I became a Christian at the age of 12. I'd been brought up in a Christian home, and, having investigated the claims of the faith for myself, I decided it was time to trust Jesus Christ with my life. Coming to university in London was the best thing that ever happened to me. I was spoilt for choice when it came to churches and threw myself into life as a Christian at college. It's also been a privilege to go through the ups and downs of the first few years with a group of close Christian friends.
Sadly, Christianity has a poor image in the United Kingdom and is often treated with a contempt that wouldn't be tolerated if it were directed at any other faith group. It saddens me that so many friends and colleagues have such an animosity towards the faith that is central to my life and will often do anything to avoid talking about it with me. But, contrary to popular opinion, most Christians are reasonably well balanced people who don't want to befriend you simply so they can force you to read the bible before frogmarching you to church. On the other hand, God's word is more useful to me than even the Oxford Handbook of Clinical Medicine as it provides me with the best means of keeping in touch with how He wants me to live my life. In addition, going to church is one of the most important aspects of my week, but I can assure you it doesn't necessarily involve several hours of long faces, dreary hymns, and organ music.
Traditionally, universities have been seen as a cauldron of ideologies and philosophies where "anything goes." But virtually all the teaching students receive is underpinned by philosophical naturalism, the notion that physical matter is all that exists and there is nothing beyond it. There is no reference to any external standard, which makes it totally subjective. Not surprisingly then, my theistic (God centred) world view is often opposed to this. Ethics is one example, but my conviction about the value of human life and humans themselves often impinges on many other aspects of medicine such as embryology, anatomy, and even communication skills.
Inevitably, my faith and the life I choose to lead have come into conflict with the expected norm. For example, I have encountered problems with the traditional medical school culture on several occasions. I opt not to get blind drunk every Friday night, take drugs, or sleep around. This is not, I hope, done out of any pious desire to appear "holy," it is simply one of the ways I choose to live in order to honour what I believe.
Medicine and Christianity work well together in several ways. Physical healing formed a large part of Jesus's activity on earth, and he was centuries ahead of his time in his emphasis on caring for the whole person, treating physical, emotional, and spiritual problems alongside each other. Christians have been pioneers in compassionate care for the sick and helped lay the foundations of the modern hospice movement and medicine in the developing world. For Christians, practising medicine can be a wonderful way to bring God's healing to hurting people.
Starting work on the wards has made me look at life differently, something that happens to any clinical student. In contrast to my colleagues studying, say, engineering, I am forced regularly to confront human emotion and suffering, as well as all that entails. But I can't, and won't, claim that my faith provides me with all the answers to life's tough questions--at times it can make things all the more difficult to comprehend. A few months ago, a Christian friend and I sat on the floor of a dimly lit corridor at three o'clock in the morning, struggling to come to terms with the death of a young trauma patient. We were both close to tears and had only one question on our minds: why? We had been standing, completely powerless, at the back of the operating theatre for six hours, watching the surgeons work, simply willing this patient, barely older than us, to live. For me, the only thing that can help make sense of problems such as this is the knowledge that there is a God who not only loves the individuals He has created but cared enough to die for them. He is also not unaffected by the sufferings of His people but, having both designed life and experienced human suffering himself, He understands the heartache much better than I ever will and shares in it fully.
I am often struck by the collective need to come back to the church, and indeed God, when things go wrong. At such times, I am reminded of what the author C S Lewis, himself a committed Christian who endured more than his fair share of sufferings, wrote: "God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains. They are his megaphone to rouse a deaf world."1
I cannot claim to have chosen to study medicine for any hugely spiritual reason. It was something I'd always wanted to do, and I never questioned that. Now, however, I am increasingly realising that medicine is a great profession for a Christian. Studying the intricacies of our God's creation in the human body often fills me with wonder, while it is a rare privilege to be able to continue the work of Jesus in caring for patients.
Illustration shows Christ healing the multitudes
