Episode 5

There’s something about cellular biology that just makes me happy.

This is the Lo-Fi Gospel Minute, a five-minute podcast about eternity. I’m Tripp Hudgins.

I’m spending my summer listening to Lo-Fi Girl and teaching High School Biology. We’ve been learning about cellular biology over the last week or so. You know: organelles like endoplasmic reticulum and processes like the building of proteins with mRNA and ribosomes.

I try to connect this stuff to what the students already know about subjects like COVID-19, but it can feel esoteric. How do we explain something that we need a special instrument to see? Can we trust what we’re being told?

“I mean, do we really know?” Asked one intrepid student.

Trusting the data can be hard. Skepticism abounds…

as do creative schemes to avoid doing the assigned work.

I really like these kids and probably relate to them too much.

Such skepticism seems healthy to a point, but then there is a line we cross where we refuse to trust anything we cannot verify on our own, touch with our own hands, examine with our own senses. Taken too far, we are left adrift and subject to skepticism and ignorance.

We become isolated in the world, distrustful and alone. Aware only of our own voices, our own thoughts.

As a curative of sorts, I’m working through “This Little Light of Mine,” playing around with its simple changes and wondering how I might lend my voice to such a sentiment. The Carolina Chocolate Drops have a fantastic rendition of the tune in “Lights in The Valley.” Same tune. Different lyric.

Such generous musicianship.

And this is where I find salvation in the midst of skepticism and ignorance. A straightforward tune played well and with fervor. It is a way of proclaiming enoughness in song, a kind of solidarity in music.

This is enough.

Lights in the valley…

This little light of mine…

When we encounter the paralyzing skepticism of our contemporary age, it may serve us to sing in response. We have to find a way to get out of our own way, a way out of no way, as the saying goes. God can surely make a way out of the no way of skepticism and ignorance. But why must we try God in this way? What does it serve in us to do so?

Wisdom cries out in the street;
    in the squares she raises her voice.

At the busiest corner she cries out;
    at the entrance of the city gates she speaks:

“How long, O simple ones, will you love being simple?
How long will scoffers delight in their scoffing
    and fools hate knowledge?

Give heed to my reproof;
I will pour out my thoughts to you;
    I will make my words known to you.”

(Proverbs 1:20-23)

Do, Lord. Oh do, Lord. Do remember me.

Skepticism serves us when we are skeptical of what would keep us from wisdom and truth. Skepticism for its own sake serves nothing but the ego. It becomes an end in itself, and a dead end at that.

How then do we escape. We listen for wisdom. We listen for her voice as she pours out her thoughts. She will make her words known. That is her promise. And it may just come as a song.

Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine.

My name is Tripp Hudgins. Thank you for joining me this week on the Lo-Fi Gospel Minute, a five minute podcast about eternity.