Surprised By Oxford

I just finished an engaging and challenging (not in style, in content) autobiography entitled Surprised by Joy, by Carolyn Weber. With beautiful voice she relates her first year at Oxford University and her conversion to Christianity. Perhaps I like it because my life trajectory would likely have followed hers had I been saved in college (a love of literature, a drive to succeed, attending Oxford, a fierce feminist). But it is also a glittering mix of good story telling, poetry, literary references, philosophy, and just an honest soul sharing how The Storyteller saved her. And there's a great lower-case love story, too, for us sappy types.

There was also one passage especially interesting in light of recent conversations about God's love (circulating around John 3:16). Weber relates a dinner conversation during a very fancy meal at Oxford with many famous politicians, alumni, etc. One was a prominent scientist who dealt in time and space, confined to a wheelchair, who shared how he did not find science and faith at odds. He boldly shares his faith, stating, "the more I discovered of the scientific world, the more it convinced me of the amazing interconnectedness and brilliancy of God's design. People tend to think of science as being at odds with faith, but nothing could be further from the truth. The one only confirms the other; the one only illuminates its echo, and yet its limitations and dependence in the face of the other."

Then, at the end of the meal, a waiter comes to help the scientist from the table. Waiters aren't supposed to talk to the guests, most world-renowned in their fields or celebrities or such, but this waiter is a science buff and excitedly asks the scientist what he believes is the greatest force in the universe. His answer (which rather stuns the waiter):

"The answer to your query is love...there is nothing more powerful, more radical, more transformational than love. No other source or substance or force...often folks dismiss it as mere emotion, but it is far more than that. Not the Great Love of the Universe, as I like to call it. Not the Love that set everything in motion, keeps it in motion, which moves through all things yet bulldozes nothing...try it, just try it. If you love that Great Love first, because It loved you first...life without that kind of faith - that's death."