Jimmy Lin | Scientific Doxology

Lin:

It’s not just theology, right, biology is for doxology. Chemistry is for doxology, right? And that’s ultimately our first and foremost calling as believers. And I like to put that as the noun as opposed to my profession. So that’s why I put doxology first. And then we just all praise God in different ways and, you know, especially thinking through, you know, the reformation where Martin Luther, really sort of thinks through the priesthood of the believers, like even the milk maid, even the baker, right? They’re all praising God in different ways, to be able to do that. So in a personal sense, I really think through how do we, in all our different professions, really praise God in those ways? And the way that I live through my praise of God, is through the sciences.

My name is Jimmy Lin, and I am a scientific doxologist.

Stump:

Welcome to Language of God. I’m Jim Stump. 

As you just heard, our guest today, Jimmy Lin describes himself as a scientific doxologist. The scientific part of that title describes his work to find cures and treatments for cancer and rare diseases, an effort he has devoted his career to. That effort has resulted in hundreds of  published papers including in the prestigious journals including in Nature and Science and it resulted in some real progress toward taking the fear away from a cancer diagnosis. But in calling himself a scientific doxologist, and by making science be the adjective, he puts the emphasis on doxology, which is to give praise to God. And in that way he sees his scientific work as a kind of hymn, or sacred song, and this infiltrates his work. While it might not change how he runs an experiment, it does change why he does the work he does and how he manages relationships in his work, and what questions he chooses to pursue. We talk about his scientific work and hear about the recent advances in cancer science and then talk about doxology and how his work, and all of our work, fits into the framework of praise. 

Let’s get to the conversation. 

Stump:

Well, Jimmy Lin, welcome to the podcast. We’re glad to be talking to you.

Lin:

Thank you. My pleasure.

Stump:

So, you’ve had some contacts with BioLogos before, or at least some people here have worked with or under our founder Francis Collins. But I’m guessing that a good chunk of our audience doesn’t know you too well. So let’s remedy that. First, tell us a bit about your life. Where’d you grow up? What was your family like?

Lin:

Yeah, well, thanks for having me on. I grew up in Taiwan in a sort of medical family. I went to high school in Canada, grew up in Vancouver and then undergrad studied computational biology and computational linguistics.

Stump:

So you said you grew up in a medical family. Is that what kind of put you onto the career path you’re on now? Or when did you first think, I want to be a doctor when I grow up, or a scientist?

Lin:

Yeah. The joke we always say is, you know, when you’re a kid, your family asks you, what do you wanna be when you grow up? In my family is what kind of doctor do you want to be when you grow up? [laughter]

Stump:

The options were rather limited. Well, and do you see though, as a kid that you were leaning that way anyway, just because of the environment or what drew you into this?

Lin:

So I eventually did a combined MD/PhD program. My interests were more sort of innovation and sort of research. So those were things that I was—as a kid, I loved, you know, inventions. The people I looked towards were like Thomas Edison. I loved, you know, a lot of, so those sort of things I loved. And then being in a medical family then sort of really put that love for discovery and research in a field where we can make, impact on people’s health. So that became a great marriage of my desire for discovery and applying it in the healthcare space.

Stump:

You’ve not been shy about the fact that you’re a Christian but I think I’ve seen that came a little bit later in life. What was the religious aspect of your life like growing up?

Lin:

Yeah, I grew up pretty much culturally sort of Buddhist, Confucius, in Taiwan there. And then because of the sciences, thinking a lot about whether there is any sort of religious belief that was important. And it was not until college, as a freshman, I really started to think deeper on sort of, why are we all here? My whole life, I think as a kid, Asian kid, where it was sort of the rat race to get into the right high school, to get into the right college to be on that path. And now that, you know, I got into, one of my dream schools, I was like, so what? And that’s when I started thinking a lot about and asking these sort of deep questions there.

And I think that my, sort of—let’s say faith and science popped pretty quickly when in my intro organic chemistry class, I was talking to the professor about the dynamics of atoms and molecules and a lot of these sort of, the reasoning a lot along these many different things and quickly actually exhausted the depth of the answer. He’s like, “actually that’s something we don’t know yet.” I’m like, “wow, I’m just a freshman in college and I’m already sort of mapping the end of understanding of this particular scientific field.” And that’s when I started really sort of exploring the different religious faiths then.

Stump:

And was this Yale, did you go to Yale as an Undergrad?

Lin:

I went to Yale for undergrad, yes.

Stump:

And so were there people around you then that helped in that discovery and journey toward accepting Christianity?

Lin:

Yeah. it’s actually funny as we talk about organic chemistry, that changed my faith. My organic chemistry lab partner was a believer. He was involved in one of the campus ministry Campus Crusade, now known as CRU. And was very sort of open to talking with me about these things and invited a lot of friends. And I jokingly say, I made a lot of people cry debating against them, as I was exploring. But the people around me were all very, very gracious. And then the people from university then also came and a lot of people poured into my life and helped me understand a lot of these different questions about the Christian faith. Well, and at the same time I was exploring, you know, the religion of my upbringing. What did Buddhism say? What does Confucianism say? And I think at the end of the journey it became really clear, for me at least, that the difference of religions that sort of pull yourself by your bootstraps and trying to save yourself, versus of a religion of grace. And I was really exhausted after being on this journey and lost because you know, I had a lot of faith in science and was a moor there. And it made sense that if there was a God and God really cared about his creation then, you know, God wouldn’t just provide no solution. And then at that time it seemed like that the person of Christ was very compelling in the Christian God. And that set off, you know a journey where initially it was sort of more of a leap of faith, but then really digging into apologetics and learning more about it. And then, so that sort of started to grow deeper in my faith there.

Stump:

Well, what about today then? What branch of the Christian tradition do you identify with now?

Lin:

During graduate school, as part of becoming a medical doctor you study for very rigorous board exams. And during that time I studied easily, you know, 15 hour days plus, over three to four months. And at that end of time you feel, you know, so much. And I thought, what if I dedicated even a fraction of that time [laughter] into my understanding of faith, right? Like, what would that look like? And that’s when I started to explore more the different branches of Christianity. And ultimately I started to take classes at Reformed Theological Seminary. And so I’ve been on that path and within that branch, for those who care, I study a lot of the teachers from Westminster, on the Philadelphia side, presupposition on my apologetic there. So for those who care more about the nuances there.

Stump:

Well, we hear from lots of scientists who say that their professional peers don’t really understand their religious commitments and their church family can be a bit suspicious of their scientific attachments. Does that describe your experience at all here as a professional with this faith commitment?

Lin:

Yeah, and I think, I see myself, you know, in the same way that Paul was the missionary to the Gentiles, right, I see myself too as being that bridge to the scientific community there in that sense. So yeah, figuring out what are the ways that, what are the unknown gods that, you know, scientists sort of profess too and help them understand the God that Christians believe. And the same way I think to the Christian Church, there’s a lot of fear of what science can potentially do. And there’s also just a lack of knowledge there. So I try to at least sort of, hopefully demystify and communicate and provide bridges across these two seemingly diverse communities. But one of the things I always say is, again, this sort of recent, this diversion between science and faith is rather recent. If we think about many of the famous scientists that laid the foundations of what we know as modern science, whether it’s Francis Bacon, you know, the scientific method or Isaac Newton, thinking about physics, thinking about Mendel, right, biology. Many, many of the foundations of science were done, not only by Christians, but committed Christians. So again that’s one of the things I try to dispel is this sort of seeming chasm between the two. But again, throughout the hundreds of years and even sort of the foundations of modern science, actually, the two were very much sort of in sync with each other. And in fact, a lot of modern science were done by people with strong convictions of their Christian faith.

Stump:

Yeah. Well I wanna come back to talking a little bit more about this interaction between Christian faith and your work in particular. But before we do that, let’s hear a little bit more about your scientific work in particular. Much of this has been focused on cancer research and rare diseases and treatment and prevention of these. So where did that come from? Here, I guess is the question from your family. Why did you decide to become that kind of doctor? Why did you specialize in those areas?

Lin:

Yeah. I think cancer, like many people, has affected my family. I’ve had really close members of my family pass away early from cancer. So that was an area that I felt, you know, was going to be important. And then just sort of scientifically, cancer is actually a rather easy system to understand because it’s a system where you know what normal looks like, and then you can look at what cancer looks like. And it seems sort of tractable as a system there, so it really sort of drew me there. So yeah. So when I was choosing schools to pursue sort of my MD PhD, I literally chose to study under what I think is probably the most brilliant sort of father of cancer genetics, Bert Vogelstein, who was at Johns Hopkins at that time. So I literally chose that school to be able to study under him.

Stump:

Well, tell us about your work now and what you do and the organizations you’re affiliated with.

Lin:

Yeah, so some of that earliest work, that working with Bert is—this is after, you know the human genome was mapped—of course BioLogos, everybody knows Dr. Collins’ contribution to that. But our thought is, you know, now that the human genome is mapped, can we map the equivalent for cancer, the cancer genome? And with my mentor thesis and really sort of proved over the years that cancer essentially is a genetic disease. So if you can map the genome of cancer and then map the genome of the person, the differences are potentially the causes of these diseases. And that set off in a work that I did as my graduate work there. And then eventually, programs that Dr. Collins oversaw, you know, internationally as well. And then, in the US, called the Cancer Genome Atlas International Programs. And that really caused a huge explosion of understanding of cancer. The first phases of that were this area, again, the listeners would know, is precision medicine. Again, Dr. Collins has written a book about that. It’s really thinking through can you find the right genes to give to the right people with that mutation? And that was my initial work, sort of after my MD PhD I was faculty at WashU in St. Louis, where I did exactly that, is started working on different works where when people have cancer, we mapped their genes and then see whether we can give the right drugs to the right patients. So I did that in different settings, first at WashU but eventually the field started to move, you know, not just sort of looking at the cancer tissue, but can we find that signal just in the blood? So it’s non-invasive. So I joined a company—well I did the first at Wash U and I was a little bit of time also NIH doing some of the work looking at tissue, being able to profile—but eventually joined a company firstly at Natera looking at using, not looking at tissue, but using blood to measure cancer. And then my current job here in a company called Freenome is in, instead of measuring people with cancer after they have it, can we detect the cancer before even they have it, or early on in terms of early cancer detection. So that’s sort of part of what I do in my day job.

Stump:

Oh, thanks. What are maybe some of the most exciting or promising things in cancer research that people might not know about yet, but you’ve been working on, or at least that you see coming down the pike?

Lin:

Yeah, and I state this, and people are shocked to hear when I say this, is I think, depending on how old you are, but I think cancer will be a chronic disease in our generation.

Stump:

And that’s a good thing, right?

Lin:

Yes. That’s a great thing

Stump:

Many people might hear chronic disease and say, “oh, no,” but that’s better than cancer. 

Lin:

Yes. Yeah. Like, HIV, right? So I think HIV again was a death sentence and a very, very scary word. But I think cancer, we can make it that so we have many more cancer survivors than people passing away from it. So that’s a combination of a lot of more therapeutic options. Specifically, what’s most exciting is in immunotherapy where, you know, Christians can really relate to this, where instead of giving toxic chemicals to be able to sort of kill the cancer, hopefully killing the cancer more than the person, there are ways that scientists have been able to leverage our own immune system, right, that God already gave us, and how do we activate that to be able to fight cancer. So this field of immunotherapy is really, really exciting. And of course, the area that we’re working on is early cancer detection, to catch them earlier. And most cancers, if you catch them early enough, actually if you just do surgery, it can treat a lot of them. So catching cancers early is gonna be so transformative. So between better ways of catching them and then treating them better, I think there’s gonna be a dramatic increase in survival. Yes, cancer is heterogeneous, there’s hundreds of types of cancers, but many, many cancers, I think will be able to do very significant changes in terms of outcomes again, within this generation.

Stump:

So does cancer in its very earliest stages leave some sort of signature in the blood that you’re detecting? Is that what we’re trying to work on to find it in the earlier stages before it manifests itself so much? Or what does, how do you go about detecting it before somebody has it?

Lin:

Exactly. No, exactly. It’s to figure out what is the earliest signal that cancer gives off in the blood that you can be able to find. And that signal often is very faint. So let’s say cancer is, let’s say maybe one centimeter in diameter, right? And it sheds off a little bit of DNA and protein, and it’s then your whole body has about five liters of blood that it’s all dilute. So you need to find that very faint signal, literally sort of needle in the haystack to be able to see that. And then you also wanna leverage the way that the immune system reacts to it as well. So those are, you know, exciting ways to be able to figure out whether we can be able to catch cancers early.

Stump:

And what about testing people genetically to see what their risks are for cancer that may not have started yet, but that they have a genetic predisposition. I think we hear the most about, like breast cancer in this regard, that some signature in the genome has been found that makes you more susceptible? Do you expect that to improve? Or are many of these not so directly tied to our personal genome?

Lin:

Yeah, that’s a great question. And in fact that’s probably an area where we’d do very well in because of the human genome project. We can map people’s genomes now relatively, you know, instead of the billions of dollars, it can be thousands or even hundreds depending who you talk to. So we can map everybody’s genome. The hard part right now is to figure out what genes are the ones that cause predisposition. So breast cancer, there’s a couple very famous genes like the BRCA genes, that is a very large effect. So those we can measure and then, you know, we can then say, okay, you have a higher predisposition. But for many, many other cancer types they’re not these big gene effects that you can sort of understand. And most cancer actually is not because of genetic predisposition. But because of sort of later onset mutations, you know, whether through sun, through smoking. But it’s definitely part of the arsenal to be able to understand cancer.

Stump:

So how far away are we from when at my annual checkup there’s gonna be a cancer screening of some sort? Will that just become a routine part of everybody’s healthcare in the not too distant future?

Lin:

Many companies are working on that. And I think there are, you know and we’re all trying to sort of get to that goal. Definitely. So I think it’s definitely within five to ten years, those will be sort of options there. Yeah.

Stump:

Okay. Well, let me turn a little more theological here then about cancer in particular, there’s an article on the BioLogos website called, “Is Cancer Part of God’s Good World?” It was written by a guy I met who right after college was diagnosed with desmoplastic small round cell tumors, if I’m saying that correctly. And like more than 85% of such people, he died within five years of that diagnosis. And this piece we have on our site is really remarkable. He wrote when he was in the midst of treatment, and part of it says this, he says, “cancer is not evil, at least not any more evil than the weather with its potential for deadly blizzards and hurricanes. I see cancer as a messy, ugly, yet necessary byproduct of the ever-changing planet we find ourselves inhabiting”. Would you agree with that? How do you respond to that? Is cancer part of God’s good world?

Lin:

Wow. It’s hard to sort of respond to someone who’s really sort of lived that experience. I can say as a scientist, understanding of cancer really sort of—a critical thing is sometimes people think because they maybe watch, you know, read comics and think about mutations and think about X-men and thinking about cancers are these sort of super mutations are that is sort of a progressive nature and these are even sort of better. But that’s actually not the right way to understand cancer. Cancer is actually a broken cell. And it’s broken because of, for example, all cells have controlled growth, right? They know when to stop. Cancer has broken, that is broken, right? All cancer, you know, all cells know where to grow. That is broken in cancer, right? And it grows in places it shouldn’t be growing. It’s growing at speeds that it shouldn’t be growing. So I think the correct, you know, to not think of cancer as this sort of next step evolution of a better cell, but in fact, cancer is a broken process. So to think about in a theological framework, then you can very easily think through, right, cancer is not sort of an adapted next step, but part of the sort of broken world that we live in. So again, a lot of the processes of the cancer cell is brokenness and alterations of systems that on the other hand would be very, very good. So, one of the things that cancer hijacks is a process called angiogenesis. It’s sort of creating new bloodstreams. And that’s amazing that God created the system where blood cells can grow to different areas of the body, so it can be perfused. But then cancer grows in the wrong place, then it hijacks that purpose and so that it can feed the cancer. So in terms of that, I think, to think about theologically cancer is that broken process, and it’s hijacking a lot of the systems that God has already sort of put in place there.

Stump:

So that sounds like it’s not the same as say, weather, that we need dynamic weather patterns in order for the earth to thrive and to support life. But when you have dynamic weather patterns, sometimes you’re gonna get tornadoes and hurricanes. So those are more byproducts of a necessary system than they are a broken part of a system. Where it sounds like you’re saying no, cancer is just a broken part of the system. Is that right?

Lin:

Yeah. Yeah. And I put this in the same, same with diseases in general, right? Sort of diseases, I don’t think was part, is not part of God’s sort of initial plan in that sense. And cancer is a very clear showing of that where it’s something that has gone wrong.

[musical interlude]

BioLogos:

Hey Language of God listeners. If you enjoy the conversations you hear on the podcast, we just wanted to let you know about our website, biologos.org, which has articles, videos, personal stories, and curated resources for pastors, students, and educators. And we’ve recently launched a new animated video series called insights. These short videos tell stories and explore many of the questions at the heart of the faith and science conversation. You can find them at biologos.org/insights or there’s a link in the shownotes. All right, back to the show!

Stump:

So lots of people feel that in the interactions between science and faith, the influence flows in only one direction, that scientists get to tell us what they’ve discovered about the world, and people of faith have to just adjust to that and retreat sometimes even from their beliefs. But I’ve heard you talk more about the other direction of influence, how being a person of faith influences your scientific work. So you introduce yourself as a scientific doxologist. You’re gonna need to explain that a bit here now, and why you prefer that designation and how your faith is an appropriate modifier for what you do as a scientist.

Lin:

Yeah. And I’ll maybe come through it sort of two different aspects. So first, personally, and then we’ll sort of talk more sort of in terms of systematically as a Christian, as a believer you know, we are all called first and foremost as doxologists, to glorify God as sort of the most important— 

Stump:

Can you explain the Greek of the—what is a doxologist? If we’re all called to be one, we better know what this word means.

Lin:

It’s someone that sort of praises, right? When you sing the doxology at the end of some services, right? It’s this thing where, you know, “praise God from whom all blessings flow.” So it’s someone who praises God. And I learned this specifically, actually adapted from JI Packer who in his, some of his seminary teaching at Regent, I was listening to some of the recordings, he says, “theology is for doxology,” right? So people can study, even God, but not necessarily just for academic purposes or just for fun, right? But really, JI Packer thinks about that, no, we study God in order to praise him. And I really sort of thought about, no, it’s not just theology, right? Biology is for doxology, right? Chemistry is for doxology right? And that’s ultimately our first and foremost calling as believers. And I like to put that as the noun as opposed to my profession there. So that’s why I put doxology first. And then we just all praise God in different ways. And especially thinking through the reformation where Martin Luther right, really sort of thinks through the priesthood of the believers, like even the milk maid, even the baker, right? They’re all praising God in different ways, to be able to do that. So in a personal sense, I really think through how did we in all our different professions really praise God in those ways. And the way that I live through my praise of God is through the sciences.

Stump:

So does that involve any difference in the things you’re doing as a scientist? Or is it just a difference of attitude and approach that you bring to the work of being a scientist?

Lin:

The hope is that my faith—again, this, I wouldn’t say that I’ve done it perfectly—but the hope is my faith pervades all aspects of what I do, the topics I study, the way I do it and the how I go about it, and even the perception of how the science is even done. That’s the hope, right? But then in terms of—so a lot of that can, you know, be more evident in terms of, for example, studying rare diseases like where some people who may be more sort of coming from utilitarian and pragmatic view of, of humanity says like why do you want to spend all this effort helping someone who may not give any value to the world, right? Whereas I see, you know, all Christians believe that everybody is created in the image of God and we see value in all life, even if it’s this person may never end up speaking or getting out of the wheelchair. So there’s sort of topics there but then there’s how we live our daily life as well. So in terms of the experiments, yes, how we do the science, right? In the same way that the baking of a Christian baker should sort of look, you know, probably in terms of the methods [laughter] look not that much different, but the way that they operate their baking business and how they do that hopefully would look very, very different. And that’s what I strive to. And really looking to, you know, thinking of someone like Abraham Kuiper, right, where he talks about there’s not a square inch right in the world that Christ does not point to as mine. And that’s my hope is I don’t want to look like any other non-Christian scientists and the only difference is I go to church on Sundays. And I try to sort of really think through how can it that my faith pervades everything that I do. Do I do it perfectly? Definitely not. But that’s something I strive hard towards.

So beyond the personal side of sort of living out that intersection between science and faith, I think there’s a lot of thinking in terms of healthy dialogue between science and faith. And as you said, most people sometimes have the misconception where science discovers something and then people of faith just need to take it to adapt. And in fact, I think there actually needs to be sort of really healthy dialogue between the two. And I talk to a lot of people who are scientists who are not theologians or philosophers, but generally science have this thinking of, what’s often in a bucket of what’s called logical positivism. It’s a fancy word, but it’s just saying that people of science often believe that science is the only way to get to truth, either through scientific proof, scientific experiments, or from first principles. And this is an area within philosophy called epistemology. Where how do you know what knowledge is, you know, how do you get to knowledge? But if you ask—and a lot of my scientist friends often sort of believe that, so I asked them then, right, if you think that science is the way to get to truth and only from first principles, how do you know that that fact itself is true? 

Stump:

The self preferential problem. Right? 

Lin:

Exactly. And that’s when scientists start to think, okay, wow, maybe there are things that science can’t answer. And that then really sort of opens up that conversation, okay, maybe, you know yes, we live in this sort of post-enlightenment world where we have cool iPhones and computers and science is amazing, but science does not have the monopoly on truth. And in fact, right, there’s, undergirding science is a philosophy of science. And there’s, girding that is philosophy and epistemology. How do we get to truth? And that’s hardly sort of discussed. And I think whether it’s theology, whether it’s philosophy, all bring different areas of truth in coming to bear. So I definitely don’t think that there’s sort of a one-directional feeding of, you know, what science determines is true. Then we sort of feed it to faith. But there should be a sort of a healthy dialogue between these different areas. I don’t believe it’s sort of a non-overlapping magesteria, that these are completely separate. I think there’s sort of interaction between them, like we talked about Abraham Kuiper, we think that faith has implications on science. But again, I think, you know, just to say everybody has something to bring to the table and to bring with humility there. And as Christians within the sciences, I think it’s very much incumbent on us to sort of see how these two interact in ways that are constructive.

Stump:

Good. Well, let’s talk about another way that both may be involved, both our science as well as our theological ways of knowing and how they might interact. I’m interested particularly in prayer, so those of us that are involved in religious communities and share prayer requests with each other, I’m guessing that the number one category for requested prayer is the health concerns of loved ones. So I’m curious for you who has devoted your professional life to finding the natural cures for some of these diseases. How do you understand the role of prayer in people getting healthy?

Lin:

Yeah. I think this is the age old question in terms of sort of, I know divine sovereignty versus sort of human will and how, how we can sort of affect that. Ultimately I think prayer serves a couple purposes. Number one, that sort of direct communication with God there is helpful in itself, right, as we sort of lift up our concerns to him. And he sort of asks us to be able to do that. In terms of prayers being answered in the ways that we expect again, being a person of science, is let’s look at some of the evidence, right? Who probably is the best human person that can pray that’s most powerful, probably Jesus, right? And he, does Jesus get all his answers to prayer? Actually, no. Right?

Stump:

Not every time. 

Lin:

No, not in, even in the garden of Gethsemane, right? So I think the prayer does not work like in a way where it’s sort of a genie in a bottle and everything that you ask for. Even Jesus himself, when he prayed to the Father, right, works it in a way that may not be exactly in the way that he would ask for. What I do believe is ultimately, at the sort of the long arc of history, it’ll be to the best of the good that God has intended. So even if locally it may not look like the answered prayer is exactly what we’d ask for. But to trust God that in sort of the arc of his judgment and of his plans, that those are the best for himself and for his people there. So that’s what I think about prayer.

Stump:

If this isn’t too personal, do you yourself pray for loved ones who are sick to get better?

Lin:

Oh, without a doubt. Oh, without a doubt. Yeah. In fact, God tells us to pray, right? Jesus teaches us to pray. So God, you know in the same way with my kids, if they have something going on, even if I can’t help, I want them to come to me and ask and share together. So without a doubt. I think prayer is—and not only do we pray for supplication, right? For specific problems that we ask for, right? We pray for, right in the acrostic that people use, for adoration, for confession, right? In all the different ways. And we’re called to be praying without ceasing. I definitely don’t do that, pray 24/7 but I do hope that I live, as much as I can, in a life of sort of persistent prayer.

Stump:

Have you been a witness to any, what we might call miraculous healings, cases where science can’t explain how this happened, but people who were praying for it have a pretty ready explanation that God did something there.

Lin:

Early in my faith when I first became Christian there were many small, less probable events that happened in my own life during that time. Were they miraculous healings? I don’t know. But they were less probable, and, you know. So I don’t know. But there were events that helped me when I was very young in my faith and needed that sort of, that help, that God really sort of spoke to me in that way of, again, through different ways of illness or again, things that are improbable that happened in a very improbable way. I can’t tell you the p-value there, but improbable. But were they miracles? I don’t know. But they were encouragement to me at that time.

Stump:

Last summer on the podcast, we talked to theologian, Todd Billings, who has a kind of blood cancer and has thought a long time and written about healing. And one of the things he told us is that the New Testament conception of healing is not just fixing some part of my body that isn’t working right. There’s a much more holistic thing that involves not just physical, but social and spiritual restoration, and most importantly, leading to an encounter with Christ himself. And then it becomes an opportunity for that person, whether physically healed or not to bear witness to the glory of God, and there’s a way of bearing witness that only somebody with a chronic illness can do. I found that really interesting, and that doesn’t at all mean that we shouldn’t try to heal such people, but it does go some way toward maybe explaining why God doesn’t always step in and miraculously heal all chronic illness and these diseases. Does that kind of description have any purchase with your understanding of such things?

Lin:

Yeah, without a doubt. And even more, I think what has been very encouraging to me is someone like John Piper. He wrote a book, Don’t Waste Your Life, but he wrote an article that has been very helpful to me is, Don’t Waste Your Cancer. And really taking even the sufferings as an opportunity for witness, for growth, to be able to, again, to not only sort of see the cancer as a problem to be solved, but as an opportunity there, right? And the same way that Christ used, you know, himself undergoing suffering and in participating in suffering others. So again, even think about Paul, right? Like how he viewed death, right? Like dying was, was actually a quick way for him to go see, see Christ earlier. And he’s like, you know what, I’ll stay. So there was not a fear of death. So I think as believers, yes, I think suffering is again, is very, very hard and death is not optimal, but we have hope beyond the physical. We have hope beyond this world and we look forward to the glories that are beyond this life, that these things are sort of but a small shadow there. So I think that’s such an amazing promise that we have in Christ hopefully to support us through this time. Or even as we undergo suffering, praise God for suffering even in those times. I know it’s easier to say as someone who’s, you know, yeah. But from the times that I suffer, you know, I have an autoimmune disease, and those are the things that I try to remind myself, often imperfectly, you know, of how to even praise God even more in times of suffering.

Stump:

Well, it’s been really good talking to you here, Jimmy. I’m a philosopher by background in training, so I naturally gravitate toward the more theoretical parts of this and can maybe too often sound like it’s just a puzzle to be solved and might feel a little coldhearted to people who are actually going through a difficult time with their health there. So I appreciate, you’ve adopted a little better bedside manner there in some of those comments. And wonder if there’s just anything else you might say to such people who they themselves or someone they love who has a chronic illness that medical science just can’t do much for right now. What kind of advice or counsel do you give to such people?

Lin:

Well, let’s do the science first and then we talk about faith, right? That, yes, I think there are a lot of really amazing scientific research that is sort of ongoing, and I would not ask someone to sort of stop looking for answers and I would definitely encourage to be involved in clinical trials and efforts there. And there are a lot of great research. So that’s number one. I think I believe in medical advances and efforts there. But in lieu of that too, for people sort of on the faith side is again of that, yes, suffering is very, very difficult, but how do we hold onto the promise of what we have in Christ, that everything else can sort of fade away and we sort of focus on that. I, myself, struggle with that, right? But, hopefully as we focus on that and then seeing beyond this life, that helps to provide comfort there. And again, this comfort is not coming from a God who doesn’t know our comfort, right? Christ himself became man and suffered excruciatingly on our behalf. So we have a God that understands our suffering and has a deep, you know, there’s a deep theology of suffering in the Christian thinking there. And not suffering for his own sake, like the Buddhist, but suffering a God who suffers with us. And provided a way out. And that is the amazing hope and promise of Christ that is unique between any of the other religion. And it’s amazing that we have, we worship such a God that provides such comfort during these times.

Stump:

Thanks. Well, we like to end our conversations with our guests on the podcast with something completely different. What have you been reading lately?

Lin:

[laughs] I’ve been reading, okay, let’s go completely different then, [laughter] learning about post-structuralism and a lot of our current thinking.

Stump:

French philosophy, it sounds like. 

Lin:

Yeah. And post-modernism and there is no truth. It just seems so crazy to me how people can believe that. That there is no right and wrong. And as we redefine genders, redefine all these things, you know, where can we seek and try to understand some of the foundations of that. It’s still very mind boggling to me, but that’s an area that I’m trying to sort of understand a little bit deeper.

Stump:

Any authors or titles in there you’d care to share?

Lin:

Well, Derrida is the main one [laughter] that I’m trying to understand. And the keyword is trying. 

Stump:

Well, Jimmy Lin, thanks so much for sharing with us here today. We appreciate your work so much, and we appreciate you taking the time to talk to us. 

Lin:

Thank you.

BioLogos:

Language of God is produced by BioLogos. It has been funded in part by the Fetzer Institute, the John Templeton Foundation, and by individual donors and listeners who contribute to BioLogos. Language of God is produced and mixed by Colin Hoogerwerf. That’s me. Our theme song is by Breakmaster Cylinder. 

BioLogos offices are located in Grand Rapids, Michigan in the Grand River watershed. If you have questions or want to join in a conversation about this episode find a link in the show notes for the BioLogos forum or visit our website, biologos.org, where you will find articles, videos and other resources on faith and science. Thanks for listening.