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Witness and intelligence

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“If I testify about myself, my testimony is not true” (John 5:31)

These words of Jesus surprised me a few days ago, my son. They caught my attention for at least two reasons: my Lord’s humility and its stark contrast with the world.

As for the latter, the people of the world live by promoting themselves. Particularly in academia and in the United States, this is overblown (although Mom, who knows the Colombian corporate world very well, tells me that it is not different there). There are too many people around me of meager talent whose only virtue to reach success has been their ability to sell their name. If it is annoying to see a capable person promoting himself, you will soon realize how unpleasant it is to see an incapable person climbing the ladder just because he sells himself well.

This is where my Lord’s humility comes as such a contrast. It is the Incarnated God Himself who is speaking here! The Second Person of the Trinity! The Son of God! The Son of Man! And yet He says that if he were to testify about Himself, His testimony would not be valid. Jesus changed the world and split human history into two without testifying of Himself. Instead, He bore witness to God the Father and, in His own words, He left it to the Father to bear witness for Him: “The Father who sent me has himself borne witness about Me.” Indeed, the four Gospels tell us that when Jesus was baptized, the voice of God the Father was heard saying from heaven, “This is my beloved Son, with Whom I am well pleased” (see, e.g., Matthew 3:17).

Who are we going to follow? I admit that I promoted myself many times. But for us who have decided to follow Christ, believe in Him, and imitate Him, the only option is not to give glory to ourselves but to our God. Therefore, this is the criterion to use from this point on: if what I am going to say is to praise myself, it is wrong; if what I am going to say bears witness to our good God, it is worth it.

To round out the matter, I was also reading Deuteronomy 4: 5–6:

See, I have taught you statutes and rules, as the Lord my God commanded me, that you should do them in the land that you are entering to take possession of it. Keep them and do them, for that will be your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the peoples, who, when they hear all these statutes, will say, ‘Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people.’

Let me be absolutely clear about this: the Mosaic law is not for believers to fulfill. However, the written word in the old covenant is a type of the Word made flesh in the new one (Hebrews says that the law is a shadow of the good things to come, not the very presence of these realities), namely of Jesus, the Logos. What this means is that, although we are not called to fulfill the law of Moses, the attitude that the old covenant asks of the people of Israel with respect to the law is the attitude that we are to have with respect to the words of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Thus, the equation is clear: if I obey and practice the words of my Lord, He—not I, but He—will show my wisdom and understanding to others. Well, I am not looking for recognition anymore (it just took me 40+ years to figure this out!), but I feel great peace by knowing that my life is in God’s hands. What is important to me is that the words of Jesus have an unequivocal message: it does not matter that I live in an academic environment where appearing smart is seen as an asset because it’s not about selling myself; it’s about giving glory to Him.

I have been looking for a new job for three years and have deeply longed to change the one I now have, but the end does not justify the means. If change is going to happen, let it be in God’s way so that it will be worth it for eternity. If not, I am not interested.

Plenitude

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The kiss – Gustav Klimt

I began to feel depressed in the middle of my Ph.D., around the year 2007. The difficult financial situation of my family in Colombia, a troubled romantic relationship, and my almost total inability to survive on my own (which became too evident when I had to live without my family in Brazil) took a toll on me, and the bill lasted for approximately ten years.

When I came to the States, loneliness hit even harder. When I started my postdoc, I realized that all my dreams came true but I was still unhappy. Furthermore, I realized that accumulating more success wouldn’t bring the happiness I longed for, so I ended up paralyzed. I was angry with God; on the brink of suicide, I really wanted to die, and I hated my intelligence because it made me feel even worse about myself. After never fearing anything, I became terrified of the night; around 4:00 pm, the panic of knowing it would get dark, and I would be alone again overwhelmed me. How was it that, for everyone who saw me, I had so many talents, and I was sinking?

My Google Scholar clearly reflects it: after completing my doctoral dissertation in 2009, which produced two articles (this and this), I only published again in 2017, eight years later! Google Scholar shows two more articles, but they are somewhat misleading (one is a preprint that couldn’t be published due to an error in the argument, and the other was an article from my undergraduate thesis to appease my employer in 2016).

2017 was a turning point in my life. The lowest point I touched and the point from which my God rescued me. After my most sincere prayer of repentance, I had a personal encounter with Christ that transcended everything I previously believed and understood. I used to talk a lot about religion. I gave lectures throughout the Spanish-speaking world on the existence of God, some of them for thousands of people, but I had never had an encounter with Christ in my adult life. Like Job, I can say:

I uttered what I did not understand,
things too wonderful for me which I did not know…
I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear,
but now my eye sees you.

My best analogy to describe what happened is this:

John Doe has read everything about the kiss: the best psychology books about its emotional effects, the best biological and medical literature on its physiological effects, and the best poems, novels, and stories — the romantic ones, the erotic ones, and the worldly ones. There is no greater expert on the kiss than John Doe! When he talks about it, everyone listens because he is the authority. But John Doe has never kissed the woman he loves. Perhaps he has kissed others, maybe many, but not the one he loves.

After many years, when he finally kisses her for the first time with an endless kiss — just the two of them, without impediments or haste—and the only words that come to his mind are: «Thank you, my God! Thank you, my God! Thank you, my God! Thank you, my God!», then he realizes that he did not know what a kiss was, and that he could never express in words the existential plenitude he experienced.

Furthermore, he now realizes that it doesn’t matter if his ideas about kissing were true or false because they do not add or take a thing. They weigh nothing! Like a null set, all his opinions were tekel. Theory and words fall so short that to say they do no justice to reality is to do no justice to reality. After having all his works written, when Thomas Aquinas had a mystical revelation of God, he summarized it well: «I can write no more. All that I have written seems like straw.» In that sense, I declare myself a Thomist!

From that point on, the guidance of the Holy Spirit became as clear to me as the purest water; his voice took away all my fears, and the sadness left me, never to return. In 2018, during a time of prayer and fasting, God promised me that from my 40s on He would restore everything I lost. He also promised He would give me a wife. And so it was. When I was 40, I met Lisette in Medellín. Two days after we started talking, I told her that I wanted to marry her, and she accepted. A month before turning 41, with full certainty in my heart that God had fulfilled his promise, we were already together in Miami. My good God fulfilled His word and has not stopped fulfilling every promise He has made since then. He has restored every single area of my life.

What about my profession? One of the things God took away was my mental block. In 2018, I started generating ideas again. The ideas gradually materialized into articles, and since then, I have been publishing in such diverse areas and in such well-reputed journals that I am still amazed: philosophy, physics, epidemiology, population genetics, statistics, information theory, and artificial intelligence, are but a sample. And I have more ideas. Many more! So many that sometimes it’s hard for me to pick the one to dedicate my next effort. And I know greater things are coming. After a mental and existential hiatus of ten years, there is no area where God has not intervened to restore it and make all things new. And yes, my Google Scholar page is there to prove it.

I don’t believe in religions; I don’t think the answer is Catholicism, Protestantism, or Anglicanism; in fact, I have a rather poor — if not negative — view of all those «isms.» They all seem like distractions from the true goal. I believe in Jesus; I talk about Jesus and what He has done for me. I live for Christ, and I follow Him. Like Saint Paul, I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who lives, but Christ lives in me; and what I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me. Like Saint Augustine, my heart was restless until it found rest in Him. Like Saint Thomas, everything I did before finding Him seems like straw. Like William Wilberforce, I believe God called me for a purpose greater than I can imagine. Like George Müller, I decided to die to myself to live for Him, and I want to show the world that it is worth the price.