The Christian union was active in many boarding schools including mine. Older Christian kids tried to get us younger ones interested. They gave us tracts and often coerced us to go to “fellowships.” You could say it paid off because, at the end of my second year in middle school, I gave my life to Christ. I remember feeling so euphoric that night, but the experience didn’t last more than a day or two. Doubt set in, and sadly I walked away shortly after. I had a similar experience years later in university, but it only lasted a couple of months.

…Growing up, I often found that what I learned about science clashed with what I learned about God… I wondered if I could ever reconcile evolution with my faith.

It wasn’t until my first year of residency as a medical doctor that I rediscovered my Faith for good. I was excited, but I wasn’t prepared for how this renewed commitment would force me to face some unanswered questions I had. You see, Growing up, I often found that what I learned about science clashed with what I learned about God. I sometimes wondered how Adam and Eve and other elements of the Bible fit in the context of our evolutionary history. I never could make sense of this, and so I would hide these questions in the corner of my mind. But, I never could escape them. They would resurface in unexpected ways. I wondered if I could ever reconcile evolution with my faith.

Searching for Answers

During this time I came across some booklets that seemed to contain the answers I was searching for. They explained the flaws in evolution. Whoever wrote the booklets seemed to know what they were talking about. They described the Miller-Urey experiment. It’s a historical experiment in evolutionary biology which I was very familiar with. In the experiment, a few basic substances like hydrogen, methane, ammonia, and water were put in a flask. Electricity was applied to simulate bolts of lightning. At the end of the experiment, the liquid contained simple organic substances. These substances included amino acids, one of the building blocks of life. This was thought to be the basis of abiogenesis—the creation of life. The pamphlet was very critical of this experiment arguing that time and chance cannot arrange amino acids into proteins. Proteins have what’s called tertiary and quaternary structure. It is very unlikely that even a protein’s secondary structure could form by itself.

The writers of the booklet were speaking my language, biochemistry, and it seemed to make sense. I was thrilled. I now had a robust argument against the plausibility of evolution. My questions were answered, or so I thought.

One day though, I heard about BioLogos and encountered evolutionary creationism for the first time. I had long admired Dr. Francis Collins greatly, especially his work leading the team that cracked the human genome. But I just couldn’t understand why there was a need to—as I saw it—squeeze the theory of evolution into God’s creation story. It just seemed somewhat sacrilegious.

Embracing God and Evolution

So God created life and all living things through the evolutionary process? That didn’t seem surprising anymore. Improbable or not, God used it to get the results we have today. You could say that the only reason why it worked was because God was behind it!

A helpful analogy I found to consider our origins in the context of Scripture is the following: Think about a 4-year-old in Sunday School who confidently says “God made me.” He knows that he came out of his mummy’s belly as a baby. He knows his little sister was in his mummy’s belly too. Mummy went to the hospital and the baby popped out. He held his baby sister in his arms while Daddy took pictures on his phone. He knew that God made his little sister, but he’s not confused about where she came from. God didn’t breathe into clay that he’d molded into the little boy’s sister. Instead, God used the incredibly complex process of embryology to form us all in our mother’s wombs. It’s completely compatible with our Christian beliefs. Similarly, God used evolution to bring about all life. It was another incredibly complex process unfolding under his watchful eye.