Surprised by Oxford by Carol Weber

This summary will be a little different in that I don’t want to repeat the story but rather the wisdom of Carol and others found in the book. I found this book amazing. Barbara and I read it together – and she even enjoyed it! It is the memoir of a brilliant young student who won a scholarship to Oxford. She was raised with very little faith input and it traces her journey to Jesus. I love her insights. She says in the beginning that she attempted to faithfully reproduce these conversations. One reviewer claimed – “No one talks like this.” He has never been to Oxford.

Since this doesn’t summarize a great story, I highly recommend that you read the book.

Carol’s bits of wisdom:

Talking about how much she liked U2’s music as a non-Christian.

On one level they suggested eros or the self-giving love of God. The former beckons the latter, and yet the latter does not need any predilection. Indeed, all other forms of love will be healed and function most beautifully when subsumed under agape’s rule.

However, the intertwining of sex and spirituality has always haunted literature and art, perhaps because we crave the intimate and are most immediately assuaged by the sexual, and so we know of no other appropriate language.

Pursuing one’s degree at Oxford becomes for most not a matter of a prerequisite for a job, or to please one’s parents, or to make a minimum income bracket. Rather, the opportunity to study here seals an experience marked by intense personal growth resulting from a genuine desire to learn. A heady, hearty experience that changes you forever because it cracks you open ultimately to the humility of learning.

One of her professors once remarked:
An education forced is no education at all.

Carol’s response: “I thought about how it seemed anything forced made it nothing at all.”

I now understand why conversion and conversation are evocative of each other, turning toward each other, yet separated merely by where you are “at.”

The morning after I heard the gospel, I woke up with what felt like a hangover. Little would I know it was of the spiritual kind that accompanies the inevitable dawn of realization that life is not, perhaps, what we previously thought it was.

One day at the tiny gym I visited on High Street, after a string of hits from Bon Jovi, I heard a Scottish pastor on the radio claim, like TDH, that Scripture has real, explosive power. Not the power of suggestion, reprimand, or even persuasion. Not nice pleasantries or comforting self-help tips. But the power of spiritual DYNAMITE! It blows your worldview apart, shatters your complacency, forces you to choose, to act, to love. It is radical and holy . . . without amendment . . . without apology.

When encouraged to commit her life to Jesus by one of her professors:
“No one will understand,” I bemoaned when she returned.
“Some will,” she replied.
“No one will listen; no one will really hear,” I continued.
“Some will, eventually, or perhaps.” She shrugged. “Beyond speaking the truth in love, that’s not your territory anyway.”
“I will no longer belong,” I said sadly.
“To whom?” Her beautiful eyes danced.

I love the way she describes the movement of the Holy Spirit in her – even before she was a follower. After her brother made a snide remark about her becoming a Christian:

I felt the sting. Then the indignant defense rushed in. Then the anger. Then the sadness. And, then, without warning, the Love. Within an instant. That tsunami Love, which threatened to flood out everything.

I found her observation on the fall fresh and insightful:

No wonder Eve’s temptation was intellectual—not sexual, or sensual, or physical, or even, ironically, spiritual, but highly intelligent—a rationalization of her desire, her hubris. Our heads can deceive us just as much as our hearts, if not more so.

I never connected homesickness to the Trinity:

Homesickness only makes the afflicted more in tune with how absolutely plausible a concept like the Trinity really is.

She offered an interesting reason why a non-Christian might not want to be prayed for:

I did not want anyone to know my want. If they knew my want, they might not want to know me

And these tidbits:

Life offers so many excuses for shame.

We can lean into the human fear, acknowledge it, and move through it to the larger vision, or we can remain crumpled by it, crumble to it.
But then I remembered that remembering is the antidote to despair.

Yes, I see. Joy is the Christian’s secret weapon. No one else has it in such abundance.

Often the darkest things within ourselves become the keys by which we open ourselves to God, to His healing, and to a better comprehension of grace (full comprehension, I think, is beyond us at present).

Wisdom from others

I love the way she starts running into Christians everywhere – her professors, the dean, on an airplane, in her dorm. She had never noticed them before. I think it is like that. You never notice positive Christians until you are on your way.

“The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.” Yeats

She records this from a special dinner with distinguished guests from around the world:

A scholarship student, I was invited to Christmas dinner at “high table” at my Oxford college—an extravagant and beautiful dining experience—to which I brought along my new Christian friend “TDH” (otherwise known as Tall, Dark and Handsome). As a result, I was memorably impacted by a conversation about science and faith in general, and by the modeling of a faithful life in particular. I consider this scene quintessentially Oxford in its setting and challenge, and I hope it offers a window into the magical and moving experience of my conversion path as a student there.
The guest of honor was a brilliant scientist whose expertise lay in the intersection of time, space, speed, sound and light. He once cracked a notoriously complicated algorithm, which won him much fame.

The following excerpt is, according to Carol, a faithful representation of what went on at this dinner from Chapter 10 “Does Love Justify All?” of the book. I was particularly struck by the argument for God from the equilibrium that exists in the universe. Not that it was particularly persuasive but that it was new to me.

More persuasive was the famous surgeon’s recognition that death is wrong. I know some theistic evolutionists who feel that death is beautiful – but of course it must be for theistic evolution to work. But the surgeon’s observation parallels mine. I once was with a beautiful race horse while it died. One minute, even though in agony, it was beautiful. The moment it died, it was ugly.

“I’ve been enjoying this lively conversation, this God-and-science dilemma; such a treat for a reclusive researcher like me,” he winked. The table now turned on him, expectant. He paused, as though measuring his words carefully. Then he began.
“Well, I wonder if it’s much like the secret of the magnet, Miss Drake.”
“Everything I’ve witnessed in the natural world seems to operate in a desire to attain equilibrium. What rises, falls. What heats, cools. What freezes, thaws. The magnet attracts and repels the thing most like it, another magnet. Yet without this force, nothing in the world would function. We are the only planet in this solar system with such delicate conditions for life. The axes of the poles would cease to spin, the tides would halt, the sun would fail to rise and set, if these forces did not exist in a relationship of attraction and repulsion, a relationship which seeks this equilibrium that allows for life,” Dr. Sterling explained.
“Are you saying that these things exist in perfect relationship?” the provost asked.
“That’s a difficult one to answer, as things currently stand. Perfect enough, yes, to perpetuate life on the planet. But imperfect enough to contribute, at times, to our suffering, wouldn’t you say?”
“What of life and death?” Dr. Rieland queried.
“Precisely,” replied Dr. Sterling
“You mention what rises, falls; what heats, cools. But what of what lives? It dies, as all must die, Dr. Sterling. Then what of this equilibrium? This great magnet?” Dr. Rieland persisted.
“Yes, true, that’s where there is a momentary crack in the equilibrium,” Dr. Sterling conceded. “Remember, though, I didn’t say it was perfect in its current state, did I? Just perfect enough, for the moment, which seems pretty generous to me.”
“We barely scratch the surface of time!” Dr. Sterling exclaimed. “A fissure is only as broad as you perceive it to be. It may be miniscule from one perspective—barely perceptible—yet from another, it may seem massive, even overwhelmingly uncrossable, like a black hole in space. Is it a mountaintop or an abyss? It might depend on how you are seeing. For instance, from which angle you are looking or with which eyes.” “What lives, continues to live, forever, if the perfect equilibrium is restored, if the relationship is repaired between the two ends of the magnet, or the two sides of the chasm, so to speak.”
“Oh my! What has this got to do with God and science?” asked the politician’s wife with a little laugh.
“Everything,” Dr. Sterling cried most seriously. “Everything!””
“Let’s be frank, shall we?”
“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.”
“While they are connected, there is a difference between fear and awe. We shouldn’t be afraid to embrace the awe. All of my work has only proven to me that the imprint of the Divine lies on the natural world. So why wouldn’t the same be the case for science?”
He then turned to Dr. Inchbald. “How do you reconcile God and science.”
“I admit,” he said softly, so softly we all had to crane to hear, and so we all moved in closer, a disparate bunch of similarly expectant faces. “I admit that I don’t know what to think about God, about death when I see it happen. When I have to inform a patient’s family that he didn’t pull through, or that no matter what we can try to do, it won’t be enough to save him.” He grew very quiet. “The hardest ones, for me, I think, are the children.”
“Sometimes I want to rage against God when I see the lifeless body of a teenage boy who was running a court and shooting baskets only a short while ago. Or when I operate on a tiny new baby with a hole in its heart. Or when I see the blue lips of a grandmother who was only just kissing her grandbabies that morning.” He paused, and then smiled wryly. “One of my specialties is massive coronaries, a funny kind of ‘specialty’ to have in life, when you think about it.”
He continued, “You had better think through God if you’re going to stay in one piece. I’ve had colleagues try to sidestep God, but that only cracks them apart even further in the long run.”
Dr. Inchbald continued, “I’ve seen science and medicine do much good, and I’ve seen it have no effect, despite the most valiant efforts. These lines on my old face are hard-won, and I’m now slowly growing proud of them,” he chuckled. Then his voice grew even stronger. “After many years, and I admit after many stiff drinks after many hard days, one morning I stood suspended over one heart, scalpel in hand, about to cut in. It was a bit of a Monty Python moment, as I’ve liked to come to call it.”
“Well, as I was standing there, all the uncertainty of my life, the absurdity of all this death, and all our attempts to ward it off, came down to a pinprick of light—like the glint off the scalpel in my hand. As I looked down I realized my hand was shaking, the ultimate downfall for any surgeon, but especially a heart surgeon.
“I panicked and felt as if I was being swallowed up in, well,” he looked over at Dr. Sterling, “a black hole.”
“When all of a sudden, I heard it. A ping.”
“A ping. Like a, well, high-pitched ping. Like the sound that the machine that cost over a million pounds makes in the delivery room in the opening birth sequence to Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life. You’re British, you should know,” he leveled at the provost. “The machine that goes ping!”
Dr. Inchbald continued, “This ping marked something that finally went off in my head, in my heart, in my hand—steadying all three by what I can only call a miracle.”
“I’ve come to the conclusion that God is sovereign, even over science, and that I cannot pretend to fully know His ways. They really are mysterious, as the saying goes. They are not of the mind of men, no matter how hard we try to wrap our minds about these ways. I can marvel at the intricacies of the human body, which really are pretty miraculous to behold. In fact, I don’t know how one can go to medical school and not be in greater awe of a Creator than ever before. The original, in both senses of the term, pings into the banal; the heavenly pokes in, pokes through.”
“To cut to the chase when I see death, I know it is wrong.”
“Really, really wrong. In my gut wrong,” Dr. Inchbald almost pleaded. “It was not meant to be. It was not meant for us. We were not built for it. Everything in my body, at a cellular level, let alone a metaphysical one, twists against it. Not just my death, but the death of every living thing.”
Dr. Sterling interjected into all of our ruminating thoughts. “Yes, I would have to conclude that no matter how misleading the title of the theory of relativity, absolutes rule the physical as well as the metaphysical. For me, God’s love is so great that it can attract even the farthest, most lost, most seemingly random cell to Him. That we desire to respond, to have right relationship with Him, is the secret. To set it all right. For everything to be all right.”
As they were leaving another conversation ensued:
“Sir,” the waiter knelt down beside him, “I wondered if you could tell me what you consider to be the strongest force in the universe?” He rushed on, “Please forgive my intruding, but I was curious as to your opinion, your being such a great scientist and all.”
Dr. Sterling put his hand on the waiter’s shoulder. “Excellent question!” he marveled.
“I’m a bit of a science-fiction buff,” the waiter admitted, “and I read all the science magazines. Always have. Before I had to quit school, science was my best subject,” he added proudly.
Dr. Sterling nodded in praise. “Well, what a delight and an honor to meet a fellow with similar interests. Yes, I don’t think I’ve ever been asked such an excellent question.”
The waiter beamed.
“Love.”
The waiter’s smile froze, and then it started to melt. He gave Dr. Sterling a confused look.
“The answer to your query is Love,” Dr. Sterling repeated.
“I’m afraid I don’t understand,” the waiter hedged. “I mean, love is an abstract, an emotion. It’s not a force or a substance or even a theory.”
“Are you so sure?” Dr. Sterling’s eyes danced.
We were waiting for the rest of the procession to go through the dining hall doors, so the waiter risked a few more moments of conversation. He leaned in even closer to Dr. Sterling, resting his arm intimately on his wheelchair. Dr. Rieland threw the waiter a withering look, but Dr. Sterling seemed delighted.
“Please, sir, do go on,” the waiter urged, ardently, seeing only the doctor’s delight, and delighted in response.
“Well, I used to have this hunch,” Dr. Sterling began, “but years of experience have only confirmed it.”
“What?” the waiter asked with bated breath. Now several of us were listening intently, but Dr. Sterling continued to speak only with the waiter.
“There is nothing more powerful, more radical, more transformational than Love. No other source or substance or force. Do not be deceived, for it is all of these things, and then some! Often folks like to dismiss it as a mere emotion, but it is far more than that. It can’t be circumscribed by our desires or dictated by the whim of our moods. 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 and yet bulldozes nothing, not even our will. Try it. Just try it and you’ll see. If you love that Great Love first, because It loved you first, and then love yourself as you have been loved, and then love others from that love…Wow! Bam! Life without that kind of faith—that’s death. Therein lies the great metaphor, Miss Drake,” he nodded toward me. “Life without faith is death. For life, as it was intended to be, is Love. Start loving and you’ll really start living. There is no other force in the universe comparable to that.”

I love this letter from Flannery O’Connor

Dear Mr. Corn,

I certainly don’t think that the death required that “ye be born again,” is the death of reason . . . Satisfy your demand for reason always, but remember that charity is beyond reason, and that God can be known through charity.

Regards
Flannery

She had many Christians in her dorm and in her classes who showed great wisdom:

“Sometimes I think the good news is almost easier to share with strangers,” Rachel observed, “maybe because so much isn’t on the line, relatively speaking (if you pardon the pun).”
“It’s the most important thing to share,” Mark insisted. “Of anyone we should be sharing it with—”
“But therein lies the rub,” Dorian interjected.

Of course there was a C.S. Lewis Society on campus. Here is what one of the speakers said:

“The gravity of being a Christian must be matched, if not outweighed, by the levity of being one. You cannot truly live the gospel and be a serious hypocrite.”

Quoting Rainer Maria Rilke

You are so young, so before all beginning, and I want to beg you, as much as I can, to be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves—like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. The point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.

“Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us.”

From one of her professors:

Fear lies at the unexamined core of who we are. Faith grows from the surpassing of fear in spite of its presence.

when you work from faith, either you will step forward onto something solid, or you will be given wings

People assume that our dignity only lies in our choices, in what we think we so powerfully will and wield. But it can reside in our reactions, too, in our decisions about how to respond.

A friend telling Carol about the beauty of a good Christian fellowship:

To put it simply, I guess, it’s because I found that the people here, for the most part, take the gospel seriously without taking themselves too seriously.”

Her sister when telling Carol why she is holding back from God:

I’m afraid of what I will discover. About Him. About me

“Pray to God, but keep rowing to shore.” Old Russian Proverb

Another friend:

The really amazing thing about grace is that it takes you even beyond the top rung.

Antoine de Saint-Exupery:

Here is my secret. It is very simple: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.1

The Breakup

Chapter 13 which records where she breaks up with her boyfriend is worth the price of the book alone. After telling him that being married with separate world views would be a disaster:

“I’m not so sure, Carolyn,” Ben reasoned. “I mean, can’t you do your thing, and I can do mine? My parents do it all the time, and they’ve been together forever.”
“I don’t want to live in a separate part of the house from you, Ben, let alone in a separate part of my soul from you . . .” I struggled to explain, but I didn’t have the vocabulary yet.
“I’ve tried to believe, Carolyn, honest I have. Especially when I thought that not doing so meant losing you.” Ben spoke so ardently that I ached. For him. For us.
I moved in closer to him, wrapping my quilt around him too. “But I just can’t,” he whispered. I took his hand and looked at his face, part shadow, part flame. “Come with me,” I pleaded.
Remember – she wasn’t there yet. She was on a journey exploring Jesus. But had not been born again.
He looked at me, and then he looked away into the flames.
I held my breath and waited.
“No.” He shook his head, still avoiding my gaze.
“No.”
I exhaled.
It was over.

I love this poem that Ben left her when they broke up:

I don’t know any other way of loving
but this, in which there is no I or you,
so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand,
so intimate that when I fall asleep it is your eyes
that close.