who have their fancy masters’ and PhDs’ didn’t get their degrees in anything related to Biology. Yet, here I am, blazing a trail (or, at least, trying to), in order to find success in a field nobody in my family knows more about than I do.
And, that’s absolutely terrifying!
In an attempt to quell my fears, I’ve retreated into the valley many times in an attempt to get away from the city, and find a place where I can listen for God’s gentle, guiding voice.
Out of Ken Caryl Valley’s 4,800 acres of private open space, the Lyon’s hogback is one of my favorite places to get lost in, so I can have some alone time with the Lord and His creation. If I go during a weekday, the chances of me running into another person on the hogback is about one in ten times. On the weekends, I have about a 50/50 chance of having the hogback all to myself.
In other words, it’s a perfect place to run to when I just need to get away; when I just need to have a little talk with Jesus.
Lately, I’ve found myself on that hogback more often than usual. In the past week, I’ve hoofed it up the red-sand trail to hide among the gambel oaks three times, despite it being close to finals week. After all, I’ve needed it.
When I’m up on the hogback, I hardly feel lonely or alone. Sometimes, it feels like God’s walking right alongside me, regardless of if I’m saying my prayers aloud or silently in my heart. And, that gives me peace, right then and there.
But, when I come to the hogback, I’m not just seeking an immediate sense of peace. I go up there to find out what God has to say. After all, up there, the hustle-and-bustle of the city life goes silent. As I hike further up the trail, my anxiety depletes and my mind falls quiet, while the sights and sounds of God’s creation amplify. Oh, I’m so very thankful to have access to such a beautiful, serene place.
The past few times I’ve come up to the hogback, I’ve brought with me many questions for God. Some of them I can (and do) answer myself, such as how science and faith can not only coexist, but intertwine.
To me, science is the study of nature, while theology is the study of God. Science changes as we learn more about the natural world. In the same way, theology changes as we learn more about God. However, neither God nor nature actually change (generally speaking, anyway). Only one’s understanding of God and nature changes.
Unfortunately, it seems like very few people I know can make this distinction. As far as I can tell- based on lighthearted conversations I’ve had with my Biology acquaintances- I’m the only person in the classroom who believes in God, let alone in the God of the Bible. And in my family, I’m the only Christian who “believes in” the science of evolution (AKA the fact that humans evolved from the same animal chimpanzees evolved from).
There’s nothing inherently wrong with this, but I can’t deny the fact that I feel a little uncomfortable being alone in both respects. In my family, I feel like I have to keep my mouth shut about what I’m learning about in my Biology classes, and on campus, I feel like I have to keep my mouth shut about what I’m learning about God.
Why is this?
When it comes to my family, I’m fairly certain that no matter what I say, they won’t change their minds. According to my Christian family members (whom I dearly love, for the record), we are in no way related to apes, and climate change is not being accelerated by human activities. Plus, it’s not my job to change their minds, so why try?
On the other hand, when it comes to talking about God in university, I simply don’t know anyone in my Biology classes who believes in anything spiritual.
Ok, that’s a bit of a lie… there are two Muslim students in my class who sit several rows away from me. But, everyone who sits within earshot of me has openly stated their disdain for organized religion of any kind. And, I don’t blame them.
I, too, went through an anti-theist phase.
However, let’s be honest: I look like a Duck Dynasty character; I’m very conservative-coded. The second I open my mouth up to talk about God to my peers, they might as well label me as another fundamentalist evangelist who calls evolution “evil-lution”.
Plus, as I said before, it’s not my job to change their minds.
But… I have to admit, the fact that I have such a staunch faith in God while pursuing a Biology degree at a very secular school, adds to my feeling that I don’t belong at CU Denver. Or near anything that has to do with science and research for that matter.
Once again, I’m set apart from everyone else.
In short, that’s the true reason why I’ve been going to the hogback so often lately. I’ve been going to the hogback to wrestle with God. Or, perhaps more accurately, try to figure out how my faith in God and my knowledge in science can be intertwined.
I know there are many Christians (and people of other faiths) who believe in both God and science. I’m friends with a few of them. But, outside of those few people, I don’t know anyone who believes in both science and God. And, that worries me.
In fact, that’s bothered me for over a decade at this point.
When I first learned about evolution sometime in elementary school, my crisis of faith commenced, fueled by my tumultuous family situation and my (losing) battle with Cystic Fibrosis. By the time I reached middle school, I was an angry agnostic with a great deal of cognitive dissonance between science and God.
Ironically, it was my experience at the private Christian school in 10th grade that turned me into a fervent anti-theist. Why? Because they not only failed to address the contradictions between the theory of Evolution and Genesis, but they called the one Christian biologist I knew of a heretic, simply for stating the fact that humans and apes share a common ancestor at a science symposium hosted by Front Range Christian school.
When that domino finally fell, the rest followed.
It took several years before I was willing to entertain the possibility of there existing a God, let alone a God who loves us, and actively cares about us and His creation. Even then, I was (and still am) extremely wary of God.
During my gap years between high school and college, I bought and read many theological books in hopes of “rediscovering” God. First, I started with memoirs such as “On Her Knees” by a progressive Christian Youtuber, Brenda Davies, I briefly watched during the pandemic, “Native” by Kaitlin B. Curtice, and “Educated” by Tara Westover, among several others. Then, I got into heavier theological books, such as the “Unseen Realm” stuff by Dr. Michael Heiser, and “How the Bible Actually Works!” by Dr. Peter Enns.
I watched a lot of Youtube lectures given by various theologians, pastors, and scientists between books, too. In fact, whenever I was playing video games or making art, those lectures served as background noise to drown out the political chaos brought in by the pandemic.
By the time I was getting ready to move back to Colorado after spending a very dark winter in Washington state, I’d surrendered myself to Christ once more. It wasn’t a spectacular event, really. I just kind of… realized… over a period of a few weeks, that I was a Christian once again. But the faith I now professed was very different from the faith I was brought up upon.
That said, I still believed (and believe) that Christ is the Son of God who lived and died for our sins. I believe in the Trinity; that God, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are the same, but different. I really wish I had the words to explain what that means.
But, aside from that, I really struggle to reconcile my Christian faith with the conservative, fundamentalist faith I was taught by my mom and grandparents. Even today, I struggle to talk about God with my Christian family members- despite the fact that we’re all Christians- because of how different my faith is compared to theirs.
Most obviously, unlike my Christian family members, I don’t take the creation story in Genesis as a literal, historical account of how God created the world. I think the creation story in Genesis is a myth, meant to convey the truth that God created the world, and wanted humans to bear His image (AKA the Imago Dei).
But, when I’m asked how I think the world was literally created, I’d answer it happened over billions of years. And we came about via Darwinian evolution. That means that, scientifically speaking, we are animals, and we are genetically related to every other living thing on earth, including and especially apes. In fact, I’d go as far as to say that we are apes. We just happen to be far smarter than chimpanzees and orangutans.
If I were to say exactly that at the Christmas Eve dinner table, World War Three might start.
But evolution’s just one of the many sensitive topics I pretty much refuse to discuss with my Christian family members, even though I sometimes really want to.
On the other side of the coin, I can comfortably talk about science and biology with my atheist dad. He's the only person in my life who laps up documentaries as much as I do. But the second I open my mouth to entertain the mere possibility of there being a Creator behind it all, my dad’s eyes glaze over. He doesn’t argue with me, but he’s obviously been burned by the church many times, especially when it came to asking the question, “Why does a loving God allow bad things to happen to innocent people?”
I mean… my paternal grandpa suffered a brain aneurysm that almost completely took away his ability to walk and talk when my dad was in kindergarten. Years later, I was born, and my dad had to watch me suffer for my entire life while he couldn’t do much of anything about it except make me take my pills and do my treatments.
Naturally, when my dad asked that very important question about suffering to his fundamentalist, Lutheran pastors, he was given less-than-satisfactory answers, to say the least. Couple that with my dad’s childhood love for science and science-fiction, and the fact that he was desperate to leave the farm he was raised upon for the city, and you get… well… the fervent, jaded atheist he is today.
Again, I don’t blame him one bit.
However, I wish there was a way to marry the hours-long spiritual conversations I can have with my Christian family members, with the hours-long conversations about science I can have with my dad.
Good news is, there is a way to marry those two. Youtube is a thing, after all. But, now the question is: do I have the balls- er I mean ovaries- to do it?