The Language of God

Today's Scripture

Psalm 139:13-14 — "For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother's womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well."

John 20:27-29 — "Then he said to Thomas, 'Put your finger here, and see my hands; and put out your hand, and place it in my side. Do not disbelieve, but believe.' Thomas answered him, 'My Lord and my God!' Jesus said to him, 'Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.'"

The Big Idea

Francis Collins was an atheist scientist who decided to examine the evidence for God — and ended up leading the project that read the entire human genome, calling DNA "the language of God." His story brings our whole plan home: the God whose works Kepler charted, Boyle weighed, Faraday wired, and Carver planted is not just an explanation for the universe. He is a person — and he invites honest doubters, including you, to know him.

Reflection

The atheist at the bedside

Francis Collins was born in 1950 on a small farm in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley, home-schooled by freethinking parents who put no stock in religion. He chased the beauty of equations into a chemistry PhD at Yale, and there decided faith was a sentimental relic. He was, by his own description, an atheist — comfortable, credentialed, and certain.

Then he changed course into medicine, and medicine ruined his certainty. As a young doctor in North Carolina, Collins sat at the bedsides of people who were dying — and noticed, with growing unease, that many of the believers among them were not terrified. Their faith held. One afternoon an elderly patient with untreatable heart disease, who had spoken openly of her trust in Jesus, turned and asked him a simple question: Doctor, what do you believe? He stammered. He fled the room. And in the hallway, the scientist in him pronounced the verdict he could not dodge: he had rejected Christianity without ever once examining the evidence. For a man whose whole profession was drawing conclusions from data, this was, he later admitted, the behavior he despised most — a conclusion adopted without looking.

A pastor he peppered with questions handed him a small book: Mere Christianity, by an Oxford don named C.S. Lewis. Collins opened it expecting comfort food for the credulous. Instead, he met an intellect that had held his own atheism first — and dismantled it page by page.

Arguing with a dead professor

What got him was Lewis's opening argument. Forget proofs from the sky for a moment, Lewis says; look at the strange data inside you:

"Human beings, all over the earth, have this curious idea that they ought to behave in a certain way, and cannot really get rid of it. Secondly, that they do not in fact behave in that way." — C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

We all appeal constantly to a standard of fair play — that's not fair, you promised, how would you like it? — and we all break it. Where does the standard come from? Collins the geneticist knew the evolutionary accounts of altruism and found they explained too little: why do we admire sacrifice for a stranger we will never meet? The Moral Law looked less like a survival trick and more like a signpost — exactly what Paul describes: Romans 2:14-15 — Gentiles who never had the law of Moses "show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness." A law written on hearts implies a Writer. Collins felt his atheism, which he had thought was the conclusion of science, exposed as something else: a choice he had made without doing the experiment.

For two years he fought. This is worth pausing on, because Collins's path honors doubters: he did not fall into faith; he interrogated it. Tim Keller argues that this wrestling is not the enemy of belief but its immune system:

"A faith without some doubts is like a human body without any antibodies in it." — Tim Keller, The Reason for God

The desperate father in Mark's Gospel prayed the doubter's perfect prayer — Mark 9:24 — "I believe; help my unbelief!" — and Jesus healed his son anyway. God, it turns out, accepts partial credit while the work is in progress. Eventually Lewis cornered Collins on the identity of Jesus himself:

"A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice." — C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

In 1977, hiking in the Cascade Mountains, the twenty-seven-year-old scientist rounded a trail and saw a frozen waterfall split into three streams, and felt the resistance in him finally give way. The next morning, kneeling in the wet grass, he surrendered to Jesus Christ. He has been careful to say the waterfall proved nothing — it was simply the moment a long-examined case demanded a verdict.

Reading the instruction book

What does a converted geneticist do next? In Collins's case: help find the broken gene behind cystic fibrosis in 1989, and then, from 1993, lead the most ambitious biology project in history — the Human Genome Project, the international effort to read all three billion letters of human DNA. On June 26, 2000, he stood at the White House beside the President to announce the working draft. His words that day were vintage Collins — rigorous science, open worship:

"It is humbling for me, and awe-inspiring, to realize that we have caught the first glimpse of our own instruction book, previously known only to God." — Francis Collins, White House remarks, June 26, 2000

Previously known only to God. The psalmist had claimed as much three thousand years earlier: Psalm 139:13, 16 — "For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother's womb... in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me." A book, written in the womb. Collins simply learned to read a few pages — and responded the way Psalm 139 does: "I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made." In 2006 he published his testimony, The Language of God, which became a bestseller, and founded BioLogos to help churches and scientists drop the warfare script. From 2009 to 2021 he directed the National Institutes of Health under three presidents. His settled conviction:

"The God of the Bible is also the God of the genome. He can be worshipped in the cathedral or in the laboratory." — Francis Collins, The Language of God

Notice how the Bible itself talks about nature's reliability — the very thing that makes science possible. God stakes his own promises on it: Jeremiah 33:25 — "Thus says the LORD: If I have not established my covenant with day and night and the fixed order of heaven and earth, then I will reject the offspring of Jacob..." A covenant with the fixed order of heaven and earth. The laws of nature are God keeping his word — which is why studying them never threatened Collins's faith:

"Science is not threatened by God; it is enhanced. God is most certainly not threatened by science; He made it all possible." — Francis Collins, The Language of God

Blessed are those who have not seen

Eight days, eight scientists. Kepler praying through his equations. Boyle funding Bibles with one hand and experiments with the other. Pascal sewing fire into his coat. Faraday resting on certainties. Maxwell's psalm over the laboratory door. Carver tuned in at 4 a.m. Lemaître finding the day without a yesterday. Collins reading the instruction book. Different centuries, denominations, and disciplines — one Lord.

And here is the point of the whole plan: their God is on offer. Not science's God-of-the-gaps, shrinking as knowledge grows, but the God whose fixed order makes knowledge possible, and who is, finally, known another way. Watch Jesus deal with the most famous doubter in history. Thomas demanded data — "Unless I see in his hands the mark of the nails... I will never believe" (John 20:25). Jesus did not lecture him for asking. He showed up and offered his scars: "Put your finger here... Do not disbelieve, but believe." Thomas's reply is the cry every one of our eight scientists arrived at by their own road: "My Lord and my God!" Then Jesus turned to the camera, so to speak — to us: John 20:29 — "Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed."

That blessing is not for people who believe without evidence. It is for people who weigh the witnesses — the heavens, the genome, the Moral Law, the empty tomb, eight believing scientists — and trust. Hebrews 11:1, 3 — "Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God." And the promise attached is staggering: Hebrews 11:6 — "whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him." He rewards seekers. Pascal told us with what: himself. For this is what all the studying was ever for — John 17:3 — "And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent."

Collins has spent decades saying out loud, in the world's most skeptical rooms, what Paul said to Rome: Romans 1:16 — "For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes." Eight scientists studied the works of God and were not ashamed to name him. The invitation at the end of their stories is not "become a scientist." It is older and better: taste and see. Examine the evidence. Ask the hard questions. And when the case demands a verdict, do what the geneticist did in the wet grass — surrender to the Author.

Going Deeper

Do the experiment Collins skipped for twenty-seven years: actually examine the evidence. Pick one step and schedule it this week — read the first two chapters of Mere Christianity (the ones that cracked Collins open), or read John 20 in one sitting, or write down your three biggest objections to Christianity and bring them honestly to God and to one Christian you respect. If a dying woman's question could launch the man who read the genome, an honest hour might do more in you than you think.