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, there’s 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 I’m 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