Man of Science, Man of Faith

REPORTERS LIKE TO SAY their job is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. And to some degree, that’s how I saw it, too.

For more than a decade, I’ve spent my days wading through the grim realities of the world—mass shootings, disasters that decimate entire communities, atrocities quietly carried out by authoritarian regimes. I’ve seen both touching kindness and horrific cruelty and have tried to expose and make sense of both.

I once thought of my job as being not so different than that of my father, a minister who spent his life searching the world for truths and bringing words of comfort to the suffering. But these days, I am not so sure.

From the time I was a young man, I had the goal of following in my father’s steps and devoting my life to ministry and the religious realm—or at least pursuing those topics in my writing. I developed an expertise in the mystical and canonical, in the concept of forces that could not be seen, much less proven and measured by empirical method.

In recent years, my work had become increasingly personal, and I’d come to view my work—examining people and the world around me—like that of a psychologist, who studies the mind of others in hopes of finally understanding himself.

IN JOURNALISM, some reporters change jobs and subject-matter beats constantly. Others find their specialty and stick with it for years and decades. That takes time, commitment, and sacrifice, but it’s often the only way to develop a network of sources and expertise in a subject.

I had none of the above when I moved to the science desk this year. It was an unexpected proposition for someone like me; until then, my career had focused on the two driving obsessions in my life, China and religion.

Just a few weeks into my new job as science correspondent, I got a call from an old source from my days as a religion reporter. There’s a man you should meet, she told me.

His name was Jaime Maldonado-Aviles, and he had worked for years as a neuroscientist at the laboratories of Yale University. That is, until recently, when he decided to give it all up and quit science entirely to pursue the prospect of becoming a priest.

I met him one day