A Human Co-Working With God

George Washington Carver, tying a child's shoe.

Carver with President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

The accomplishments of Dr. George Washington Carver are legendary. He created 300 products from the peanut, and 118 products from the sweet potato. These products include printers ink, plastics, adhesives and more.

Carver is widely known as a scientist. But what is not so widely known, is how Carver seamlessly embedded his faith into his daily work. When he went into his laboratory (which he called, "God's Little Workshop"), at Alabama's Tuskegee Institute, Carver asked God to reveal to him the mysteries of the peanut: "Great Creator, why did you make the peanut? Why?" And God answered his prayer.

Carver testified: "God is going to reveal to us things He never revealed before if we put our hands in His. No books ever go into my laboratory. The thing I am to do and the way of doing it are revealed to me. The method is reveled to me the moment I am inspired to create something new. Without God to draw aside the curtain I would be helpless.”

George Washington Carver epitomizes what it means to be a human co-working with God. He said: "Man, who needed a purpose, a mission, to keep him alive, had one. He could be...God's co-worker...My purpose alone must be God's purpose...As I worked on projects which fulfilled a real human need, forces were working through me which amazed me. I would often go to sleep with an apparently insoluble problem. When I woke the answer was there."

Carver did not suffer from SSD, the Sacred-Secular Divide: "...all my life I have risen regularly at four o'clock and have gone into the woods and talked with God," Carver declared, "There He gives me my orders for the day." He wrote: “…if we do not take Christ seriously in our every day life, all is a failure because it is an every day affair.”

Carver loved God and loved people through his daily work with plants. He is "Exhibit A" when it comes to bringing meaning to work by putting it into the context of something much bigger--a biblical world-and-life view. All I can say is, "Bravo, Carver!"

Here is a short video about Carver's life and faith that is well worth the time to view. Of all the videos Worldview Matters has produced, this video has the highest number of views, going on 13,000:

If the video does not play, click http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wv4qYIyJoM

For more on Carver's Christian worldview, see William J. Federer's George Washington Carver: His Life & Faith in His Own Words.