X: X-RAY CRYSTALLOGRAPHY

Crystals are fascinating because their macroscopic shape (think of a piece of quartz) is a larger fractal of their orderly arrangement on a microscopic level. A crystal is a repeating lattice of atoms. In the big everyday world, if you shine light through a lattice, patterns of shade result as the light is diffracted. If the wavelength of light is on a scale that matches the atomic distances in a crystal, patterns are also generated, and those patterns reveal the structure of the crystal itself. The electromagnetic radiation that accomplishes that task is outside the range of visible light. The one-angstrom range wavelengths of X-rays do the trick, and in the early 1900’s, X-ray crystallography--investigation of atomic structure through beaming X-rays at crystals--was born.

In the 1950’s, it became apparent that X-ray crystallography could also be used on large proteins and bio-molecules, which had a much more complex repeating arrangement than the repeating lattices of crystals. Proteins and nucleic acids are wonders of structure and function—tiny but dense repositories of information residing in each one of the trillions of cells in your body. In the case of proteins, the order of the amino acids building blocks dictates a three-dimensional structure for the molecule that affords its entire function, in the case of enzymes yielding shapes crucial to run the reactions of life! And, in the case of DNA, I count the structure as a bona fide miracle. And like all miracles, DNA was once only a mystery, especially in terms of its structure, and X-ray crystallography provided the evidence that cracked the code.

Rosalind Franklin was a British X-ray crystallographer working at King’s College on the structure of DNA in 1952. James Watson and Francis Crick, not too far away at Cambridge, were seeking to build a model of DNA. Though some knowledge of the chemical composition had been generated, the scientific community still lacked a viable structure for the amazing molecular keeper of the generational code! Without Dr. Franklin’s knowledge, one of her X-ray diffraction photographs, now famous as “Photograph 51” (Google it), fell into the hands of the ever-scavenging pair of Watson and Crick! The photograph turned out to be the Rosetta Stone of molecular biology. Rosalind Franklin had begun to suspect that the massive molecule was organized as a helix, but no one had envisioned the double helix with the base pairs in the middle until Photograph 51 bounced into the informed imaginations of Watson and Crick. Ultimately, a beam of X-rays shined on a DNA sample in a secluded lab changed the world—no, really, I said, CHANGED THE WORLD! Someone photographed a diffraction pattern and today we can see the invisible. In fact, it was “invisible light” that taught us who we actually are.

Watson and Crick, along with Dr. Franklin’s colleague, Maurice Wilkins—the man who “leaked” Photograph 51 to them—were awarded the Nobel Prize for the discovery, but in a twist of fate, Dr. Franklin died of cancer only four years before the presentation (Nobel Prizes cannot be awarded posthumously). It seems that her own DNA participated in keeping her away from the revolution she helped generate. (And no doubt her gender in those days had played some role in exclusion.) The ability to generate the glimpse wasn’t enough without the ability to interpret it.

I often compare the words of Scripture to DNA. Scripture contains the words of the Spiritual genetic code—the information necessary to synthesize new spiritual product as well as to inherit all that is ours in the family line, spiritually speaking. Scripture is an orderly, repeating miracle, but like DNA prior to 1952, can also be a confounding mystery! People have shined all kinds of the wrong wavelength light on it and come up with all kinds of misleading “data”. But it requires X-rays of the appropriate high-energy wavelength (light of the Spirit) to hit the lattice of Scripture and finally generate useful diffraction patterns that array themselves in our life.

So, if we take this crystallography analogy to the limit, as I often do, what is Photograph 51? What is that key that spiritual thinkers need to be covertly (or not so covertly) shown for a whole new world to open? That is clearly one thing: the spiritual view of the cross. Photograph 51 applied to spiritual things is the central role of a death and resurrection on the part of the Son of God that is far, far more than just an act of sacrifice for generosity’s sake (though it is that, too). The real Rosetta Stone of Christianity is the DIFFRACTION PATTERN OF THE CROSS—It is not just in theory, but rather in fact, a real transaction through which the very life of God was made eternally and immediately available to us. It is, “a death in which there is no life” so that we can step into “a life in which there is no death.” It is THE masterstroke of genius from a God whose wisdom cannot be contained as it rolls out through the human genome!

The cross is not just a snapshot of a sacrificial act intended to evoke pious emotion: it is a code-break to spiritual reality! We required a Savior that was far more than sentiment! The cross is Creator dying for Creation to fully restore paradise lost—with all its unlimited and divine (and astounding) possibilities.

Something kept Rosalind Franklin from seeing what Watson and Crick in their voracious searching energy almost immediately saw. Did her methodical nature cause her to lose the forest for the trees? Had she grown to familiar with the slow process of research and was she too cloistered by her dark stone lab walls (I’m guessing here)? Obviously her photograph was important and her work was valuable and perhaps her methodical way would have yielded the blazing truth by process of elimination. But Watson and Crick had something else going for them—they had prepared a place of expectancy for any and all data they received. They were consumed with a quest and confident in their own ability to be the first ones to crack the code! It was almost “fun” to them, while it seemed more like “work” to the dedicated Franklin.

Yesterday, a Christian friend asked me a question about quantum physics. She said, “Has quantum physics shown us that the expectations of the observer play a role in determining the outcome of an event?” I answered her this way, “Science itself will not give us that subatomic particles (small components of reality) act according to our ‘expectations’. We people of faith include that in our truth, and rightly so, but the science itself won’t give us quite that much. What science does say, however-and it is just as good--is that the OBSERVER is actually a part of the system that pulls reality into manifestation from its “unmanifest” state!” Watson and Crick had observed Photograph 51 with an INTENTIONALITY (popular buzzword for good reason). They WANTED to be a part of the system with every fiber in their being, while Dr. Franklin nobly cherished the scientific goal of remaining aloof from it! Their annoying intentionality determined HOW they observed the diffraction pattern and they ultimately changed the world!

Science claims—no, prides itself on—impartial judgment, but is there any such thing, really? Is there meant to be? It seems the very universe is telling us no! When invisible rays shine on unfathomably beautiful structures like redemption, bending the light into personal possibilities patterns throughout our inner worlds, how can we remain aloof and methodical? There are always more structures to be seen, codes to be broken, mysteries to be unveiled as miracles, and world-changing discoveries to be announced, even if they don’t seem of Nobel laureate significance. It seems unfair that Rosalind Franklin wasn’t more celebrated, and history has to some degree corrected that, but, then, Watson and Crick knew how to see the unseen, at least in this important case.

So, where are the Photograph 51’s of your life? What patterns have been generated by the spiritual light that has hit you? Have you REALLY observed them, or are you trudging on methodically, hoping that the data of your every day life will one day mean more to you? Take a fresh look with eyes that see Kingdom realities that are seeking to emerge around YOUR LIFE. Let the X-rays hit the crystals of your particular genetics and decode yourself and your purpose!