May 14. Francis Collins. Collins is a physician and geneticist who spearheaded the Human Genome Project, which studied DNA and completed finished sequence of the human DNA instruction book. Collins also discovered the genes associated with a number of diseases. Since 2009, he has been director of the National Institutes of Health and the largest quantity of biomedical research in the world.
He is a member of the National Academy of Medicine and the National Academy of Sciences, was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in November 2007, and the National Medal of Science in 2009. Today’s story takes place before Collins was famous.
Believing a lie can blind a man, but accepting the truth can open his eyes.
In the mind of young Dr. Francis Collins, anything that could not be scientifically proven wasn’t worth exploring.
At lunch, Collins listened to some fellow medical students discussing their faith in Jesus.
He shook his head. Nice people, he thought. They’re nice, but crazy.
Normally, he’d have avoided them entirely, but the cafeteria was full that day, and he was lucky to find a seat. He’d have to stick his nose in a book and try to stay out of what he viewed as their silly discussion about church and the Bible.
But when he was working, his patients talked about Jesus, too. And he couldn’t avoid them. Collins believed they were just as crazy as the students in the cafeteria, but he couldn’t deny that these patients had something every sick person desperately wants and needs: hope.
Collins gave one elderly patient a warm smile. She smiled back and squeezed his hand. Studying the woman’s chart, it was clear she didn’t have much time left. Despite all the best treatments, the patient’s age was working against her. But she didn’t appear the least bit bothered by it.
And this wasn’t new. Several of his patients displayed great calm—even when they got news that would have sent others into an emotional tailspin.
There was the cancer patient given only months to live who simply nodded, smiled, and said he was praying for a miracle. There was the cardiac patient—his second heart attack—who confidently told Collins he wasn’t worried, because God was in control.
Collins convinced himself that his patients were kidding themselves. They were delusional; wracked with grief. It was easier to turn to an invisible God than it was to face the truth, he told himself. What he couldn’t understand was why they weren’t angry at God.
But then Collins considered DNA and other aspects of the human body, and there was so much intrinsic design that science alone couldn’t explain.
“It was the fact that there is something instead of nothing. … The fact that the universe seems to be fine-tuned to make complexity possible and therefore life possible. That actually, nature follows these elegant mathematical rules of second-order differential equations that I had solved. Why should that be? Why should nature be like this?
“It seems like there should be a mathematician and a physicist behind all this. Oh my gosh, that sounds like God.”
“Basically, science is the way to uncover valid, trustworthy information about how nature works, about things about the natural world. But if you limit yourself to the kinds of questions that science can ask, you’re leaving out some other things that I think are also pretty important, like why are we here, and what’s the meaning of life, and is there a God? Those are not scientific questions.”
“When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them?” (Psalm 8:3-4, NIV).
Right now, is God telling you something true you could really embrace? Believing a lie can blind a man, but accepting the truth can open his eyes.
Smith, Samuel. “NIH Director Francis Collins Details His Path to Christ after Living as an Atheist.” The Christian Post, The Christian Post, 31 Mar. 2019 www.christianpost.com/news/nih-director-francis-collins-details-his-path-to-christ-after-living-as-an-atheist.html.
Begley, Sharon. “Francis Collins Talks About Science and Faith.” Newsweek, Newsweek, 1 Aug. 2011,
www.newsweek.com/francis-collins-talks-about-science-and-faith-68851
Story read by Chuck Stecker