How to lead winsomely when your vocation is under attack
How to lead winsomely when your vocation is under attack, how the cross can “disabuse you of any sense of power” at work, and how Dr. Sethupathy practically elevates the marginalized in his office.
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[00:00:05] JR: Hey, friend. Welcome to the Mere Christians podcast. I'm Jordan Raynor. How does the gospel influence the work of mere Christians? Those of us who aren't pastors or religious professionals but who work as web developers, butchers, and legal clerks? That's the question we explore every week.
Today, I'm posing it to Dr. Praveen Sethupathy, a legendary scientist and the Chair of the Department of Biomedical Sciences at Cornell University. Dr. Sethupathy and I recently sat down to discuss how he is trying to lead winsomely when his entire vocation is under attack due to political polarization. We talked about how the cross can disabuse us of any sense of power at work. And we also talked about how he practically elevates the marginalized inside of his office. Trust me, you are not going to want to miss this terrific episode with my new friend, Dr. Praveen Sethupathy.
[INTERVIEW]
[0:01:09] JR: Dr. Sethupathy, welcome to the Mere Christians podcast.
[0:01:11] PS: Thank you for having me. It's an honor.
[0:01:13] JR: Yes. Hey, so we're going to talk about how the gospel influences your work here in a minute, but given that you were recommended by none other than the legendary Dr. Francis Collins, a fellow believer who you used to work under, I'd love for you to just talk a minute about how you saw the gospel most significantly shape his work, either when you were working directly with him or observing his career from afar these last few years.
[0:01:37] PS: Yes, Jordan, that's such a great question because he's been an incredible mentor in my life and a great example. So much of the way he leads is through his example and just being able to witness him and watch him traverse really muddy waters sometimes has been a treat, but it has also served me really well as I have progressed in my own career. So, I appreciate the question a lot.
Francis is one of the most humble individuals whom I've ever had the privilege to work with. That may sound like a really easy thing to say, but people who are in a position of power, it is very difficult to maintain humility, to keep your center, to try to remember who you are in relation to God and what you're doing there, what's your purpose.
This is the thing that I just found so impressive about Francis. When I was a postdoctoral fellow with him in the 2000s, an average day for him might be talking with institute directors at the NIH about the goals of the National Institutes of Health, then moving on to the Clinical Center to meet patients with a rare disease and meet with their families, then going to Capitol Hill and having a meeting with the Chief of Staff of the White House or congressmen and women on the Capitol, and then coming back to the NIH campus and meeting with people like me in his lab, talking about the work we were doing and the papers we were writing.
Never once, despite the fact that I was keenly aware, I was the least important thing he would do that day, never once did he make me feel that way. I watched him with everybody else as well. No matter how young or old, uneducated or educated, privy to the inner workings of science and research or not, holding a high position in the government or not, he gave you the time that you deserved because he believed in your dignity as a human being. And those are all things we talk about a lot, but it's rare to see a person execute that. To really think, yes, these meetings are different for him, but he's going to give each the time and the energy and the creativity of his that they deserve because they are someone who is seeking him. They are someone who wants his time. Not only that, they're someone who he can learn from.
That's the other bit that I really want to share here that's so impressive to me is that in a position like this, when people are often seeking you and wanting a piece of you in your time, it's easy to start to think that the information and knowledge flow is one-directional. When he and I would sit down and we talked about science, it was clear who the mentor was and who the mentee was. But we would then shift into talking about how we were doing with our faith, and it was immediate transition to brotherhood. And I could feel, despite the gap in age, despite the gap in status, despite the gap in accomplishment and achievement, it was brother to brother.
I'm speaking to a brother in Christ here, and that was remarkable to me, the way that he would make that transition in such an appropriate way. And Jordan, if I could share one more thing about how impressive working with Francis is, he has a way of bringing people together with big egos who generally want the credit for themselves, but bringing them together and helping them to be able to contribute to a shared vision, something that is bigger than each of them. I think that that's an incredible skill, and I do think that it is shaped by the gospel because he has to think about on a daily basis what his goal really is and what his purpose really is. And to remind himself that it isn't about this achievement or that achievement, but to be a minister of reconciliation, to be Christ's ambassador. He really views himself as all of us should, as that being our purpose. It really shows in the way that he conducts himself.
I asked him one time, “Francis, there's so much vitriol spoken about you. How do you navigate that? How do you handle that?” And he said, "Praveen, you've got to remember, you're not as great as what some people say. You're not as terrible as what other people say, right? You're just a man trying to figure out the will of the Lord and to do his best to step in faithfully. You remind yourself about that daily, you'll be okay.”
[0:05:57] JR: That's really good. It's really good. I've had very few interactions with Dr. Collins. But I remember the first time we interacted, Dr. Tim Keller was the one who suggested that I get Dr. Collins on the podcast. So, Dr. Collins and I were trading emails. I think it was like 18 months, we're trying to get him on the show. I wasn't pressuring him, right? Because he's no big deal, trying to fund research for a COVID vaccine. He had a few things on his plate. I remember I had to follow it up in a while and he emailed me. He reached out and was like, “Hey, Jordan, I just want you to know I'm really excited about doing this and I haven't forgotten about it. I just can't get,” I'm like, who does that? I would have been like, “Stop emailing me random podcaster, like I've got bigger fish to fry.” But it was that humility in that scene, the other image bearer, oh man, I love it.
By the way, listeners, if you haven't already, go listen to Dr. Collins' was on the show twice, actually. Just go search for Francis Collins, Mere Christians podcast and you can find it. All right, Dr. Sethupathy, let's talk about the work you're doing right now at Cornell. Explain your research in layman's terms to us laypeople/mere Christians.
[0:07:05] PS: Yes. Absolutely. So, broadly speaking, the work that I'm in is in the field of genomics. What that means is it's the study of the genome. What the genome is, is basically our entire DNA. Almost every cell in our body has our entire DNA. And actually, it gives me goosebumps every time I talk about this. But even some of the most basic facts about our DNA are mind-blowing. I mean, they're just awe-inspiring. So, if you were to take DNA out of just one cell of our body, and we have tens, hundreds of trillions of cells. But if you take DNA out of just one cell and you stretched it out from end to end, it would be taller than me, much to my chagrin, right? So, it would be about six feet. That's just incredible. And if you were to take it from all the cells of our body, just one human body, and then connect them all end to end. It would go from here to the sun and back many, many times.
Unbelievable how much information is packed inside one body. It's hard not to marvel at that when you just take a second. It's easy to take it for granted because we've all got bodies and cells and we're all walking around doing various things. But if we stop for a second and just think about the magic happening inside of us, it's nothing short of remarkable. Think back to the days where people were trying to use telescopes to figure out the stars and the planets and the magic unfolding before us about this sort of universe that we're in. I think of the universe within our body that's just microscopic, but it's equally marvelous and amazing.
So, what do I do with DNA? I try to understand how DNA works. We used to think the reason why we gave it the name genome is we thought it was a collection of genes. We thought there were maybe 100,000 genes or something like that. But the Human Genome Project that was actually directed by Francis led to the conclusion that perhaps it's more like 20,000 genes, right? Way fewer genes than we anticipated, and your listeners may be interested in this. We have far fewer genes than rice. The rice we eat actually have more than twice the number of genes we have. That was mind-blowing for those of us who thought that genes offered complexity and that perhaps the number of genes really is what led to our cognitive potential and all kinds of, but it turns out that probably it has less to do with the number of genes and more to do with when, where, and how those genes get used.
I kind of like a spiritual analogy for me with this is it's less about how many gifts God has given us, and more about how we use it, and where we use it, and why we're using it. That really affords the power of making an impact for the Kingdom of God. I think of it in the same way in our bodies, right? Is that it's this complexity about how the genes get used, how the cells are talking to one another in order to control what genes are getting used. It turns out that most of the genome isn't actually genes or sequences coding for genes. A lot of it turns out to be what I refer to as switches or maybe better referred to as dials, rheostats.
So, you can walk into a room and turn a switch on or off and the light goes on or off. Or there might be a dial that you can kind of control it with some more resolution. It's that way with a lot of these elements littered across the genome. They're not genes themselves, but they control when, where, and how genes that are encoded nearby are getting activated. It turns out that a lot of human diseases can be traced back to mutations that are occurring in those control elements and often not in the genes themselves.
We've known about that for a long time but the sheer magnitude of the number of mutations that are like that, that are predisposing us to different kinds of diseases, really exploded onto the scene and by the turn of the millennium and into the present age. So, a lot of what I'm interested in are those control elements. Where are they? Which ones work in what way? And which ones are relevant for what diseases? They're not all going to be relevant for diabetes. They're not all relevant for cancer or Alzheimer's. Some of them are relevant for different kinds of diseases. Figuring that out is a part of what I do.
[0:11:43] JR: Yes, it's fascinating. I watched a video on BioLogos where you are articulating why you view the work as worship. One was, which you've already hit on, is just that overwhelming awe and wonder. You could stretch out that sequence of the genome and it stretches this far and it's just awe-inspiring, at the power and care and intricacy of the work of our Creator God.
But another thing you hit on, and I think it's subtext in what you're saying, is the humility that that work sparks. I got to imagine you've got more questions than answers today than you did 20 years ago about genomics. Am I wrong? Talk about this.
[0:12:25] PS: Oh, yes. I mean, we have answered a lot of really interesting questions, but you hit the nail on the head, Jordan. This is research life in general, is just when you think that you have started to arrive at an answer to a question that's been plaguing you, what you realize is you've really just asked 10 more questions. You've got to kind of enjoy that hunt a little bit, enjoy that sort of process of discovery of never quite getting there and always opening up new questions that you didn't even know to ask in times past. That is the research life and you've got to find that process in and of itself somewhat satisfying in order to find fulfillment in a career like this.
But Jordan, what you just said, it reminds me, one of my favorite scientists is Johannes Kepler. And he's the 17th-century polymath. Your listeners may know him as a mathematician or as an astronomer or may not have ever heard of him at all, but I really, really enjoy Kepler because he's a wonderful example of someone who he didn't just sort of hope and pray that science and faith could be partners. He was actually driven to do science because of a belief in a God of order. He was a devout believer and he said, “God must have set up this world according to rules that we should be able to discern, at least to some extent.”
So, when someone asked him, “Hey, Johannes, what are you? Do you see yourself as an astronomer or a mathematician?” He said, “I'm a priest of physics.” And someone asked, “Well, what does that mean?” He said, “What that means is my vocation is ultimately, I get to figure out how God made the world, and then go and share and celebrate that with others.” What a beautiful depiction of what a scientist gets to do, right? We get to discover how God has made the world and then celebrate that with everyone else. Madeleine L'Engle famously said, “I've never seen conflict between science and faith because all it does is enlarge my view of God.”
Like, “Oh, my goodness, what a cool way to make this. I never would have thought about that or never would have imagined that.”
So, that's the way Kepler thought of himself. I try to think about that on a weekly basis to say, “Wow, what does it look like for me to be a priest of the natural sciences, to discover how God has made the world, and then go and celebrate that with others?” That's real worship there.
[0:15:00] JR: It's so good, man. I love that so much. One of my heroes is Fred Rogers, Mr. Rogers, and Rogers had this tension, right? He felt called the pastoral ministry, the literal priesthood, but he also felt called to ministering the kids on TV. There’s this great story, after he decided to go into TV, he had a friend of his, this guy named Bill Barker, who was one of his professors in seminary, and Bill was on this trip in Scotland, and he was in the store, and he came across these traditional tartan-patterned neckties worn by Presbyterian clergy, this like blue and black pattern tie. So, he bought two, one for him, who was a theologian, a trained theologian, and one for his friend Fred Rogers. Fred loved it so much because it was this literal physical representation that he was a priest, not of physics, not of natural sciences like you. He was a priest on television, just as our listeners, our priests as baristas or whatever it is. And he loved it so much, he wore it on TV and he decided to be buried in the tie. He's like, “I'm literally going to the grave with this idea that I'm a priest of television.” I love it so much.
All right, Praveen, we've been talking about how God delights in what you do. Let's talk about how your faith shapes how you do, what you do. Before we started recording, I asked you, “Hey, man, how's the season going?” And you were like, “To be real, this is a really tough season.” Talk about the season you're in and talk about how your faith is helping you navigate that in a winsome way.
[0:16:32] PS: Yes. Thank you, Jordan, for the space and the opportunity to share about that. It has been a very, very challenging time. It's hard for academics, those who work in a university setting, those who are doing medical research, not to feel like there's a wholesale attack right now on our livelihoods and on what we bring to society and what we bring to culture. I think there's a feeling that there isn't an appreciation for what we do and why we do it. I think there are a lot of misconceptions about what our motivations are in the academy and what really animates what we do.
I've talked to a lot of people about how well isn't everybody in the sciences aren't they trying to undermine faith? That actually hasn't been my experience. There are definitely some louder voices of people that are like that. There's no doubt about it. But that does not represent the majority of my colleagues and the good faith in which they're working to try to help humanity. So, to be thrown into a bucket with those who are seen as undermining or have an agenda to undermine others, or people that don't care about the heartland of America, it's difficult to hear. If you knew many of the colleagues I know, I think you would see what incredible people they are, many of them just so humble, wanting to help, wanting to serve, and wanting to make a difference in the world, and their inability to do so, or the fact that they have just come in and lost their jobs overnight for reasons that are inexplicable and no one can understand, it's a bit of a devastating time.
There's so much uncertainty and unpredictability, Jordan. Government funding for research, which we've been able to rely on for so many decades is suddenly up in the air. It's unclear whether research that is really being done to promote health for people in our country, whether that's going to be maintained. So, it's been a very difficult and challenging time. How do you lead in this time in a way that prevents people from going into a tailspin, helps them to just focus on what they can control, but at the same time, encourage people to be introspective a little bit, even in the midst of this challenging time to think about how we got here. Why are we so polarized to a point where trust has so remarkably severed between scientists and the academic community in general and the lay public?
Jordan, I think a lot of it is on us. I don't think we've been doing a great job of reaching out to communities across our country, and helping them to connect the dots. Every time they drive their car up a bridge, it was structural engineers who were trained typically in a university or research setting who enabled that, right? Every time they're using their cell phone, I mean, these are computer scientists and electrical engineers and technologists typically trained at research institutions and universities of like Cornell and other places, Ozempic and Wegovy, which are these widely prescribed medications for diabetes and obesity now that people are expressing tremendous amount of interest in could have great impact and ramifications on public health.
That started as research with wizard venom, right, that people would have easily dismissed as being unimportant and just a bunch of elitists who are working on things that don't matter. But there is a plan, there is a method to the madness. And if we could be better at conveying that to the rest of the country, I think it wouldn't be so easy to dismiss the work that we do. So, in the midst of this very acute challenge that we are facing, many of us are also trying to take a step back and think about how we communicate in an honest and transparent way, more generally, not when there's a pandemic, not when grant funding is suddenly being impacted.
[0:20:30] JR: Not when there's a crisis.
[0:20:32] PS: Yes. We can't just turn to think about these problems in our society when there's a crisis. It's almost too late. We've got to be thinking about it all the time.
[0:20:41] JR: Yes. It's really good. I love it – man, talk about humility. That's definitely the three-line of this conversation so far. I mean, I love the humility of, okay, I'm in this conflict, maybe the conflict of your life with the general public, with the federal government, right? Attacking the credibility of your institution and everything that you've studied so hard for. And your response is to first look at the plank in your own eye, right? It was like, okay, great, like what did we screw up? Where did we drop the ball in miscommunicating and that? I love that so much.
As you're talking, I'm thinking myself. I mean, scientists are so misunderstood. What you do is so misunderstood. And Jesus was misunderstood by just about everybody, right? How has that changed your intimacy with the Lord during this time, your communion and your prayers with Him during this time?
[0:21:35] PS: Wow, what an incredible question. There are a couple of things that come to mind, Jordan, in answering that question. I mean, I think the first is that it has made me rely on him more than ever before. I think that this reflects a weakness in humanity. I wish that I could walk with that sense of need and dependence on God all the time, no matter what it is, because I do need –
[0:21:58] JR: Yes, totally.
[0:21:56] PS: – that much all the time. But I think we can easily kind of slip into a sense of complacence and coast a little a little bit in our faith. It's in times like these where there are practical challenges, but also this feeling of loneliness. It's alone sometimes. Like, “Does nobody does nobody get what we're doing here and the heart that we have for this and the desire we have to help humanity to serve as a community of scientists?” Yes, there are noisy voices that really muddle the issue, but overwhelmingly, we want to serve. That's why we got into this still. We didn't get into this to make money. That was not a good decision if that's why we got into this game, right? We really got into this to discover, to learn, and to contribute.
So, the feeling that that isn't seen can be lonely sometimes. I think that's where a greater reliance on the Lord, because I know that he sees me. That's one sort of prominent way in which it has impacted my walk and my journey right now. But I think the other way is, I don't like to play the victim card. I like to think about what can I do to bridge the gap here, right? Let me identify the gap. Yes, it's not all my fault and it's not all someone else's fault, but the more we do of this kind of finger-pointing, the less progress we're going to make, right? I think each of us has a responsibility to, as scripture says, work out your own faith and your own salvation with fear and trembling.
There's a little bit of work you've got to do and a little bit of introspection to say, “Hey, what is it I really believe and who is it I really represent? And how does that impact the way that I move forward?” I think for me, I've come back to that verse that has that you are an ambassador for God, as though God were making an appeal through you, right? What an unbelievably remarkable statement. This broken, sinful, often wayward person and God is making his appeal through me and you, it has made me take that more seriously than probably ever before in my life, Jordan, that, “Hey, I have called you to such a moment as this, and I want you to think carefully. You can get up on your pedestal and yell and make noise, or you can think carefully about what it means to be my ambassador. What does it mean to reflect me and my virtues and my character in this moment?”
Jordan, I don't have all the answers to that, but I think I'm on the right track by going down that road.
[0:24:39] JR: Yes. Do you have an answer? Do you have one practical answer yet to what that looks like? For example, maybe the answer is what it isn't. It's not hopping on social media and posting mean tweets. Talk a little bit more about how this is showing up practically.
[0:24:52] PS: Yes, I think the biggest way that it's got to show practically, Jordan, is relationships. I know that sounds cliché, it sounds maybe canned, we do not know each other in this country. We don't know each other. If I could share a really brief story, trust matters so much. So, during the pandemic, there was a town in Brazil that was highly in favor of Bolsonaro, who was against the vaccine. They very much supported Bolsonaro. But when it came to the vaccine, huge adoption rate in that town. Why?
Well, years prior, there was a similar sort of local public health crisis, and what they decided to do in response to that was to set up kind of medical clinics at every corner in neighborhoods in that town. It was staffed by people who lived among them, but had medical expertise or pharmaceutical expertise. But when it came time for soccer practice, their kids were going to soccer practice with everyone else's kids. They were going to the same school, the same church, et cetera, right?
So, when the COVID pandemic rolled around, on that one issue, they went to the local medical professionals instead and they said, “Hey, what should we do? We're hearing about this thing.” And they said, “You ought to take the vaccine.” And they said, “Okay.” On that one issue, they happily deviated from Bolsonaro, even though they supported him with everything else. What that taught me is the simple lesson that trust matters more than just about anything else.
I can give you an eloquent speech, I can show you how many degrees I have, I can tell you where I studied, I can lay out the most well-reasoned propositional logic, but at the end of the day, what's going to matter is for someone to look at me and go, “I trust that guy. He's like me. I get how he thinks. I've been with him. I've grown with him. I know his family. I trust him.” Right? That's the kind of thing that is going to move the needle on the level of polarization we have right now. I'm not quite sure how to accomplish that fully a whole scale across America. But we've got to start in our communities.
Right here at Cornell, it's a little bubble. All around Cornell is farm community. How much are we getting out there meeting our neighbors just 10 to 15 minutes away and trying to understand their concerns, and their plights, and their problems, and their worries. How much are we really doing that? If we're serious about solving this problem, we've got to build relationships, we've got to be okay talking to people who think differently from us, and we've got to be willing to think that they have something to teach us and not just the other way around.
[0:27:33] JR: Yes, it's really good. And not only are relationships the key to solving polarization issues. I mean, relationships are the conduit for pretty much anything. You've got a team at Cornell. I got to imagine a pretty sizable team. How does it show up in that context? What does it look like for you to build relationships with that team in a way that may not make sense for a non-believer who's observing you in the role? Where do you go above and beyond? And getting to know your people beyond their productivity, beyond the number and what they could do for you. Does that make sense?
[0:28:07] PS: Makes total sense, Jordan. I came to Christ in college, and I came to Christ largely because Jesus disabused me of my notions of power.
[0:28:16] JR: Say more about that.
[0:28:18] PS: When I saw him hanging there on cross, naked and disfigured, and frankly, at the time for me it seemed pathetic. Just hanging there. I thought what is this? This is the protagonist, the God of this story? I grew up as a Hindu and I was used to when Krishna was challenged, He'd become 60 feet tall and throw his chakra at you, and yes, I could resonate with
That.
[0:28:39] JR: That's power by the world.
[0:28:41] PS: That’s power. Right, exactly. I think that's also why we all resonate with Norse mythology, and Greek mythology, and Superman, and Batman, and things like that. These are all sort of superhuman demigod characters that we sort of want to be like them. They're just a little more powerful than us, but they're kind of like us. But here was this character who was just laying there on a cross. I mean, I couldn't understand it, right? But eventually what I would learn is that, of course, he was not powerless to stop this. This is just how he would choose to exercise his power, solely for the benefit of others. It's the kind of thing you only hear about and never see.
It transformed me because it was a 180 transformation in terms of how I viewed power. There wasn't this perceived sense of superiority or an exertion of force or my will on those underneath me and working for me or whatever it might be, but rather a posture of service, a washing of the feet, how can I serve you? That that's actually what power means. So, it completely reoriented my thinking, Jordan, and it's how I try to approach my every day as a department chair, for example. One concrete way in which I think it has really changed the way that I think about leadership, is I always try to identify the most marginalized, the least recognized, the most marginalized, and Jordan often, these are people that are breaking their back. They are giving their all, but their work is not seen as high profile. Their work is not seen as the one that someone is to write about in the news. Often this is custodial staff, it's administrative staff, technical staff, a lot of those kinds of roles, not necessarily the dean or an academic leader or someone who's in the National Academy of Sciences.
Obviously, that's all wonderful and important, and we want to highlight and recognize those accomplishments. But I start with the people who really make it happen and elevate and bring them to the fore so that the entire community sees what they're really doing and goes, “Wow, none of us would be able to do what we do without them.” So, it's elevating those people that are easily forgotten and easily marginalized by the broader community. That to me is an important aspect of leadership.
[0:31:11] JR: It's so good. I finally gave language within my family. I got three young kids. What’s our big idea? What are we chasing after? It's really the love like Jesus. And specifically, we called that out as a few, five things of what that means. One of them is, we especially love the marginalized, right? We love, we love all neighbors as ourselves, but we especially love the marginalized. So, I love that you brought that up. Give us an example of this, don't name names, right? But what's a position within Cornell that you went after is like, “Man, I'm going to elevate this person with God-given dignity and the work that they're doing.” Tell us a story to that end.
[0:31:52] PS: Yes. So, a great example of this is my admin staff team, right? I call them the dream team. Not even sure I would have taken this position as department chair had I not had the opportunity to work with them. They are phenomenal. They are not only really good at their job they go above and beyond to serve all the faculty in this department and they provide all of the grunt work, Jordan, to make sure that when we're inviting a speaker, all the itineraries, the logistics, all those behind the scenes, they do all of that. It's not the kind of work that gets any kind of recognition we expected to happen. It's sort of happening, humming behind the scenes. We only ever notice it when something is broken, something goes wrong, like, “Oh, what happened to that hotel arrangement for this person? And then we get on someone's case for that.”
But the 99% of the time that it's happening smoothly, we take it for granted, right? And being a faculty member in the department, I often didn't see how much work went behind the scenes with the department managerial staff and the custodial staff. Now, they're a part of my team as the department chair. I actually interact with them on a regular basis to accomplish a lot of those kinds of tasks, and I see how much time it is, how much effort goes into it, how much energy above and beyond they go beyond their working hours to make sure that people are satisfied with the product, right? And they don't ever ask for any credit. It's sometimes the opposite of the sort of highfalutin people I interact with.
So, what I often like to do is typically when an event, let's say we hold a big symposium, we usually highlight all the keynote speakers that have come and all the kind of credentialed people that have attended. We highlight them, we thank them for their time and for their expertise and all these things, and then we move on. One of the really small things I like to do is, we will do that, but we will end, save the best for last by highlighting the staff who helped to ensure that we had the room to do this, that the audio visual was going to work perfectly well for us. All external speakers had a place to stay and that they had a welcome package, and they felt welcomed, and all those things that are absolutely vital for a successful event, but no one gets credit for.
[0:34:19] JR: I love that, man. That's such a beautiful, practical example. Those little things, those are the big things. Those things in aggregate, those are the big things. What a beautiful picture of the kingdom that is breaking into the present. Speaking of which, hey, there are four questions we wrap up every episode with. The first is about the Kingdom of Heaven when it's here on Earth. So, looking ahead to the New Earth, Isaiah 65 says we're all going to long enjoy the work of our hands. What work would you love for King Jesus to give you to do? Free from the curse of sin, free from political polarization. What do you want to be doing for billions of years?
[0:35:02] PS: Oh, my gosh. There are two things that I think I love the most.
[0:35:05] JR: We got billions of years so you could pick more than two, but two is a good place to start. I like it.
[0:35:09] PS: So, I love discovery, right? I love the idea that there are ways that God has made things that will just blow my mind, right? Because I think what it does is it doesn't push God out of view. When I learn about a natural mechanism for how something works it doesn't make me say, “Oh, that's less exciting now. It would have been cooler if God had done that.” It actually makes me go, “Whoa.” So, he set it up so that it would all kind of work out like that. Wow that's pretty remarkable. What it always does for me is it adds this wonderful color to the truths of scripture, so I can't wait to just keep on, and I think, right now we see dimly through a mirror, but we will one day be able to see much more clearly. And I love the idea of being able to see things and then saddle up right next to him and go, “Wait. So, does this mean –”
[0:36:01] JR: Yes.
[0:36:03] PS: How did you do it? Why did you do it that way? Just to be able to converse with him after an opportunity to discover, right? It's almost like I imagine a twinkle in his eye like, “Yes, I was hoping you’d see that. I was hoping you’d pick up on that.” So, I love thinking about that and that kind of idea.
The other thing is I love building teams. I love bringing people together for something that's bigger than each of us. And maybe I get a little bit of that from Francis and how good he was at doing that. I don't know what kinds of opportunities there will be for that on the other side. But I love the idea of God kind of dispatching us and saying, “Okay, you guys, you go and figure this out.” But now we're doing it, knowing that the Lord is there. Then we come back to him and say, okay, “Here's what we found out. Teach us more. Tell us what this means.” The opportunity as part of teams with so many different kinds of people work together, because we now all have a shared goal of worshiping him through what we discover.
[0:37:06] JR: Yes, that's so good. I mean listen in Genesis 1 and 2, it’s clear that God's a big proponent of teams to work the garden and to turn it into the garden city. I'd be shocked if we're not working in teams on the New Earth. So, I love that answer.
All right. Hey, let's talk books and I get book recommendations are highly personal. But let's say we opened up your Amazon order history. Which book would we see you buying over and over and over again to give away to friends?
[0:37:31] PS: Wow. Can I say two, Jordan?
[0:37:34] JR: Say as many as you want.
[0:37:38] PS: Daniel Taylor. It continues your theme of humility. It is written by a devout Christian, was a professor at Hope College. I'm not sure if he's still there or if he's emeritus now, but it's a book about embracing uncertainty in the context of assuredness of faith. It's just a really interesting idea. He's not advocating the idea of being a reed blowing in the wind, but he is saying that the notion that you could be a 100% certain, almost doesn't leave room for faith.
[0:38:08] JR: That's right. That's exactly what it means.
[0:38:11] PS: Yes, exactly. So, we need to embrace uncertainty and the kind of messiness that it brings because that's where the magic happens, and it's a really, really great book and very transformative for me. Definitely, What's So Amazing About Grace? by Philip Yancey, which is a book that humility is just an incredible theme in that book and just how open Philip is about his own misconceptions, his own assumptions that are shattered about all kinds of things. And then finally, I would say there's a book called, I'm still reading it actually, and it's called The Genius of Their Age. And it is about two – it's actually two Muslim thinkers and scholars in an ancient era and how their context and their time afforded them the opportunity to do profound discovery, but in really humble ways, not just humility in the sense of, “Wow, we're just scratching at the surface of knowledge and God has given us all this opportunity,” but actually veering off into different kinds of cultures and trying to figure out how the pursuit of knowledge is altered by your cultural context. I think that's really interesting. I obviously don't share their faith, but I do find it's really important to know the giants on whose shoulders we stand.
We often end up giving credit to a certain set of people and maybe not others who are lost, particularly to Western literature. So, I do think it's really important that we give credit where credit is due. And there are phenomenal thinkers and scholars across time and place and culture that I think we would do well to recognize their contribution.
[0:39:49] JR: And across religious background. This is The Doctrine of the Common Grace.
[0:39:52] PS: Exactly.
[0:39:54] JR: All truth is God's truth, regardless of where we find it. So, man, I love that you pointed that out. That sounds like a fascinating book. All right, Dr. Collins, when I asked him this question, his answer was you. Now, I wanted you to answer, who do you want to hear on this podcast most, talking about how the gospel shape in their work in the world?
[0:40:12] PS: Wow. The reason why I'm thinking is that there's so many names that are flooding my thoughts right now. Let me see if I had to pick one. I mean, one person that I've always been incredibly fascinated by and I'm not sure if you've had a chance to talk with him yet is Ard Louis.
[0:40:29] JR: No, I don't know this person.
[0:40:30] PS: Okay. So, Ard Louis started at Oxford Developing the Christian Mind or DCM.
[0:40:37] JR: Yes. I'm familiar with this project.
[0:40:39] PS: Yes. That has now started to kind of gain traction here in the States, and I know that in the in North Carolina and the Triangle area, they're trying to develop it. Harvard has been trying to develop it. Here at Cornell, we're starting to think about it too. So, what does it look like to develop a Christian mind, which I think is such an important topic, Jordan, for all of us, not just people in the academy, because what did Jesus say? He said to love him with all our strength and soul, but also all our mind, right?
So, what does it look like to do that? I think it's a really important question that all of us ought to wrestle with. And he's just a really fascinating, wonderful thinker, and such a good friend and colleague too. He's a brilliant person, but always eager to share what he knows with anybody he talks to. So, I think he'd be a great guest. The other person that comes to mind is Katharine Hayhoe.
[0:41:30] JR: I've had Katharine. I love Katharine Hayhoe. She's amazing. That's one of my – man, that's an old episode on the show, but it's a really, really, really good one. All right. Dr. Sethupathy, before we sign off, you're talking to this global audience of mere Christians doing a lot of different things vocationally. What's one thing you want to reiterate from the conversation we've had over the last 45 minutes before we sign off? What do you want to leave us with?
[0:41:53] PS: I think the one thing I would reiterate is there is more to each other. Among the polarized groups in our country, there is more to each other than it seems. There's more to each other, the sort of the noisiest voices on the extremes of these of the spectrum would have you believe. Let's get to work on building relationships, on getting to know one another better, on being a part of each other's lives. It's going to take goodwill across the entire day of America. We should want to get to know each other, the fullness of one another, not the caricatures of one another. Then let's see what God does with that step of faith, of reaching out to actually get to know people who we have demonized or we have easily caricaturized. Let's actually get to know them, whether they share our faith or not, and see who they really are. I think there's going to be a lot of good that happens in that process.
[0:42:53] JR: It's good. It's really good. Dr. Sethupathy, I want to commend you for the exceptional and important work you do every day, for the glory of God and the good of others. Thank you for, man, just your heart of humility and just the posture of humility and everything that you do and are talking about. And for reminding us that we are all priests of physics, priests of the natural sciences, priests of podcasts, whatever it is, and the God delights in this good and important work that he's called us to do. Hey, where can people keep up with your work if they're interested in doing so?
[0:43:28] PS: Googling my name is always the best way because all kinds of things, so talks that I'm giving, whether it's through BioLogos or Veritas or other kinds of forums, are almost always recorded and up online. So, I think that might be the easiest way. My scientific work is usually cataloged on my website at Cornell, and that's pretty easy to find as well.
[0:43:49] JR: Great, Dr. Sethupathy, thanks again.
[0:43:50] PS: Thanks so much, Jordan.
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[0:43:52] JR: Hey, if you enjoyed that episode as much as I did, do me a favor, take five seconds right now and go leave a five-star rating of the Mere Christians podcast on Spotify, Apple, wherever you're listening right now. Thank you guys so much for listening. I'll see you next week.
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