Being 'Both'

“A scientific discovery is also a religious discovery. There is no conflict between science and religion. Our knowledge of God is made larger with every discovery we make about the world.”  

Joseph H. Taylor Jr. 

(1993 Nobel Prize Laureate-Physics)

We live in a world of conflict. The only thing you have to do to validate that statement is walk out your door. Conflict constantly surrounds us in our families, in our communities, and in ourselves. Sometimes even the things we love most can seem to be in stark contention.

I am a southerner. I was born in the deep South of the U.S.. The South is a place that I love, a place that has made me who I am, a place often vilified for its history, a place that-like other places-has been deeply entrenched in issues of  injustice. It was in this beautiful and broken place that I developed my own passion for social justice.  

Everything's bigger (and hotter) in Texas. 

I am a scientist. I am an ethicist. When I tell people my degree is in Biology and Philosophy the general response is mostly confusion. These fields seem to most people to be at two extremes, incompatible, in conflict. One based in observable fact, the other based in abstract reasoning. 

Collecting salamander samples for a Comparative Physiology lab in college 

Clemson ethics debate bowl team after regional competition

Our world tells us that we can't be 'both'. The world tells us that things can't live in contention, that differences have to divide us, that there has to be a winner and a loser, that we have to pick a lane. 

I don't believe that. I believe in a God who is the Lion and the Lamb, the Beginning and the End. I believe in a God who says "give and it will be given to you" (Luke 6:38). I believe in a God who finds strength in weakness (2 Corinth 12:10). I believe in a God of paradox. I believe that my God is big enough to encompass science and religion. I believe my God is big enough to encompass Northerners and Southerners and people halfway across the world. I believe my God is big enough to encompass everything we are, which in my experience is a whole list of identities that the world can't reconcile. 

I am a Southerner and a scientist and an ethicist and a Christian and, now, a missionary. 

Yep, I'm going to be a missionary in Rwanda. (I've finally gotten to the point, sorry it took so long but hang in there.) 

Rwanda is about the size of Maryland!

 'Missionary in Africa', now there's an emotionally charged title. But I am. I'm on a mission. I'm on a mission to discover a God of paradox, a God of 'both', a God of 'and'. I'm on a mission to discover a God that can encompass a white upper-middle-class Southern girl and a young Rwandan school pupil. I'm on a mission to discover a God that can speak Kinyarwanda (cause I sure can't yet) and English and that can (hopefully) fill the space between linguistic understanding.  I'm on a mission to discover a God that can heal in a country that has seen so much pain. I'm on a mission to accompany and learn from rather than fix or change.

In the quote above, Joseph H. Taylor Jr., a Nobel laureate in Physics, says that "our knowledge of God is made larger with every discovery we make about the world". With every paradox we encounter, with every seeming contention we find within ourselves or in the world around us, for every wall that is built to divide us, we are introduced to a God who is even bigger and more all-encompassing than we imagined. So for those of you still wondering why I'm going to Rwanda, it is just that: to discover God by discovering more about my brothers and sisters in Christ in Rwanda, to discover God by discovering life in and the beauty of another culture, to discover God by discovering how to teach science in another language (prayers please), to discover God by discovering the Science of Service.

I hope you'll come along with me. I hope you'll pray for me and the almost 80 other young adults going into global service this year. I hope you'll walk with me (via possibly reading the stuff I type) as I experience Rwanda. And most of all, I hope that you'll embrace every seemingly irreconcilable part of yourself and your community, knowing that we have a God of paradox who is big enough to reconcile across even the deepest divides.

Love, 
Sav