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Monday Morning Ministers

July 13, 2009


This is the continuing series on “regular” people from my church who are serving God and ministering to people in their “regular” lives. This week’s interview is with Mark Whalon, a 60 year old man who is a professor of entomology at Michigan State University. He is a voracious reader, devoted husband, father and grandfather, church elder, and truth seeker.

1. Where did you grow up?
A split between Eastern Oregon (wilderness) and S.E. Vermont (small machine industry and milk cows).

2. Tell us about your family—the family you came from and the family you have now.
I grew up in an Irish Roman Catholic Family. We had 11 kids in the end; his, hers and ours. My dad and mom were truly in love and we lived a very respectful, organized and disciplined life style. My dad was an outdoorsman, and I learned to be the same—and became a man when I was lost out in the Mountains overnight Elk hunting when I was 12. But my mom had died refusing a therapeutic abortion, and the baby died too a week later.

My dad handled things very poorly. He was devastated, his world dried up and he started to drink heavily. Six months after my mom died, he went back to Chicago to a woman that had introduced him to my mom. He proposed to her (she had been jilted), and she agreed to marry. He brought a cosmopolitan, non-driver, semi-executive single woman to a one-horse county seat in Vale, OR. She lasted about 4 weeks. My dad got permission from the Vatican to annul their marriage—I never heard from or saw Mary again.

My dad was miserable and so were we. He hired a string of daytime house keepers, mostly women from broken marriages; a Texas cook, a bar-room drunk who dropped my sister Kathleen, a battered divorcee with a 6 yr old son that she protected like a mother wolf, a Basque princess (local sheep herder’s daughter-beautiful and tough), my old first grade teacher for a summer, etc.. My dad had promised my mom on her death bed, that he would keep the family together, no matter, but he raised a wild, independent lot.

After that we started to move around. I was in 24 schools in E. Oregon, W. Oregon and Vermont before I graduated from High School in Springfield, VT. In ~1962 my dad finally married a much younger woman from a broken marriage and Edith had a daughter (my little sister to this day). They had 3 boys. So 7 kids by my mom, one adopted daughter and 3 “little boys” = 11 kids.

I met the love of my life at the U of VT (UVM) where she was in nursing school , and we were married 18 months later. Both of our daughters were born in PA. We almost lost them both. We lived on $3K/yr and what I could scrounge on the side—but lived well.

3. How did you become a Christian?
In the midst of my MS degree, farm work and early marriage problems, I came to know Jesus. I was an unlikely convert as a thoroughgoing Darwinian evolutionist with a self-deterministic attitude. My life changed; I saw things totally rearranged. I swam across Darwinian swamps, was drug through intellectual and heart trauma in an academic hippy, return-to-the-land, rural drug-culture to meet a little Baptist Pastor with an MS in Mathematics. I struggled hard, but found myself on my knees in an upstairs “prayer closet”, yes Puritans really had prayer closets complete with a kneeling pew! My life changed, my hard core swear words caught in my throat, and I experienced heart wrenching confession followed by washing forgiveness. I was clean in God’s eyes…wonderful. We were baptized on July 4th, 1977 in an icy Deer Creek. We joined the Church in Starksborro, VT and attended a small group. We still visit and communicate regularly with our dear farming family friends in VT. I mark those days as some of my best, ever!

4. Describe your current vocation and why you decided to do what you are doing.
I am an entomologist, a “bug” guy. I study the most abundant and variant animal life-form on earth—both numerically and also in diversity. I research, teach and educate the public about insects, insect damage, control, disease dynamics and “management”.

I teach a large undergrad class in Intro Biology. On the first day in that class I explain that I am a “Jesus Follower.” And I explain why it is important that they know why I would tell the class that bit of “personal” belief. I point out that my worldview explains some of the things that I choose to teach, and that a committee in the U prescribes some other things as well. I explain that everyone has a way of viewing or believing. Period. After all, almost any academic subject taught cannot be covered in a single class. Therefore, teachers and professors “choose” to teach what they think is important (even if the curriculum is set by a committee—those individuals still choose from thousands and thousands of sources). Worldview and belief bias is introduced through the processes of “choosing” what to teach! I pray for “divine appointments”, and I try to serve Him faithfully.

5. What are some of the blessings of your vocation?
Access to young minds. Washington D.C, policy work. Spring, summer and fall outdoors doing research and helping food producers. Graduate students! A campus environment with many young people to interact with. Global travel opportunities. A challenging, learning and contentious environment.

6. What are some of the challenges?
A contentious environment with some discrimination against Jesus followers, particularly in biology. Always striving to be current in my field. The “Funding & Publication Treadmill”. Ordering my personal world after my Lord’s teachings and example.

7. How is your commitment to Christ challenged, strengthened, and exercised in your vocation?
By disclosing my belief, I often have to “defend” my faith and this leads one to the Word and to his knees. Therefore, I have worked on my faith articulation, and my knowledge of other worldview positions. I also attempt to remain “current” on what the atheist leaders in my field are saying in order to remain relevant and ready to address or attempt to refute their structures and arguments.

8. How has your life and/or vocation been affected by the downturn in the economy?
Remaining “funded” is increasingly difficult, and relevance as a researcher in an academic institution today depends on your granting ability. Public research $ are declining, although my area for many practical reasons has a real “applied” side to it. Therefore, because significant diseases like malaria (which kills far more people than AIDs annually), stored food destruction (approaching 50% globally), crop destruction (increasing) and invasive species (outbreaks) due to travel and global trade remain very high and increasing priorities in the public’s funding eye.

9. What is one thing you know now that you wish you knew when you were younger?
Humility.

10. Any good books you are currently reading or would recommend to others?
Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from it Cultural Captivity by Nancy Pearcey

This content was originally published on The Gospel Coalition

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