Glen Davis

I just found out that Stanford has a center called Bio‑X.

Is it just me, or does that sound like some sort of shapeshifting superhero?

In reality, Bio‑X is arguably the most ambitious interdisciplinary bioscience research effort in the world. (source)

There’s an interview with Matthew Scott, chair of Bio‑X, on the Stanford website. In it, he talks about his hopes for the superhero-monikered program.

One section I found particularly interesting:
We have a bioethics expert, Hank Greely [professor of law] as a member of the Bio‑X Leadership Council, and he will be advising about this. Many issues are likely to come up — issues of access to health care, debates about the meaning, practical applications, and dangers of new technologies, or genetic privacy — all kinds of things arise, some of them ethical issues and some of them scientific issues with social impact, not strictly ethical.

Hmm… if I had to pick ethical issues related to interdisciplinary genetic and biological research, access to health care would not be the very first thing on the top off my head.

Still, it sounds like a tremendously important research project–giving me another occasion to repeat our rallying cry–today they learn, tomorrow they lead. These future leaders must be reached with the gospel!

Here’s a bizarre little annoyance: no one from Stanford can dial my telephone number (or my wife’s). Whenever they try it asks for an authorization code!

I called the IT department at Stanford to let them know, and they’ve been very helpful. They seemed just as surprised at the news as I was.

Let’s see–what could account for this ministry hinderment. Could it be… Satan? (soundbyte)

Another note on those amazing students at Stanford: the undergrads are engaging in original, funded research.

How wild is that?

One student featured in the story is doing research on the dowry system in Kerala, India. My cousins, who are of marriageable age, are victims of the system, and if my parents had not come to the States, theres a good chance I would have been also, she said. I was a bit bothered by always reading about Kerala as the model state. I knew it had its good and its bad, like everywhere else … but this dowry system, a very present bad, is one Im interested in learning about more, understanding and contributing to stopping it.

Yet another reason we feel so passionately that Stanford is a strategic mission field. I said it before, and I’ll say it again: today they learn, tomorrow they lead.

Professor Christian Smith of UNC Chapel Hill wrote an interesting article for Books & Culture called Force of Habit attempting to explain a tenacious anti-religious sensibility among many faculty.

Several anecdotes effectively highlight his thesis: anti-religion is still alive and well among the university professoriate. Particularly anti-Christianity, which disdains a faith neither exotic nor “subaltern” enough to merit the admiration of intellectuals.

After spouting some very confusing sociological terminology, he uses a concept called habitus to account for this consistent trivialization of faith. They way Smith uses it, habitus seems to mean an idea carried forward by momentum rather than merit.

In particular, the notion of habitus helps to explain some curious features of academic anti-religion. One is that none of the anti-religious faculty I know as individuals are nasty people out to make religious believers feel bad. They’re smart, interesting, morally serious, and well-intentioned. I prize my relationships with them. They’re not aiming to be anti-religious, anti-Christian. They don’t have to try. It just comes naturally to them, almost automatically, as if from a fundamental predisposition.

I’d have to say that’s been my experience: the irreligious among the cultured elite seem genuinely shocked when they discover someone that they previously considered thoughtful and well-educted is possessed of a deep and abiding faith. They’re flummoxed.

More importantly, this habitus is infectious. The most pernicious struggle I see students engaged in springs from a perception that smart people just don’t believe in God.

That’s hard to battle: it’s not as though there’s an actual argument being made here. It’s just an attitude picked up by osmosis. That’s one of the reasons I try to bring information on intelligent believers to their attention such as a list of living famous Christian scientists and information on Christian faculty at Stanford such as Don Knuth.

On a totally random note, I happened to stop in at the Stanford Bookstore and I saw an ad for birds.stanford.edu.

Yup. Birds.

The site actually redirects to a subdirectory on the stanfordalumni.org domain, so I guess the ol’ alumni assocation has some pretty serious ornithologists…

Andrew Wright, the Stanford student who was living with us over the summer just moved out. He’s gone to stay at home the rest of the summer so he can spend some time with his family before school starts.

*sniff*

It was great getting to know him better! We had some wonderful talks about God and the Christian life, and our relationship with him has really confirmed our call to Stanford.

Just last night we had a great time talking about a Christian’s proper relationship to culture, and what it means to be in the world but not of it…

On another note: I’ve been sick all day. I’m feeling better now, but I sure was a whipped puppy earlier.

Last night I was privileged to preach at Glad Tidings Assembly of God in San Francisco. It was a lot of fun!

Pastor Beiser had asked me to come and encourage the people to invite their friends to hear Bubba Paris (of the San Francisco 49ers) come and preach this weekend at their special meetings, and to specifically “speak on the lostness of man.”

I decided to speak from Luke 15, the chapter in which Jesus talks about the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost son (prodigal son).

Since Paula’s college roommate, Rachel Spradley, is visiting with us right now I decided to use her in my sermon. I told the congregation that Rachel had just become engaged to be married, and I asked her to stand up and show everyone her ring. Rachel then stood up and flashed her finger sans ring, and convincingly shrieked: “I’ve lost my ring!”

Everyone freaked out and began to scan the floor for her ring. I then read from Luke 15:8: “suppose a woman has ten silver coins and loses one. Does she not light a lamp, sweep the house and search carefully until she finds it?”

It was fun. Unfortunately, two people bolted right away to search the lobby and the restroom (they even put on rubber gloves and dug through the trash). As a result, they missed most of my message. Still, they beautifully illustrated how we respond when we think something valuable is lost!

My points, incidentally, were as follows:

1) Realize people are lost
2) Value lost people
3) Take risks to reach the lost
4) Use every resource at our disposal to reach the lost
5) Celebrate success