"Jesus is compelling to me because I find the need to rehearse the gospel message every single day.."
Cullen Buie is an Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering at MIT, where he is working on therapies in which a patient’s own immune cells are modified to find and fight off their cancer. It's like a software update for the immune system! But Cullen didn't always imagine himself as a professor. Instead, he sees himself as an "accidental academic" and credits his brother's football camp for his original entry into engineering, and for the circumstances that led to him coming to faith.
Finding God at the Ohio State University
Cullen's brother had a football camp at Ohio State and Cullen was along for the ride. He got talking with some staff there about what he might want to study and ended up being introduced to the associate dean of engineering (a subject he wasn't even familiar with) and being accepted on the spot into a pre-college engineering program that was going to start in two days! Cullen went home, quit his summer job, packed his things and came back. Engineering turned out to be very much his thing! But Cullen got more than an engineering degree and a ticket to grad school out of this time at Ohio State.
Cullen had grown up somewhat familiar with church. His family didn't attend regularly, but at one point, his mother made him and his siblings go to Sunday school and Cullen remembers being introduced to John 3:16: "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life." But Cullen had no idea what this meant. How was God loving the world by giving his Son? It made no sense.
Cullen didn't think much about Christianity again until he went to college, and found himself living with a Christian roommate. One of the first things that jumped out to Cullen about Greg was that (unlike Cullen, who cursed a lot) Greg didn’t curse at all. The next thing Cullen noticed was that Greg read his bible every single night. It turned out that Greg's father was a pastor at a local church and he began inviting Cullen to come to Sunday services. Cullen doesn't know why he said yes, but he did.
"I’ll never forget that Easter," Cullen told me. "It was my freshman year (which was the year 2000) and they invited me to their Easter morning service at 6am! I really don’t know why I said yes to that, it was ridiculous. After my friend’s dad gave the sermon, he said, ‘if you’re in the building, and you don’t know Jesus, it’s time to give your life to him’. This was a tiny church and I’m pretty sure I was the only person in that building who didn’t know Jesus, but I responded by getting up, giving my life to Christ, and getting baptized that day."
After Ohio State, Cullen went to Stanford for his Ph.D. and then to MIT, where he is now a tenured professor.
Living for Jesus at MIT
Cullen is part of a rich community of Christian faculty at MIT, including Ian Hutchinson (featured in a previous email here) and others who you'll meet in future emails! Many students are surprised to hear about his faith, as they assume MIT professors won't be Christians. They're even more surprised when they find that Cullen has well-thought-out reasons for his faith. Cullen appreciates the opportunity to break down stereotypes and reach people who aren’t expecting to hear about the gospel from someone like him.
I asked Cullen why he still finds Jesus compelling, 20 years after he first came to Christ. He replied,
"Jesus is compelling to me because I find the need to rehearse the gospel message every single day. Each morning, I’m reminded that I’m not perfect and fall short of my own expectations, much less God’s; but at the same time I’m loved more than I could ever imagine. I need to hear those words every single day to keep from becoming either overconfident or falling into despair. Jesus is the rock that keeps me from being blown away during the storm, either when things are going my way or when they aren’t, because both are dangerous places."
Reflecting on the COVID-19 Crisis
I asked Cullen to share what he's reflecting on in this midst of this global pandemic. He answered,
"Whatever your idols are, COVID-19 has exposed them. Do you idolize your wealth? That’s in danger right now. Do you idolize comfort? Needless to say, many of us are quite uncomfortable. Do you idolize your achievement and productivity? Hopefully you aren’t also a parent, because if so you can throw your productivity out the window. COVID-19 has presented an opportunity to confront the idols that were already there and allow the blood of Jesus to wash us clean of them. Much like we’re spending a lot of time washing our hands, we have a lot of opportunities to repent and let Jesus cleanse us."
Let's pray for Cullen and his colleagues at MIT, who are worshiping God with their research and their witness. And let's give God the idols this crisis has exposed in our own hearts. He is the only sure foundation and (as the great fourth-century African theologian Augustine of Hippo observed) our hearts will always be restless until they find their rest in Him.
