decision

 [Earlier this week I was privileged to speak to several hundred middle school and high school students. This is what I said.]

Three years ago I had the chance to give a TED talk from this stage. That night I asked the question: “What is the most important machine in the world?”  You can find my TED talk on the internet if you’re curious about it.

Tonight I'm going to ask a different question: “What is the biggest decision you'll ever make?”

Let me ask that again – “What is the biggest decision you’ll will ever make?”

For a group of middle school and high school students, some of the easy answers that immediately come to mind are things like these:

What high school classes should I take? If I'm in middle school I'm looking ahead to that question. Even if I’m in high school I'm probably thinking about that too.

Should I go to college or tech school?

What college should I attend?

What should I study in college?

How am I going to find a partner in my life?

Should I buy a car? If I already have a car, should I buy a different car?

Should I live at home or move?

iOS or Android?

(Actually, that's a decision probably all of you have made already!)

Those are some of the obvious decisions that come to mind.

But, if I ask this question to students one-on-one, and when I read about the pressures that you are really facing, and when I sit down with students like you and get to know you, there are bigger and more difficult and more private and more personal decisions you're facing.

How far do I go with my partner sexually?

What do I do with my guilt feelings about viewing pornography?

What do I do about my friend who’s hooked on oxycodone or some other opioid or some other drug?

Who do I tell about my eating disorder?

I killed someone with my car when I was texting. How do I even go on with my life? (I heard that one last year)

What do I do with my worries about my own drinking problem?

How do I deal with my friend’s suicide?

Who do I tell that I've been cutting since my parents' divorce? (I heard that one last week)

Do I keep going to church? Why?

Who do I tell that I'm questioning my gender identity?

If we are honest, these are the harder questions and bigger decisions that are being faced by students right now in this room.

Tonight we’re going to think bit about the decisions that you are facing and how some of them are pretty big. Then I'm going to look back over my life, because I'm quite a bit older than you, and I am going to reflect on many of the decisions I have faced. Then I'm going to tell you about the biggest decision I ever made.

I'm going to challenge you that you probably face that same big decision.

 These are pictures of me from when I was your age.

When I was in middle school and high school there was no Internet and there were no cell phones so we had to create fun in old-school ways – things like finding out how many rice krispie bars I could fit in my mouth at once.

I also faced some big decisions when I was in high school. I had to decide if I wanted to be a professional musician in my life – I was both a classical musician and a rock musician and I love music.

I also had to think about whether I wanted to be an actor because I love drama and I love performing. Should I be an actor or musician or a scientist or doctor?

I also faced a big decision when I was a freshman in high school and had a large cancer operation. I had to decide how to manage the challenges of chemotherapy and radiation therapy and all the questions of my friends. How to go on as a cancer patient?

I also had a big decision because when I was a senior I met a girl who was a sophomore, and fell in love with her. Just three years later we were engaged and that was a big decision for both of us.

After a few years we faced decisions about starting a family and raising two daughters.

When they were little the decisions were challenging, but when I look back decades later I realize that the biggest decisions were about how to raise our girls so that we could eventually let them go. Those are big decisions that your parents are thinking about right now.

 Then our family faced many big decisions as we moved for my education. I was born in the Twin Cities and grew up in Madison, Wisconsin, where I got my college degree and my Ph.D. Then we had to decide about moving for more education. We moved to Los Angeles where I studied science at Caltech. Then we moved to my first job as a professor in Nebraska. Then more than 20 years ago we moved here to Mayo Clinic for me to be a scientist. Think of all the big decisions along the way as we made those moves with our family.

Now imagine all the decisions that I face every day as a research scientist. My research group has students and professional scientists and each day we have to decide how to study the problems that interest us in my lab. I have to decide how to raise the money we need for our science projects. I have to decide how to approach our science questions.

 And I now have other big decisions all the time as a leader in science. I am the Principal (they call it the Dean) of the graduate school at Mayo Clinic. That means I am always facing decisions about who should be our new graduate students, and how to serve them.

 There have been other big decisions in my life. I think of decisions that I have faced when serving in the community. I was fortunate to lead the committee that discussed the idea of the name for this church when it moved to this location 15 years ago. We wanted a name that would be welcoming to everyone. Not far from here is a street sign and that sign gave me the idea that maybe our new church should be named for its neighborhood rather than for a denomination. That's why the church is now called Autumn Ridge Church. That was a big decision.

Then I was the leader of the committee that designed and built this church. $25 million were raised and we had to decide how to invest in this facility – every detail, every room, every function. Our committee had more than 90 meetings to make all those big decisions.

Then I had the chance to lead the committee that designed the gymnasium addition you were just enjoying. We had to decide how to make it into a space that could serve as a gym for recreation,

 but also a flexible space to be transformed, like it was tonight, into a beautiful event center. Those were big decisions.

 And I had the idea that in our new building we might be able to host new activities and functions for the community. I decided on an arts series so that every year there are two big concerts where we invite national performing artists and welcome people from all over the region to come and enjoy music. Imagine all of the decisions that are needed to hire artists for concerts and organize volunteers and publicity for two big arts events every year! Those are a lot of big decisions.

So that is a look back at the many many big decisions I have faced in my life.

But what is the biggest decision I ever made…what is the biggest decision you’ll ever make?

That's what I want to talk about now.

To understand the biggest decision I ever made, we need to think about my family when I was in high school. I was a very successful student. I had straight A's and was co-valedictorian of my high school class. I was a National Merit Scholar and was constantly involved in many exciting activities in high school.

But my life was not perfect.

I remember that I was lonely. I had friends, but I really wanted a girlfriend. I wanted a girlfriend more than just about anything else. So I was lonely, but I also had other problems and concerns. For one thing, I felt guilty about the way that I had treated my little sister through much of her life. She was vulnerable but I would make fun of my sister in many ways, and I acted like a bully toward her. This made me feel guilty.

I had been raised in a church and had been going to church every week of my life.

 I had come to my own theology about God. In thinking about my desire for a girlfriend, but also my feelings of guilt about my behavior, I had the idea that God was a judge of my life. If I wanted something good, like a girlfriend, I thought that meant I needed to act better and please God so he would reward me. If I was bad and felt guilty about what I was doing wrong, I assumed that was why God was not rewarding me with a girlfriend in my life. 

It was a simple idea that God was the judge, and my job was to be as good as I could be to be rewarded.

The story of the biggest decision I ever made is because of a friend of mine named Tom.

Tom and I played high school basketball together when we were juniors. We were on the basketball team together and would often talk after practice. We lived near each other and would ride our bicycles home together after basketball.

One night in the fall of my junior year our practice was done and as we walked out to our bikes we began to talk about life. My friend Tom had been thinking more about God, and his relationship to God. He asked me that night – “Tell me about your relationship with God, and tell me who Jesus Christ is in your life?”

I was a little annoyed by this question because I had a simple relationship with God and didn’t want to talk about it. I told my friend Tom – “I don't need to think about Jesus Christ. I have a simple relationship with God. I try to do the best I can so God will reward me if I’m good. If I'm bad I expect that God will punish me or withhold good things from me. Jesus was a good teacher, but he died tragically. I don't need any special relationship with Jesus. I just have a relationship with God. Fanatics and Jesus freaks and fundamentalists talk about relationships with Jesus. Maybe you should just have a relationship with God like I do.”

My friend Tom was curious and persistent and he offered to give me two little booklets that explained Christianity more clearly. I didn't really want to read the booklets because I was annoyed about Tom’s question. I was afraid he was some kind of born-again Christian who was pushing some weird fanatical kind of Christianity on me. I was suspicious.

I did finally take the little booklets and started to read them. One was by a famous teacher named Billy Graham. The other was called Born Again. I wasn't very interested in the booklets at first and I didn't really want to read them, but I was a bit curious and they were short and easy to study. I was wondering if there could be more to my relationship with God than what I was experiencing.

As I read the booklets I was very surprised. The booklets explained teachings from the New Testament of the Bible. Even though I had gone to church all my life, I had never heard about how to experience a personal relationship with God.

Here are some of the examples of Bible verses that changed my thinking and led to the biggest decision of my life.

Some of these are statements from St. Paul. Paul had never met Jesus personally, but he was a Jew who understood how important the new principles of Christianity were. In his letter to the church at Rome, St. Paul taught these important principles. In the third chapter of Paul's letter he wrote “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”

All have sinned.

This was a surprise to me because I was hoping that I could be good enough so that God would reward me with a girlfriend.

Here I learned that everyone falls short of God’s glory.

In the sixth chapter of Paul's letter he wrote “the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

This passage really surprised me.

Paul says that what I deserve in my life is separation from God. I don't deserve good things, like a girlfriend. Because of who I am, and how I behave, I deserve nothing from God. “But” is the next word. “But the gift of God… the gift of God… is eternal life, and it's through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

This passage taught me that God has a gift for me. It's not something that I can earn or deserve.

It's not because I am good.

It's because he is good.

I didn't want to think about a relationship with Jesus Christ, but this passage says that the gift is through Jesus Christ.

In Chapter 5 of Paul’s letter to the Roman church Paul goes on to write that “God showed his love for us in this – while we were still sinners Christ died for us.”

I was amazed. Even though I am intrinsically bad and don't deserve anything from God, Christ died for me even while I was bad.

God gave me a gift. Jesus paid for my sins.

One of the booklets shared a verse from the New Testament Gospel of John – a verse that most of us have heard about, even at football games. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that whoever believes in him will not die but have everlasting life.”

What an amazing promise and gift.

Jesus has already paid for me and for all of my sins. My job isn't to try to be perfect and live well. It is to accept the gift of Jesus, and live my life thankfully.

What amazes me as I think back is that all of my life I had been going to a church where there was a breathtaking symbol of Jesus dying for me. I had not recognized the symbol or thought about it.

At my church in the front, above the alter, was a large wooden cross. On the cross was a beautiful and terrible larger-than-life wooden sculpture of my savior, Jesus Christ, dying for me. How could I have missed the huge implication of the sculpture?

I was trying to earn God's blessings.

Right in front of me was a sculpture showing my savior dying for me. He died in my place to pay for me.

When Jesus died on the cross, he paid for every sin and every act of failure and evil that I had ever committed.

He paid for every mistake and sin I will ever commit.

He paid for my whole life once and for all when he died.

What's more amazing – in that act he also paid for every sin you have ever committed. He paid for every sin you will ever commit.

More than that, Jesus paid for every sin that has ever been committed by anyone in the world.

And he paid for every sin that will ever be committed by anyone who ever lives.

Jesus's death was so amazing that it paid for everything and for everyone to start fresh.

Jesus' death redeemed the entire world forever.

That is the most amazing idea I have ever heard.

So what is the biggest decision you will ever make?

For me it was deciding that I would stop trying to earn God’s favor and accept that Jesus had already paid the price for me.

My biggest decision was to surrender my life to Jesus Christ.

My biggest decision was to ask Jesus Christ to be my savior and pay for me.

My biggest decision was to live the rest of my life being thankful for what God has done for me in Jesus.

I made that decision when I was a junior in high school. That night I got down on my knees in my room and I prayed a prayer of surrender to God. I'm going to pray a prayer like that again right now, and I ask you to close your eyes and listen as I pray. As I pray, if my words are touching you and you feel that they’re words that you want to make true in your own life, then pray them along with me and let your heart be changed. After I am finished praying, please keep your eyes closed as I’ll say a few more words.

Here is what I prayed that night.

Dear God, I have lived my whole life thinking that I can be good enough to earn things from you. I now know that that is not true. I have learned that you love me so much that you have paid for me through the death of Jesus Christ on the cross. Thank you Jesus for dying for me. Thank you Jesus for paying with your life for all the sins of my life. Thank you for offering me your life to pay for me forever. I now accept you as my savior and I accept your life as payment for me. I want to surrender to you and let you live in me for the rest of my life. I want to live with you in heaven forever and I ask you to be my savior. Thank you for coming into my life now.

I prayed that simple prayer that night and gave up trying to be good enough for God. He changed my life that night.

It was the biggest decision of my life.

If you prayed along with me just now and feel that tonight you've come to understand that Jesus offered his life as payment for you, and if you would like to accept the gift of Jesus tonight, then with all eyes closed in this room, raise your hand for a moment to symbolize before God your acceptance of his love and gift for you tonight.

If this was your choice tonight then please let someone know this evening. Talk to a leader or tell a friend or mention it to a parent.

I will also be here in front so come and chat or ask questions about life with Jesus as your savior.

3.15.19

again

I have been blessed to enjoy Florida Christmas vacations with my wife’s family for almost 40 years.

For a Wisconsin native, these sunny weeks have been surreal. When the girls were young, I joked that even sharing half of the child-care load during the vacation week made me feel like I needed a subsequent real vacation.

Since the girls grew up, I often use the peaceful vacation time to plan logistics for the major arts series concert events I produce at our church, or to write creatively.

That was the case at Christmas of 2014. I began to envision a dramatic musical project about heaven.

It seems that everyone thinks about heaven, but few people talk about heaven. We all instinctively long for heaven, but we don’t know much about it. For Christians, we look to the Bible for guidance on how to know God and how to be rescued and how to become part of what Jesus called “the kingdom of heaven,” but we still find heaven to be a mystery. We are taught that every one of us needs to be forgiven when confronted by a perfect deity, and we learn that we can never earn this forgiveness. We learn that God offers forgiveness as a free gift – his rescue comes through his own goodness and sacrifice, not ours.

But what is heaven really about?

How will heaven address the great griefs of this life? Why do we long for a redemption and restoration that will undo the pain we now know only too well?

What about a child lost in an accident?

What about an innocent animal that enriches a life and teaches about death too soon?

What about the parent whose loss leaves a young woman empty before she has grown up?

I thought about the people in my life that have raised these pressing questions, and I thought about three stories I have written to honor them. If Christianity is true, if the rescue offered by Jesus’ death on the cross and his resurrection from the dead are real, if God will one day redeem and restore all of creation in this little particle of his universe, shouldn’t I address this unspoken longing?

Longing for heaven.

I guess I needed to be in my fifties before I could collect three of my stories about longing for heaven.

So I gathered them. Three stories about grief and longing for heaven. They all speak about the longing to experience the loved one again. Someday. Somehow. By God’s grace.

Again is a universal longing, so I named the collection Again.

One of the great joys in my life is being surrounded by creative friends who are willing to share my dreams and introduce me to more creative friends.

Four of those friends, Jeffry Swertfeger, Brian Dunbar, Tommy Rinkoski, and Evan Bonde, joined me for this creative project.

I envisioned a collection of original dramatic readings, music, and songs. These friends helped realize it. Jeffry wrote original songs for my friends to sing. Brian wrote and performed original musical scores to enhance the readings and he recorded the audio performances. Tommy edited my stories and created screenplays, and then recruited some of Rochester Minnesota’s finest actors. Evan patiently captured everything on camera.

We created a video of Again, saved for now as a template that could someday form the basis for a live performance. Live events carry amazing power, but they are so transient. So few people can attend. Since we are not certain of the prospects for the logistics needed for live performances of Again, I have chosen to preserve a simple video version here for now.

Besides the team that created these elements, superbly talented old and new friends read and sang their way through all of this original material for the recording.  Their creativity honors me beyond words. I am so thankful to Mollie Baker, Bria Carr, Jerry Casper, Tanner Fiek, Mariya Maragos, Nick Mezzacapa, Mick Nichols, Audrey Rinkoski, Cory Wentland, and Sue Zehasky for sharing their gifts for this project.

Who knows whether this work will ever be realized as a live performance? If you have 38 minutes and are curious, watch it here, and wonder with me why we each are wired to long for our own personal Again.

4.12.18

psalm 22

From our vantage point as western readers in 2018, it is difficult to remember that the biblical book of Psalms is a set of lyrics from a collection of worship songs whose music is long lost.

Removed from their original Hebrew context, we don’t sense them as poetry, let alone lyrics.

These were the ancient worship songs of Israel. Studying them teaches us something about worship songs. They are brutally honest expressions of every kind of human emotion.

Our modern worship songs are narrow in scope, telling God that he is good, telling God that we love him, reciting canonical truths about what he has accomplished for us. Those are not bad things, but the Psalms tell us that worship lyrics can be deeper.

Much deeper.

We can cry out in anger, fear, misery, frustration. We can express doubt and horror. We can blame and exaggerate and use sarcasm. The lyrics of the Psalms are often brutally honest and even confused. Reading these lyrics speaks permission for a deeper and more honest kind of singing in our worship of God.

I was reflecting on this as I read two contrasting psalms, both of them lyrics to songs whose melodies are long forgotten.

Psalm 23 is beloved. In The Message the translation is rendered:

God, my shepherd! I don't need a thing.
You have bedded me down in lush meadows,
you find me quiet pools to drink from.
True to your word,
you let me catch my breath
and send me in the right direction.

Even when the way goes through Death Valley,
I'm not afraid
when you walk at my side.
Your trusty shepherd's crook
makes me feel secure.

You serve me a six-course dinner
right in front of my enemies.
You revive my drooping head;
my cup brims with blessing.

Your beauty and love chase after me
every day of my life.
I'm back home in the house of God
for the rest of my life.

Many of us remember these lyrics in various other translations. The words are safe and comforting. These lyrics are what we expect in a reassuring worship song. We want to sing it over and over.

Yes, Psalm 23 is beautiful and it’s model for our own modern worship songs. That’s fine.

But what struck me, on reflection, were the lyrics to the song just before this one.

Psalm 22 starts like this:

God, God...my God! Why did you dump me
miles from nowhere?
Doubled up with pain, I call to God
all the day long. No answer. Nothing.
I keep at it all night, tossing and turning.

And you! Are you indifferent, above it all,
leaning back on the cushions of Israel's praise?
We know you were there for our parents:
they cried for your help and you gave it;
they trusted and lived a good life.

And here I am, a nothing-an earthworm,
something to step on, to squash.
Everyone pokes fun at me;
they make faces at me, they shake their heads:
"Let's see how God handles this one;
since God likes him so much, let him help him!”…

Not a conventional worship song? Too personal? Too depressing? Lyrics that accuse God of indifference in the midst of my suffering? Who would dare put that to music?

Who would remember lyrics like that in a time of despair?

I asked myself those questions.

Then I reflected on one of the most poignant truths in all of the Bible. 

Jesus Christ, my savior, hung suffering and dying on a Roman cross, the ultimate innocent lamb paying once and for all for your imperfections and shortcomings…paying once and for all for my imperfections and shortcomings. As he suffered there what came to his lips were lyrics from an ancient song he had known since childhood. Songs have a way of transcending logic and speaking when isolated words can’t. Jesus used lyrics to speak beyond time. We’re not told that he sung these words, but he might well have.

Jesus didn’t sing lyrics from the encouraging Psalm 23.

He chose the lyrics of Psalm 22.

Matthew 27 records the moment:

From noon to three, the whole earth was dark. Around mid-afternoon Jesus groaned out of the depths, crying loudly, "Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?" which means, "My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?"

At that moment he sang an ancient worship song to us.

We don’t need to be afraid of honest worship songs like that.

He wasn’t.


4.10.18

election 2016

  
Dearest Liz and Chris

It is easy to become frustrated or even furious when we sense what we interpret as ignorance in our society, and especially when we perceive it in our friends. 

I want to remind you of something that we have tried to elevate in your lives above even knowledge and insight.  It is why we eagerly sent you to public schools, and why your grandparents invested in your college education at large public universities. 

It was to learn the concept of tolerance and the ability to make friends and communicate with all kinds of people, including people you may feel are uneducated, biased, or misled. 

In our civil society, our hope is in the ability to love and serve even (and especially) those with whom we disagree. We have no hope of dialog or change unless we have communication and mutual respect. Using insulting and dismissive language will not change our society. Unconditional love, and an ear to understand the concerns of others are necessary. 

While it may appear misguided to us, there are some who are much more influenced by what they believe to be the impact of a presidential candidate on the future supreme court, or national security, or the growing size of government, or the right to bear arms, or many other issues that might seem subordinate to us. 

Some act simply on an instinct for change because they feel unempowered. 

As an example, our faith community attracted us because we agree to love and serve each other and together build ministries to serve others and introduce them to Jesus Christ, even though we may disagree on politics. Our imperative to love and serve others and explain the love of Jesus to them does not depend on our politics or their politics or who ends up as president. 

For what it is worth, my approach is to build relationships that allow me to understand why another person might think differently about the world than me. Only then does it make sense to try to explore those feelings and discover if more information could lead to a different opinion. I also enjoy working with people who may have different politics by choosing projects where we can agree to serve together. This then earns a sense of trust and appreciation that might lead to dialog, eventually. 

Don’t be discouraged. I’m not. I love my friends not because of their politics or in spite of their politics, but because they are my friends.

Feynman

I received an amazing gift in the mail today.

I had wanted to be an architect…or maybe an archeologist…or a musician. As I started college in 1979 I told people I was pre-med and then began to imagine an MD-PhD trajectory. Truth be told, I think I gravitated toward that dual degree target mostly to impress other people during those early college years. I probably had the grades and the standardized test skills. I had a medical history so there was the needed curiosity. On the other hand, I had never asked myself whether I had the needed commitment to service and empathy, or to teamwork, or to joining the healthcare machine. By 1982 I knew my undergraduate BS honors degree at the University of Wisconsin–Madison would be in molecular biology. It was time to decide if medicine or science or both were really in the cards for me.

The answer came through several scientists who served as role models. None was more important than Bill Dove. Bill was a remarkable scientist at the McArdle Laboratory for Cancer Research at Madison. With his wife, Alexandra, he led a genetics research lab with interests spanning bacteriophages (viruses that infect bacteria), Physarum polycephalum (a slime mold that shape-shifts), and the developmental genetics and cancer genetics of mice. Bill's example taught me that it was possible for scientific curiosity to take a research laboratory in multiple directions simultaneously. Bill's career taught me that physical chemical thinking could connect to genetics and to developmental biology and to cancer biology, and that a single scientist could make those connections. Bill's career also taught me that the history of molecular biology was amazingly brief, and that in the 1980's individual scientists could be connected with all of the founders of the discipline.

And Bill taught me about Caltech.

Actually, it wasn't Bill that taught me directly, it was the books on Bill's office shelves. Early in my internship with Bill at McArdle, I had a mix of labwork and office tasks. In those pre-computer days, the clerical work included filing of reprints and organizing books and papers. Bill's narrow office included a rudimentary bookshelf assembled from bricks and wood. On it was a treasure trove of textbooks and notebooks. Some were dusty, some were in frequent use. As my organizational assignments often took me to these shelves, I began to be familiar with the titles there. One red 3-volume hard-cover set of books often caught my eye. It was a collection called Lectures on Physics. The books embodied an unprecedented freshman physics curriculum developed at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena at about the time I was born. The curriculum was the entirely unconventional product of the mind of the incomparable Richard Feynman, a theoretical physicist who shared the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1965, shortly after the textbook collection had been written.

Feynman was a character.

Besides being willing to teach freshman physics and develop his own original 3-volume curriculum, he was an avid traveler, a frank speaker, a dabbler in hallucinogenic drugs, a man fascinated by languages, and a bongo player. I had heard of Feynman, but paging through these textbooks piqued my curiosity in new ways. What was Caltech like? Why were these books on Bill's shelf?

Bill Dove had done his PhD in the physical chemistry of DNA with Norman Davidson, a Caltech physicist who had been part of the Manhattan Project. Dove's PhD was granted in 1962, when Feynman was finishing his Lectures on Physics for Caltech undergraduates studying a few buildings away. Bill Dove had been part of the interdisciplinary academic and intellectual life at Caltech. I found myself daydreaming of that mystique. It occupied a place in the background of my thoughts.

It was in the Dove lab that I realized that the entrepreneurial independence of the career of a PhD scientist fit my personality. Though not a lover of risk, those that know me will affirm that I thrive when I'm in charge. I didn't want to be at the beck and call of a pager, or told what my patient schedule was going to be. I didn't want a boss. My experience in the Dove lab sealed my fate–I wanted to be a scientist like Bill Dove, or at least a weak impression of him.

After my transformation in the Dove laboratory, these aspirations led me to a PhD in molecular biology and a thesis project in the human oncology lab of Bruce Dolnick at the interface of chemistry and biology. In 1988, after considering postdoctoral opportunities in Cambridge England, Amsterdam, Montpellier France, and Boulder Colorado, I was drawn irresistibly to creative molecular biology and chemistry work being done independently by Peter Dervan and Barbara Wold at…Caltech.

In a sense, my professional dream came true when I accepted a postdoctoral fellowship there in 1988. It changed my life. The mystique was still present. Richard Feynman died just after Laura and I chose our apartment in Pasadena. His name was still spoken quietly and with reverence when I began my work in those hallowed halls that summer.

Now, 28 years later, I'm 55 and a professional molecular biologist. I will never attain the impact of Bill Dove, but I keep trying. At a retirement celebration for him a year ago we spoke about legacies and threads that link people and careers. As Bill planned the contraction of his office in retirement, he kindly asked me if there were any particular items that held special meaning for me. It was a profoundly generous question. I thought for just a moment and then replied.

A year later, Bill's office transformation in Madison is complete. How do I know? It is because of what I received in a heavy, lovingly packed cardboard box today.

There are only a few possessions in my life that I would truly describe as "cherished." That list just got a little longer.

9.1.2016

Rome

A friend of mine will be spending the fall in Rome. I wrote to wish him well:

Dear Peter-

Congratulations on your opportunity to spend this semester abroad, in particular, in Rome!  How exciting. I have no doubt that you will have a remarkable time with plenty of experiences that will change your life.

Enjoy every one of them!

I wanted to send you off with some thoughts that you may find a bit different from what others are saying. Because you have given your life to Jesus Christ, and depend on him for your identity and purpose, I wanted to reflect a minute on perhaps the most important letter recorded in the Bible. It is the letter of Saint Paul to the church in Rome. It was written by Paul from the city of Corinth, in Greece. The date of writing was approximately 56 AD, when Paul was about 60 years old. Since you will be living in Rome, I thought this was a good time to review why Paul's letter to the Romans is so amazing and important. Bear with me. If you are bored on your flight to Italy, maybe it would be a good time to read the whole letter. For now, just a few comments on some of the most amazing parts.

Paul was born in about 4 BC in Tarsus, a city in southern Turkey. We don't know too much about him, but it touches me to realize that he was about the same age as Jesus Christ, though they never met before Jesus was crucified in the early 30's AD. Paul's original name was Saul, and he was an orthodox Jew, a man of extreme integrity and determination to keep Judaism pure. As you will recall from the Book of Acts, Saul was miraculously converted from a persecutor of early Christians to the greatest missionary of the early church. His passion was to explain about Jesus Christ to the Gentiles, that is, to non-Jews. Without the life and ministry of Paul, the spread of Christianity might have largely been limited to Jewish communities. Paul changed the world. His ministry is why you and I heard a clear explanation of how God has pursued us, paying our own debts of evil through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ for us.

So what is so important about Paul's letter to the early church at Rome? It is a letter that clarified the central truths of Christianity in ways that have been helping change lives ever since. The letter is rich with Paul's theological teaching (after all, he was an expert in the Jewish scriptures so he could explain in detail how the life and death of Jesus fulfilled the Jewish story, while changing everything). Though the entire letter is worth detailed study, there is a selection of very famous verses (statements) from this letter that have been used for centuries to help explain Christianity to those seeking to understand it. These verses helped convince me to give my life to Jesus Christ in 1978. As you reflect on them, keep in mind that as you live and study in Rome, you carry the legacy of Saint Paul, whose love for the people of the early church in Rome led him to write this letter. Recall that he was writing to early Gentile believers who were confused and still trying to understand his message.  This was hundreds of years before Emperor Constantine made Christianity into an imperial religion. Recall that Paul was writing about 20 years after his conversion experience in 36 AD. Reflect also on the fact that Paul probably was killed about 10 years after writing this letter. We don't know, but he may also have died in Rome under Emperor Nero.

Here are some of the amazing verses in this letter, and what they mean to me. Remember that it is always risky to select individual Bible verses and read them out of context. That is why I encourage you to read the entire letter.


Rom 3:10 There is no one righteous, not even one.
Rom 3:23 For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

These two verses remind me that all humans are in the same boat – we fall short of God's standard. We stumble when it comes to the ten commandments, and even if we manage to avoid doing bad things, we leave good things undone. Worse, Jesus taught that our thought lives count against us as much as our actions. We all stand before God in need of restoration and redemption, and we don't have the tools to restore or redeem ourselves.


Rom 5:8 But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

This amazing statement suggests that our rescue isn't about our goodness, but about his goodness. It also tells us that there is nothing we can do to merit God's love. There is nothing we can do to make God love us more than he already does. We don't have to improve ourselves or get clean in order to be forgiven. Jesus died to pay for us just as we are. Sure, there are plenty of things that we can do to love God more, and to imitate his great unconditional love for us. Those things show our appreciation and thanks, but they won't make God love us more. He can't love us more.


Rom 6:23 For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

This verse reminds me how wonderful is God's free gift. I had separated myself from him through my selfishness and pride. He has not given me what I deserved, but offers a gift of forgiveness, and a chance to be redefined forever. If I accept this gift, I am forever new, not seen by God in terms of my sin, but seen by him as his own son, Jesus Christ. I need not constantly worry about this new status – I have been adopted forever. Even as I continue to struggle to imitate him, he has defined me as saved permanently.


Rom 10:9 If you declare with your mouth "Jesus is Lord," and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

Here I learn that accepting God's gift of new life doesn't involve achieving anything or maintaining anything on my part. It is a single decision and statement of faith and surrender to a new Lord. God pays my penalty once and for all, not because I am good, but because he is good.



As you have a wonderful fall in Rome, I pray that you remember and are always prepared to share Paul's ancient message to the Romans.

8.29.16

Inhibition

I am truly so fascinated when I attend wedding dances. I'm especially fascinated by wedding dances after Christian weddings involving churchgoers who I know and love.

I went to one last night.

What fascinates me is comparing the behavior at a wedding dance to the behavior at a worship service.

The behavior is so different and I'm trying to nail down why!

Last night we all had so much fun dancing and singing! People showed practically no inhibitions, even relatively quiet and demure people who are respectable and conservative in church services.  Everyone was on the dance floor leaving nothing behind! 

Such passion! Such joy!

Why are wedding dances fun but the same people glower and look like deer in the headlights in a worship service?

The same people.

I have some theories.

1. Joy. The wedding celebration is fun and it brings people joy. Worship is not and does not. Gulp. OK – if this is true, where are we failing in our worship theology? Does a couple need to get married before every worship service to inspire a celebration?

2. Ethanol. Let's be honest – ethanol helps reduce inhibitions. Maybe that is part of it.  If so, I can only say that either we should have ethanol in worship or we should consider that the Holy Spirit is at least as powerful as ethanol. Inhibitions and self-consciousness are huge obstacles to passionate worship. We haven't figured out how to overcome them in worship, at least not in my church. I didn't detect many self-conscious inhibitions last night at the wedding dance!

3.  Ambience.  We try to make our worship ambience encouraging of passion and transcendence. At a wedding dance this is so easy. The room is dark and there are flashing lights everywhere. Nobody is watching the DJ. People are dancing with joy, clapping, singing, and stomping. They are doing it for hours on end. During worship in church…not so much. At the dance most people knew most of the songs. They were pop/rock classics from the past 40 years, shared deep in our culture. People belted out the lyrics in full voice, unable to hear themselves, sharing happy memories of the songs. Not in church.

4. Examples. At a wedding dance the kids hit the floor hard and immediately with joy and passion. They basically create role models for the wallflowers who soon follow. Who is setting this passionate example in worship, granting permission to shed inhibitions?

5. Volume.  This is the observation that most inspires me. I listened carefully to the music at the dance last night. It was well above 95 dB the whole night. More importantly, it was dance music with simple messages inspiring simple joy. The subwoofer blasted punchy bass lines and powerful backbeats all night long. The sound carried the power to hit us right in the gut where the rock experience belongs!  Even more importantly: nobody complained! No critical comment cards were submitted – there was just joy and smiles and passionate abandon. People came expecting powerful music in that style and they embraced it.

What is going on??

These joyful dancers are the same people trapped motionless in their seats at a church worship service the same weekend.

Why? 

Is it unfair to compare worship to a wedding dance? If so, why? Why is our culture confused about this?

Why should so many Christians settle for passive, inhibited worship when they really do know how to party?

I'm beginning to understand why Jesus launched his ministry by supplying supplemental wine for a wedding dance.


5.15.16

the most important machine in the world

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A version of this story was presented as a TED talk. 
Watch the video at TEDx Zumbro River

What is the most important machine in the world?

The printing press?

The car?

The airplane?

The personal computer?

How about the smartphone?

I am going to argue that the most important machine in the world is the machine with the greatest number of copies on planet earth – the most abundant machine.

So what machine is that?

Is it the smartphone?

Manufacturers started marketing smartphones around 2005 with about 3 billion phones produced since then!

That's about 10 smartphones produced per second every day, every week, every month, every year!

The machine I'm talking about is stunningly more abundant than the smartphone.

Let's think about it.

About ten septillion (that is one followed by 24 zeros) copies of the most important machine in the world are created every second, every day, every week, every month, every year.

Wow. How is that even possible?

It turns out the honor of most abundant machine in the world doesn't go to any of the things we discussed, but to a very tiny machine - in fact a NANOMACHINE.

Nanomachines are machines whose size can be measured in nanometers (billionths of a meter). We don't think about them very often, but the most amazing machines on the planet are nanomachines like this one.

The most important machine in the world is really small. In fact, 2 million of these machines lined up end-to-end would reach just one inch.

Here's another illustration.

If you came with a friend, or don't mind bothering a stranger, pluck a single hair from their head for this demonstration. Go ahead, do it!

If you're not that daring, take a look at an arm hair.

You would need 4,000 copies of the most important machine in the world sitting end-to-end to reach across the thickness of a human hair.

The most important machine in the world is a nanomachine not designed or made by humans and not even found in the human body.  It is a nanomachine that is crucial for the existence of humans, and with respect to life on earth, you could argue that this nanomachine is more important than humans! From the perspective of the ecology of the earth and our biosphere, the most important machine in the world is absolutely necessary, and humans are not.

Isn't that a humbling thought?

I'm not saying that humans don't have important purposes. After all, I'm a man of faith and I'm convinced about a beautiful and joyful human purpose. I'm just saying that life on earth isn't all about us.

Let me take a few minutes to describe the most important machine in the world to help you understand why it is so amazing, and why the world absolutely depends on it...and why WE absolutely depend on it.

Let's take a tour of this amazing machine.

You can think of this machine as being made from 4,000 tiny beads arranged in 16 strings: 8 long and 8 short.  There are 20 different kinds of beads used in the strings, so the machine is very fancy. Even more amazing, the 16 strings each automatically fold up into complicated shapes that automatically assemble together to form the machine itself.

If you are a biochemist like me, you would say that the most important machine in the world is a nanomachine called a protein enzyme made up of strings of amino acids. But we don't need those fancy words for this story.

We see the 8 short strings folded into 8 beautiful, identical shapes.

Next we see the 8 long strings folded into pairs and packed together.

Finally we see all 16 chains assembled, each shown in a different color. 

I think the ways the tiny chains automatically fold into spirals and zig-zags is breathtaking.

Even more amazing, this is a self-assembling nanomachine!

OK – I know you are now curious, what is this machine and why is it the most important machine in the world?

The machine is named ribulose-1,5-bis-phosphate carboxylase.  Say that with me once...

Luckily, the machine has a nickname: RuBisCO. If there is one thing I want you to remember from this story (besides that I let you pull your neighbor's hair) it is this funny name.

Let's say it together one more time: RuBisCO.

What does RubisCO do that is so awesome?

It does something no human can do: RuBisCO makes sugar from sunlight and air.

RuBisCO is an enzyme that dramatically increases the speed of the most important chemistry of life: taking rare carbon dioxide molecules from the air, and gluing them into a cluster of carbon atoms to make a sugar called glucose. This is really the only way that glucose is made from scratch, and glucose sugar is really important.

Why is RuBisCO's job so hard? Because it turns out there is almost no carbon dioxide in the air!  Remember that CO₂ even in trace amounts is a greenhouse gas, trapping heat.

Here is a demonstration to show what I mean. It is sometimes helpful to imagine the different components of the air we breathe as if they were liquids.

80% of air is nitrogen. About 19% of air is the oxygen we breathe. About 1% of air is argon. How much of the air is carbon dioxide that RuBisCO needs to capture? Less than 0.04% (4 hundredths of one percent)! Even if I use purple dye to represent the CO₂, you can hardly see it. Imagine poor RuBisCO needing to fish carbon dioxide, CO₂, out of the air. It turns out that this is a really hard job, and RuBisCO can barely get the job done. Many protein enzymes perform thousands of cycles of their job every second. RuBisCO struggles to even capture a few molecules of carbon dioxide every second. Worse, it gets easily confused and sometimes accidentally captures a more abundant oxygen molecule. It ruins the chance to make sugar whenever that happens. These facts explain why RuBisCO needs to be so abundant on earth. It is struggling to get the job done.

So that explains what RuBisCO is, and what it does. 

Why is RuBisCO so important for humans?

Well, RuBisCO makes everything we eat, both plants and the animals that eat plants, and it makes all our fuels...anything we can burn, including fossil fuels like coal, oil, and gasoline, and modern fuels like wood and cellulose and everything made of sugar.

In case you missed it, that about sums up everything needed for human life!

And RuBisCO does all this just by grabbing carbon dioxide from the air. It's just about the only machine that we know that can do this.

If RuBisCO is the most important machine in the world, how do we get more RuBisCO?

Simple. 

More plants.

I'll let you think about that.

So what is the take-home message from this story?

RuBisCO is the most important machine in the world, but it is not designed or made by humans, it is not part of humans, it is crucial for human life, and from the perspective of life on earth it is more important that humans.  

RuBisCO reminds us that humans are beautiful and important, but the story of life on this planet isn't really about us. RuBisCO uses light energy and air to make all our fuels, and it is the only machine that can undo what we humans are doing every time we convert fuel into CO₂.

What is the most important machine in the world?

RuBisCO !

5.5.16

humility

My wife, Laura, has many gifts. One of them is the determination not to allow her home to be cluttered. I think she is imagining a day that no longer seems so unimaginable, when we will be relocating someplace smaller, and asking ourselves how we ever accumulated so much stuff, and why we never thought about lightening the load along the way. I've been watching her apply this discipline to our home, while guarding my own secret hoard of questionable junk. My piles are packed into the closet of my basement office. It is a gold mine in there, or maybe a trash heap. It depends on your perspective. This past weekend I finally started to let my mind question the gold mine concept, and begin to consider if the closet is actually a trash heap. How many different kinds of adapters for obsolete computers and audio accessories are really necessary to keep for the coming apocalypse? How about reams of white paper and blank cards and empty 3-ring binders? What about four pairs of bookshelf speakers from a time that our home proudly sported an awesome central wired stereo system with independent sound in each room? What about boxes of memorabilia documenting twenty years of major church building projects and a name change for our congregation? Something got into me on Saturday morning.

I started dumping.

Kyle, our pet house rabbit who roams our finished basement, inspected every growing pile with fascination. Laura was amazed to see the loads that came up the stairs, forming stacks alternatively for recycling, trash, or charity. Even my bookshelves were lightened, with inspirational resources to be shared with the local re-entry ministry. At one point I found my 40-year-old high school athletic letter jacket. I just declared victory by moving it to a different closet where I'll have to confront it at some future time.

Then I found something that I had forgotten, and a lesson in humility that I had once learned and had never really been able to forget.

There in the back of my closet was an empty and beaten-up 1973 Fender bass guitar case. It was tattered and covered with the remnants of stickers. I brought it out into the light for examination and the memories came flooding back.

I was trained as a classical string bass player, but early in life I began to explore the bass guitar and all of its opportunities and promises. In high school my second bass guitar purchase was a beauty. It was a slightly used 1973 Fender Precision fretless bass with ebony fingerboard and sunburst finish. It was stunning and it served me well for many years and across many venues. As my bass guitar collection grew, the original 1973 Fender Precision fretless with ebony fingerboard and sunburst finish became an occasional loaner instrument. That's how I lost the bass forever. At a point of misplaced trust, I loaned the bass to an older player going through tough times, and, at a point of poor judgment, he pawned my 1973 Fender Precision fretless with ebony fingerboard and sunburst finish for cash and that was the end of that.

So now, years later, all I had was the empty case. Despite owning several more bass guitar cases, I had never been able to let go of the empty 1973 Fender bass case that used to contain the 1973 Fender Precision fretless bass with ebony fingerboard and sunburst finish…not that I'm still bitter about losing it.

Seeing the case in the back of the closet this past weekend did not inspire anger about the the loss of the instrument. I'm over it (mostly).

Instead I recalled a lesson in humility involving that case.

In 1988 Laura and I moved from our beloved Madison to Los Angeles for me to begin a three-year stint as a postdoctoral research fellow at Caltech in Pasadena. Elizabeth was born there in 1989, but 1988 was full of exploring and learning and all kinds of music. This in addition to science and new friends and serving in a new congregation. The music was delightful. I played in way too many different ensembles, from classical to rock to gospel.

At some point in the fall of 1988 I confronted the need for some kind of decent new bass amplifier.

It was on a quest for such an amp that I set out one Friday night for nearby Studio City California, where big west coast music stores were to be found. These big stores had huge supplies of the latest gear and were always full of aspiring and seasoned rock musicians looking to buy, sell or trade. I was intoxicated by the idea of hanging out in such a store, seeing and being seen, playing loudly and conspicuously through amazing amps and then maybe buying something impressive. Maybe. So, it was on that quest and with a sense of the excitement of a midwestern musician entering the promised land of a Hollywood-area music store that I set out. In the back of our maroon Ford Escort station wagon was my Fender Precision fretless bass with ebony fingerboard and sunburst finish in its road case. The bass was coming along so I could play it through various amps as I shopped with the big-time rockers. I secretly imagined myself laying down some tasty amplified riffs and the room maybe quieting a bit and long-haired, road-worn musicians taking notice and wandering over to hear the chops of this new skinny mystery bassist as he lay it down. I was on that page as I walked into the showroom. Appearances did not disappoint. The place was packed and long-haired tattooed rockers were everywhere. A huge stack of bass amps sat in the distance. I started to imagine how this was all going to go. I smiled to myself.

I strolled into the room carrying my bass in its 1973 Fender case, the same case excavated from my closet this past weekend, the same case in the photograph above. I felt good. This was going to be quite the night. Just then I caught the eye of a clerk heading in my direction and I began to plan my inquiry about setting up to play my personal 1973 Fender Precision fretless bass guitar with ebony fingerboard and sunburst finish through his beast bass amps so I could make the most awesome impression decision.

The clerk came right up to me, wide-eyed, and I swear he shook my hand and declared loudly, as if trying to get everyone's attention

"You are JIM MAHER!!"

I was speechless for a moment.

How could he know me? He didn't look familiar? Did I look familiar? Did he know me from my musical career back in Wisconsin? From some recording I had done? From friends that had talked about me and my great bass playing? This was so totally amazing! Here I was walking into a store near ground zero in the rock universe, thousands of miles from my original home, and the guy already knows me! My mind raced to consider which of my past exploits could account for my fame having already reached Los Angeles before me. After a pause I asked the clerk how it was that he knew my name.

He looked and me and smiled wryly.

"Dude, you've got your name stenciled in gold spray paint on your case."

Me:  silence.

I listened to a different guy play through some bass amps and slunk out after buying a small $100 unit. I had been 6'4" tall when I walked in. I had trouble seeing over the dashboard driving home.

If you look closely in the photo of the case from last weekend, you can still see the stenciled letters.

I never forgot that night.


2.23.16

Genesis

The Judeo-Christian worldview is rooted in the stories of the Torah, the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, the beginning of the Christian Old Testament. Here we learn of a creative God and the story of his personal relationship with humanity, eventually revealed through his insertion into an obscure tribe roaming territory just east of the Mediterranean Sea.

The Bible account begins with "In the beginning," giving us the name of the first book of the Bible, Genesis. The story mentions the creation of the universe, but it is a story intended for the child-like minds of human hearers, so the story places focus on humans. This can be dangerous and misleading, because humans, being arrogant and self-centered, can mistake the story as implying that humanity lies at the center of God's purposes. We apparently occupy a meaningful part of God's story in the present era of life on this planet, but we should never be so deluded as to confuse the Bible story of God's concern for humanity with the broader story of God's creation and timeless purposes in this universe and countless universes beyond this. Those purposes and stories are simply unknowable. 

My point here is to remind us that the knowable story revealed to us is but an infinitesimal fraction of the true story of God's power and purposes in time and space. The real miracle is not that the Earth was created. It is that God attends to such an unfathomably trivial fraction of his creation.

The Judeo-Christian story misses the reality that the Earth is invisibly small relative to the scale of the universe.  I will make this point here in terms of both space and time. These arguments are intended to humble us and widen our awe in the face of a powerful, personal God.

The earth is beyond insignificant on the scale of the created universe. Its insignificance is far more extreme than what is suggested by the photograph of our planet as a tiny speck when viewed from beyond Saturn as seen from the NASA Cassini space probe. The insignificance of the earth is vastly more astounding.

The mass of the earth seems impressive at 4,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 kilograms. That is 4 times ten to the 24th power kilograms. This makes the earth seem important until we risk calculation of the mass of the known universe. The mass of the known universe (never mind  dark matter) is estimated by scientists to be 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 kilograms. That is 10 to the 53rd power kilograms.  The earth no longer seems important in any sense. It is beyond trivially unimportant on the scale of the entire creation. Just how unimportant? Let's calculate the fraction of the mass of the universe that corresponds to the earth. This ratio is about ten to the 29th power. It would take ten to the 29th power earths to equal the mass of the universe. Even this makes the physical insignificance of the earth difficult to comprehend.  Another analogy is perhaps helpful. A single grain of sand has a mass on the order of one milligram. This is one thousandth of a gram, or one millionth of a kilogram.

The mass of the earth is to the mass of the known universe as the mass of a grain of sand is to the mass of the earth.

The entire story of human existence and all that has been created from our perspective is like the story of a single grain of sand in the context of the entire planet earth. If we feel that the story of this earth is meaningful and important, that is all well and good. Let us remember that our story is equivalent to the story of one grain of sand in a planet made of 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 grains of sand. If we are important, how much more important is the whole story – the story that we don't know?

So our entire story is less than insignificant on the scale of created space. What about created time? This calculation turns out to be no more encouraging. The universe was created about 14 billion years ago. That is 14,000,000,000 years. The written history of human civilization dates back about ten thousand years. That is 10,0000 years. That means that the universe, God's entire story of created time, is more than a million times older than the human story – 1.4 million to be exact.  How do we come to terms with the insignificance of human history in this reality? An analogy is helpful. If the age of the universe were a month, the entirety of the human story – everything we know about God's interactions with humanity, would have taken place in the last two seconds of that month.

Before we imagine that we can define God as the being who is focused on humanity, let us be corrected and stand in awe that the entire human story is truly nothing on the scale of God's creation of time and space.  We are less that a speck of paint splashed on the edge of a vast canvas being painted by a master artist. It is worse than that. Physicists tell us there is reason to believe in the existence of a multiverse made up of countless universes coexistent with ours.

How unimaginably powerful and creative is our God. How vast and beautiful must be the stories of his purposes that do not include us at all. How thankful we must be that the incredible is true – that such a God loves us and seeks us and pays personally for us to win our redemption that we might share timelessness with him.

What is mankind that you are mindful of them?

Psalm 8:4