From the time I was very young to this day, I knew there was a God who loved me and I loved Him. I also knew that science was really cool, and I wanted to learn more and more about it. As I grew up, I learned that the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell, Jesus died for my sins, and that somehow the two don’t mix. I remember the sinking feeling in my chest when I learned at the age of eight that Stephen Hawking didn’t believe in a God. Looking back now, I think I was just so young and ignorant of the largely atheist population as a whole, but I remember being shocked that someone so smart believed something different than me. I eventually grew to accept this principle as fact. Science and religion don’t really intersect. You have to pick just one.
Years down the road, I started to think about college, and after a long arduous, path I decided on the sciences, specifically Biology. Just a few short months ago, I recall being so elated to receive a nametag with “College of Science” written on it. This was it; I was finally going to be a scientist.
Since that decision devote my professional life to a scientific discipline, I have encountered a peculiar struggle. As I mentioned before, science and religion were generally mutually exclusive worlds in my own head. I separated the two communities and didn’t really allow them to intersect. However, the more I have grown in my faith and the more I learn in labs and lectures, I have begun to challenge my own thought process.
I may not be the most well versed Christian and I may not pray as much as I am told to, but when I get to extract DNA from tiny microbes I cannot even see, I see a very real God at work. My studies have helped me to tear down that wall I had built up between these parts of my life, and now I can see the duality of these two once-separate things.
Every day I learn something that continues to pull away at my old way of thinking, and I could not be more grateful to have faith and science.