Surgical Spirit: The bull’s eye

“For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities – his eternal power and divine nature – have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without any excuse.”  (Romans 1:20)

At the age of thirteen I wanted to be an eye surgeon. This lofty ambition was occasioned by my physics teacher telling us to go to the butcher and ask for a bull’s eye: we were going to dissect it. I was incredibly excited at this prospect. We learned about lenses. We drew diagrams of refraction and how the image was focussed on the retina. We were amazed that this image could be conveyed to the optic cortex (in the brain) by a nerve no thicker than a pencil.

Sadly, my interest was not solely scientific. I had a very squeamish friend and was delighted by her terror. I had already flicked maggots at her during the ‘Response of Larvae to Light’ experiment and was fascinated to see how she would get on with a real pathological specimen. (This friend later became a Christian but I’m not recommending my approach to evangelism!)

In the end, the lesson was rather a disappointment: the structures were soggy and flat and not clearly labelled like the wonderful pictures we had drawn. But, even as teenagers, we could see the complexity and brilliance of the system. How, I asked myself, could this possibly have come about by random mutation? This was one of my first steps towards theism or, I should say, one of the Good Shepherd’s first steps towards me.

I am aware that evolutionists claim to have ‘debunked’ the idea of irreducible complexity but even when I did a job in Ophthalmology years later, I discovered that the surgeons, to a man (and they were all men), were in awe of the eye’s intricacy and design. Furthermore, they all used words like ‘arranged’ or ‘constructed’ or ‘wired’ to describe the anatomy. More than one ascribed glory to God.

Let us praise God for his eternal power and divine nature, clearly seen and understood in creation:

‘All things bright and beautiful, all creatures great and small,
All things wise and wonderful, the Lord God made them all.’

Let us be encouraged (especially in children’s work) that even when a youngster appears silly or frivolous, there may well be something going on at a completely different level.

Ruth Eardley is a GP and member of Affinity partner Little Hill Church, Leicester. She writes a regular piece for her church entitled ‘Surgical Spirit’. We have been given permission to reproduce some of them. This is her latest contribution.